To download an image on your phone (iOS): tap on the picture to open it in full resolution, then tap and hold till you see the menu, choose Save Image. Then change to the photos app and open the picture in Recents. Hit the little share button in the bottom left (Square with an up arrow) and choose Use as Wallpaper.
The land of the rising sun
It has almost become a tradition for me to travel every other year to Japan for skiing. 8 Years ago when I did it the first time it was this secret powder spot that some people heard about but no one has ever been. This is quite a contrast to today when everyone and his grand mother has flown to Japan in search of the powder. To avoid the masses of people, me and my friends decided to go this year with less preparation and more flexibility. We decided to fly to Tokyo, take the Shinkansen to Nagano. Get our rental car there. And then just take the days as they come and decide on the fly where the snow is good and where we want to go. This gave us the opportunity to avoid the masses and not being stuck in an area where there is no snow.
The first days where not so great regarding snow. There was no snow fall and Japan in general did not get a lot of snow at all. There was about 2 meters of snow base missing. We went skiing in certain areas and almost couldn’t believe it. After a few days exploring Kyoto and Osaka the weather turned and it started dumping. We started to get amazing powder days.
A couple days later we headed up towards the island of Hokkaido. One long car trip later we were not disappointed with what we found. There was good powder to be found near the lifts. But everything easy accessible was tracked within minutes. This is quite a difference than I remember from the first time I was in Japan. Back then there were very few people riding powder. Because of this we often decided to put our skins on and walk into the backcountry for some untracked lines. And lines we found!
After all that skiing (and a big party for my birthday) it was time to head back towards Nagano to return the car and take the Shinkansen to Tokyo. No Japan trip is complete without the experience of this busy city. I love the duality of Tokyo. There are some of the most crowded streets just a block or two away from the quiet back alley or a nice park.
Personally the skiing was the reason why I wanted to go to Japan. But in contrast to the years before it was not my only reason. I love Japanese cities, especially Tokyo. And I wanted to take my time to explore these cities with my camera. My goal was to take in the emotions and capture them in pictures. I don’t know if I succeeded but I enjoyed the process a lot.
I created a photo book of our experience in Japan. You can see the pages in the gallery above. There is no text as it is intended to be viewed in person together with one of us. We can explain where the pictures were taken. Feel free to show up with a six-pack and I am more than glad to add some more stories of our trip to my explanations.
As you can see, we did not take a lot of pictures while riding. I preferred to enjoy the great powder myself. What we did is use our GoPros, 360°- and compact cameras, as well as our cell phones to film the experience. On some pages there are QR codes you can scan and watch short edits of our trip. Alternative you can just click in the photobook page and a new window will pop up with the video.
Wallpapers for your phone and PC
I was asked by someone if they could use some of my pictures as wallpapers on their phone. I liked the idea and decided I will start publish images every month or two in the right formats to use as smart phone backgrounds and one image to use as desktop backgrounds.
To download an image on your phone (iOS): tap on the picture to open it in full resolution, then tap and hold till you see the menu, choose Save Image. Then change to the photos app and open the picture in Recents. Hit the little share button in the bottom left (Square with an up arrow) and choose Use as Wallpaper.
Here we go with the first set of images
Windows / Mac / Linux desktop Wallpaper
The treasures I found
As much as I love photography, there is one thing I always said I will never shoot: Weddings. No offence to any wedding photographer. I don’t think weddings are too simple or too boring to shoot. Quite the opposite: They are so diverse and complicated and there is no second try, so I never thought about myself to be fit to shoot them. But then one of my best friends decided to marry and their wedding photographer could not cover the civil wedding. She asked me to cover for him and I said that I am not going to do that. But after a lot of begging and threatening to just give someone a small camera and be done with I gave in. In preparation I decided to take my old medium format camera with me to make just a few additional shots with a vintage look.
But I am not here to talk about wedding photography. I am here because after the wedding I had to send in the film to develop. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a lingering thought: Don’t I have some old exposed but undeveloped film laying around? After a quick search I found a box with about 10 films or so; some 35mm, some 120, some rolls, some in color and a lot in black and withe. I put everything in a box added some padding and most importantly some Swiss chocolate (I learned that this makes your pictures so much better) and sent them off to Carmencita Film Lab in Spain.
