Yesterday, I caught myself clicking on a green area with my mouse. Again and again. Not because I'd discovered some new image editing trend, but because I wanted to get to the bottom of my reaction time. The result? Sobering. 310 milliseconds on average, with an upward tendency.
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8 AM. After two days of photo production, I'm boarding a flight home from Ibiza, looking forward to seeing my wife. But first, I need to cry. It just breaks out of me. Thankfully, I have the entire row to myself. Why me? Why won't it stop?
Recently, I stared at an image for ten minutes. Ten minutes in which I dissected every detail like a pathologist during an autopsy: The rows of trees with their accurate autumn colors. The weathered chessboard with cracked joints between the tiles. The warm yellow street lamps and their light reflections on the chessboard to the right. And the extremely flat, black Lamborghini Countach at the left edge of the frame. I couldn't tell whether it was a photo or AI.
You know how it is with art. It really belongs to everyone. At least that was always my modest conviction when I sent my photo books out into the world. Limited editions, yes, but not to create artificial scarcity — rather because it just felt right. Like a good conversation — it eventually comes to an end, and that's exactly what makes it valuable.
Today I stumbled across a study that particularly interested me as a photographer: researchers have been investigating why men have different preferences for female body parts. Some are Team Breasts, others Team Butt. Apparently this is biologically hardwired, and I see evidence of it every day in my work.
There are those people who wake up one day and realize: This isn't my life. For Nausicaa Yami, it happened of all times during a global pandemic, when the world stood still and she suddenly had time to think. Eight years she'd worked as a pastry chef. Cake designer — a respectable profession, her parents would say. Except lockdown closed that chapter.
Back from Fuerteventura, I'm sitting at my desk signing the last copies of my Mellow photo book. Remove the wrapping, flip through, autograph on page 5, done.
I'm driving against traffic on social media. Never spent much time there, don't really get the hype. Looking at other people's photos just makes me jealous, makes me feel small as a photographer. So the platforms aren't good for me.
The EU has decided that we'll soon need to label images when they've been created or edited with AI. Starting August 2026, it becomes mandatory. The EU AI Act aims to create transparency, prevent deception, restore trust in visual media. Sounds reasonable, right?
A model with a perfect figure, flawless makeup, and an off-the-rack hairstyle — I experience this situation more often than I'd like. Yet hair isn't just a decorative accessory, but rather the strongest ally in front of the camera.
Christmas is the season of giving. In recent years, I've always given you a recipe for a festive drink — little liquid companions to sweeten the end of the year. This year I thought: How about something that doesn't lead to headaches? (At least not directly.)
I know this article won't interest everyone. If you're here purely for photography, feel free to skip ahead. But over the past few weeks I've been tinkering so much with my website that I wanted to share a few thoughts about it. Not to pat myself on the back, but because I keep getting questions about it.
The email hits my inbox like a sledgehammer: "Your images have been discovered on a Russian website." Without permission, without credit, without any respect for creative work. Once again. You'd think I would have gotten used to it by now, but this digital vandalism affects me every single time.
That moment when you open the program you've been working with for 30 years and find yourself wondering: What have they gone and done now?
When I was flipping through my work from the past few years I had to smile. There it was again, this unmistakable style in my pictures. Like a red thread, it weaves through my portfolio, without me ever consciously searching for it. Sometimes I'm amazed how distinct my signature has become. I probably couldn't even publish my images under a pseudonym without being immediately discovered.
Recently at Frankfurt Airport. A group of Asian tourists catches my eye, their faces as white as a sheet of copy paper. Even for me, as a chronically pale person, it's a surprising sight. With these Asian women, it seems to be no genetic coincidence, but rather a system executed with absolute precision.
Have you experienced this? You're sitting on the subway, and across from you sits an attractive woman. She's wearing boots that look excellent on her. In the past, you would have simply said: "Great boots!' In today's woke era, you risk a public backlash for "male harassment".
I'll be honest, I was a bit offended when someone recently asked me if I even still shoot for Playboy. Yes, of course I do. I'm just not the go-to photographer who appears in every single issue. Sometimes it's months between shoots, sometimes a year. That's just how it is.
It started innocently enough. I was scrolling through my own blog, just looking for an old article about pornography, when my eye caught on those little flag emojis. Those pixelated scraps that look like bunting at a German-American friendship festival.
There you stand with your high-end camera at a dreamy location. The model is beaming and the light is divine. Yet at the end of the day, you're missing the accompanying video footage once again. My clients regularly ask for it, and there I stand like a first-grader who forgot his lunchbox.
I just got deleted by Google. Not because of dubious content, but because an artificial intelligence claimed that a particular OnlyFans creator appeared on my website. A woman I neither know nor have ever photographed. The AI confused two completely different people and turned it into a DMCA claim.
The news from the film industry came as a surprise: The new Bob Dylan film "A Complete Unknown" was shot at ISO 12,800. What might sound like a technical gamble to many was a welcome validation for me as a photographer.
A baker bakes rolls every day. I sometimes don't touch my camera for weeks. And every single time, there's that gnawing guilt: Shouldn't I be producing daily too, like a proper craftsman? Spoiler: No.
One might think the work is done after the photoshoot. Models and clients are satisfied, the pictures are in the bag. What else could there be? Well, if only it were that simple. Because now begins the part of my work that hardly anyone gets to see. An odyssey of data security, driven by a healthy dose of paranoia and years of experience with the pitfalls of technology.
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