The second day of the FEP-congres was kicked of by French photographer Lorenzo Salemi. At first I wasn’t sure if I was already awake or still having sweet dreams of beautiful women. Anyway I have to admit my memory can’t recall much of what was said. That’s why I made notes, but as you know, they got stolen too.
I had a little chat with Lorenzo that evening (or the next) and he’s a really nice guy. He is convinced that make-up is very important in his kind of photography. Maybe he’s right and should I work with a make-up artist more. Lorenzo has the big advantage that he can do make-up himself. If you let me apply make-up, the model will be only suited for circus photography.

Luckily my wife nancy is planning on doing some make-up courses. But then I urgently have to stop working so much, so she has enough free time to do the courses.

I can be very brief about the presentation of the Portugese photographer Homen Cardoso. The biggest part of the people were leaving the room after 10 minutes, I guess that says it all. I’m usually not hard on people but his presentation as well as the pictures he showed were an insult to professional photography. So mr. Cardoso, I’m sure you are a decent photographer, but next time you do a presentation it won’t hurt to do it with some more ‘schwung’ and better stuff to show.

Luckily Austrian photographer Reinhard Fasching made me quickly forget the wasted hour. Reinhard talked about some very interesting aspects of his company SFH Bildcommunikation (there’s a small part of the presentation on his site). To me, this presentation was the most inspiring of the whole congres. Fasching has opened my eyes on some subjects.

A part of me wants to try more and bigger commercial work, simply because bigger budgets allow you to make better pictures. But in the commercial world a photographer is often nothing more than a technician who has to turn some advertising agency guy’s drawing into a picture. I like technical challenges but without being able to put a good dose of my own creativity in the picture, it’s not my thing. Reinhard proves with his company that commercial work and being creative can go together. It may not be the standard way to work in this industry but it’s possible and can be interesting for the client too, refreshing.

edit: I would just like to make it clear that I don’t have anything against advertising agencies. I work for a few and there’s so much talent in these companies. I’m often invited to join in the creative process. I like the group effort. But I think this way of working should be more rule than exception.

To do this, you need the right clients. SFH goes looking for those clients and educates them. If I think about it, I’m really lucky to have quite a few corporate clients, who give me that creative responsability.

In april I wil be giving a workshop in Austria for about sixty professional photographers on a multi day event. I sa that Reinhard is speaking a few days earlier on the event. Hopefully he’ll hang around for the rest oft he event so I can have a chat with him.

Dutch professor Bernt Hugenholtz talked about the difficult subject of copyrights. Turns out that a lot of things that I thought I knew, aren’t right. I’m not going to write more about it because it would lead us too far. And then I would also have to admit that I fell asleep halfway through the presentation (but that was’t Bernt’s fault, just very tired).

Czech Time then. Some of the Czech people had that iron curtain look but they are more then up-to-date when it comes to photography. It always strikes me how much creative photography comes from the former communist countries.

Jan Pohribny‘s work is absolutely stunning. Both technique and creativity are fantastic. It was also interesting to hear that there shouldn’t be a border between commercial work and fine art photography. At the dinner table Jan turned out to be a modest and nice guy. Check out his site and enjoy!

We got two Czechs for the price of one. After jan came Miroslav Vojtechovsky. As a real professor he told us a lot about light, composition and symbolism. For me it got a bit too arty-farty but other people were very impressed.

And that was the end of the official program for day two. But it sure as hell wasn’t the end of the day for photographers who like to party.