I knew that some of these films must have been exposed around 15 years ago. So I was not expecting a lot. My skills back then still had a lot to improve (not that they don’t still have to improve a lot), but also storing exposed film for such a long time deteriorates the material.
When I got the link with the developed and scanned images I was super surprised what pictures came out of this. I had no memory of what or whom I shot back then. There are pictures from events I still remember vividly like my first ride from the Ammertenspitz down the Schaafstal and others I have no idea what the occasion was nor was I in contact with some of the people portrayed for what feels like an eternity. So without further ado I present you some of the treasures I found.
Snow
People
Landscape and Urban
GoDeep 2019 - New video out!
This is last seasons edit. I was with @adi_waefler, @dominik_willen on a rood trip. The plan was to drive down to Montenegro. But first we stoped in St. Anton for a couple days. It was perfect timing. While the Bernese Alps did not got any snow, it dumped massive right when we arrived. Even better, the next day the clouds disappeared and offered us some unbelievable possibilities to ride amazing lines.
After St. Anton we drove further through Austria, towards the Balkan. After a week of hiking up mountains and having some nice rides, the weather forecast predicted another great dump in the Arlberg area. So we decided to leave Croatia again, and head back to Bludenz to visit our friend @gypsyoffice. With some friends of here we went up to Sonnenkopf. This was a decision that paid off big. We got to ride some secret runs and insanely deep powder.
From there on we had to say goodbye to @dominik_willen as he had to go back to work. @adi_waefler and me headed back out east again. Unfortunately Petrus was not nice to us and we did not get any new powder anymore. Therefore the rest of the trip was more sightseeing in cities and ski areas. We visited Zagreb, Trieste and Venice. For the finale four trip we decided to go skiing in Davos, Livigno and back home.
Enjoy a collection of the best runs in St. Anton in the video.
My new - Website - Portfolio - Business Cards
I used to have 2 homepages, one to represent my photography profile and the other one to tell stories of my travels around the world. Both sites were hosten on a server i managed in my spare time. But as this was an old operating system that was end of life, I had to do something with my sites. Even though I am an IT engineer by profession, wanted to focus on the design and the selection of photos for the presentation. I decided to merge both sites into one and present you my stories and pictures both here.
Homepage
I was searching for a simple place to present my my pictures. After some research I came up with WIX and Squarespace. After looking at the templates I liked squarespace a little bit more and did my first experiments on here. I have to say that it was really easy to create a simple, nice homepage without much work or knowledge and achieve great results.
I present my pictures in three galleries.
Snowworldpictures
I used to mostly take pictures of skiers and snowboarders doing freestyle. Today I prefer to ride powder myself. But there is still chance to take pictures of my friends hiking and riding.
Landscape
I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world: the swiss alps. Lately I got back into hiking. As always I have my cam with me and try to document the beauty of our world.
Urban
Not only mountains are interesting, also people and architecture from all around the world. I try to carry my camera always with me and take pictures from interesting scenes I encounter.
Printed Portfolio
In todays world everyone is presenting their pictures online on their homepage and instagram. And to be honest I was not any better. But then while redesigning my homepage I was invited to try creating a photo book on saal-digital.ch. I did not have to think for a long time. I wanted a printed portfolio or better yet a coffee table book for a long time. But I never found a good place to do it. They had either horrible software to layout the books or were super expensive if they allowed you to upload pdfs created in a DTP software. From my time at the university I have some experience working with a DTP software like Adobe InDesing or Affinity Publisher. I was really happy when I discovered that I can upload PDFs and print from them. Saal Digital not only supports that but has a huge amount of information about sizing, color management and quality. They even provide templates for InDesign and Photoshop.
As I started designing the book, I had my first hard decision. What format will fit my pictures best. After a lot of back and forth, checking the examples on the homepage and experimenting on my computer, I had the feeling, that a square book will look the best. I have quite a mix of landscape and portrait shots. While other formats cater more to one or the other, a square is neutral and supports both.
