A calendar of my kind is about breasts. Yes, that's just how it is. Let's say it plainly. The female bust is a magnet for the male gaze, and so Petra draws us in on the cover as a cowgirl. I generally find it a ridiculous question to even raise, but in this case I'll note with genuine admiration: they're real. And in that beauty, rare and remarkable.
Warm earth tones, boho atmosphere, Katharina opens the year in January. Natural beauty, year after year. There aren't many German nude models, and I'm all the more grateful to have worked with her again.
Ballet dancer Bella takes you into her Tenerife apartment in February. It contained a safe roughly sixty centimetres tall, fifty centimetres wide and deep. The kind of thing you'd expect to find in a bank. But that's a side note.
I spent several days shooting with Katherine. So many images that I simply let myself drift, without working deliberately toward any one calendar shot, with the quiet confidence that it would emerge on its own. And it did, when she was lying on the bed in those bridal stockings. The camera hovered above her, and the moment I reviewed the images, I knew immediately: that's the one. Cheeky, sexy, different.
Do we really need to say anything more about the April motif than "wow"? The finest backside of the year. And a wildness and joy for life that's simply contagious. I mentioned it in last year's roundup: a model with a penis tattoo on the sole of her foot can only be crazy and funny. Here's proof that she's also breathtakingly sexy.
Petra in May, in a villa, beautiful from the front and from behind. Casual, approachable, easy to be around. I'd had her on my radar for a few years, and was finally able to work with her.
In June I take you to the south of Fuerteventura. Nausicaa Yami, the cover model for my book Mellow, truly came alive in the backlight of the setting sun. She has a quiet strength about her.
Sergeant Ice is a peculiar artist name. But that's what it says in the contract, so I'll go with it. In the end it's not about names anyway, but about a beautiful, wild woman with a mane that could have stepped straight out of an eighties dance film. Shot at a location that no longer looks like this, since it rained heavily on Fuerteventura that winter.
A close-up of the bust simply cannot be missing. I picked this grass and handed it to Nicci so that you can almost feel her chest as you look at the image. Do you follow my thinking?
Emmanuelle is a striking presence. Small, slender, delicate, and a little shy when she first stood in the lobby. But also self-assured and strong. We worked together beautifully, and the salsa pants, as I call them, were worth every euro.
Franzi and the guitar. Or should I say the guitar and Franzi? I enjoy it when two competing elements vie for the viewer's attention. The beautiful woman always wins in the end. That's a promise.
Just one motif with Katherine was never going to be enough. Her backside is simply stunning, and last year it didn't quite get its due. As a self-confessed admirer of a good posterior, I had to include the rear view of Katherine as well.
Sazze in December. An image so innocent and yet absolutely cheeky. I love it so much that it was immediately clear: this is the closing shot. Like at a fashion show, where the final model on the runway always holds a place of honour.
Am I too enthusiastic? Perhaps. But I spent a long time refining the selection and genuinely only chose motifs that I myself am completely taken with. And that's not such a bad thing, is it?