I wanted to try my new DTP software from Atfinity called Publisher. I have experience with InDesign, but I am very intrigued about this new product. So I had to create my own template. With the precise sizing guides from Saal Digital this was no problem whatsoever. Next step was do jdecide on a layout and flow of the Book. I wanted to include the same division into snow, landscape and urban as I have on my homepage. Then the hardest part started. I set myself a limit of 25 double sides and therefore had to be very strict with myself in choosing what pictures I want to display. Some experiments and rearranging later, I had 25 spreads arranged and ready to export. The only thing I was missing was a new Logo. I checked some offerings on fiverr.com and spend a little bit of money to get a logo. Funny side note: I asked the guy to have ski-tracks in the logos. Only after getting the revision back I realised, that a guy from India might not know what I mean by that. So I fixed it myself and ended up with this logo.
I wanted a very clean and simple look of my book. I only put my logo on a white background as my cover. Also, I did not use any text except for the chapter titles. Once done with the layout and collecting all the feedback from my friends about the choice of pictures and the design I went on to order the book. I twas an easy and straight forward process. I had to upload the PDF to their web application. There I had to drag each page on the template and choose a full site template. If I have to say one negative point, I would say it would be great, if I upload a PDF it should be already full spread. But this is just a minor thing, as it took me approximately 5 minutes to correct this issue. Once the order was done the wait begun. To my astonishment, it was only a short wait and the book arrived a few days later in my office. I was sunned. Pictures have so much a bigger impact when they are printed. The print is very detailed and lifelike, the paper great to touch and the overall quality very hefty. I was not sure about the fold and how this might look. Saal-Digital promoted their version of binding as almost flat. I have to say they did not disappoint at all. I printed the book 19x19 cm as I was not yet convinced. But I already decided I will get a bigger book to display on my coffee table.
Business Cards
Me having now my new homepage and my portfolio, finally I also wanted new business cards. When you walk down the streets and take photos of people, it is really hard to explain that you just like to take pictures because you like it. Everybody thinks you are weird or creepy. But If you tell them you have an art project going on and hand them a business card with your instagram account or your homepage, the people are way friendlier and even pose for a picture.
project world powder – Eastern European Edition
Sälü Zämä
Wir haben ja schon mal darüber gesprochen, ich habe nun mir etwas Zeit fürs Ideen sammeln genommen. Mein Plan:
Ich möchte irgendwo Freeriden wo ich noch nie war. Der Osten würde mich sehr Reizen zum die Skigebiete zu erkunden aber auch mit den Tourenskis. Natürlich ist ein Kriterium, dass es dann auch Schnee hat. Als Alternative wäre auch noch die Pyrenäen (Andorra, Spanien, Frankreich)
Wir nehmen uns 2 Wochen Ferien (so zwischen ende Januar und anfangs März) Wir einigen uns auf eine Zeit und geben Ferien ein. Ca 1–2 Wochen vor dem Datum können wir dann Festlegen wo wir hin gehen und Hotels / Flüge / Autos buchen.
Meine Idee wäre je nach dem wie weit wir gehen / wohin wir gehen, mit dem Flugzeug und dann ein (grosses) Auto mieten.
Unten mal was ich von Google gefunden habe:
P.S. Ja ich weiss, die Videos sind nicht alle so der bringer 🙂 Und wichtig: ich habe hier keine Reihenfolge beachtet.
project world powder 3.0
Two years have already passed since I was in Japan and Canada. It was a memorable trip. I met a lot of nice people and traveled to amazing places. There was only one problem on this trip: Where is the snow? We planed 3 weeks of skiing in Japan. And we ended up with about 4 days of fresh powder. Afterwards, we went to Canada and it was quite literally the same. Tons of blue sky and, if it was snowing, it was 2-3 degrees too warm to deliver the fluffy white gold. We had some nice days in the powder and others on the slope, but after one almost dry month in Canada we decided to do a road trip through the US of A. We did skidooing in Salt Lake City, watched the sun go down in the Monument Valley, passed the Grand Canyon, gambled in Las Vegas, visited friends in San Francisco and finally saw the real east cost and the pacific while driving up to Vancouver.
The trip was not what we had planned, but it was an amazing adventure anyways.
Now two years later and I miss these countries, the people and, first and foremost, the snow! I give them one more chance to show me their beauty and the white gold. I’m going again 🙂 I will fly the 11th January to Tokyo, then straight to Sapporo and finally to Niseko. There I will stay till the 25th January and after two days of ski trip fly to Tokyo. At Saturday the 30th I fly to Vancouver, get the car and then travel through Canada and the USA in search of the Powder till mid March.
project world powder 2.0
Some experiences from my ski trip in 2014