English: As I’m mostly away in the coming months I have some desks to rent out in my lovely studio at a prime and quiet location in the middle of the city of Zurich, right between Bellevue and Grossmünster. Available from August onwards for at least 7 months.

This is what you get for CHF 1280.00 per month and desk:

• desk
• WiFi
• color laser (A4), and large format printer (A1)
• Nespresso coffee machine
• whenever available, the studio space for photo sessions and events

A small toilet, fridge with freezer and a tiny oven are also available.

If you’re interested or have questions I look forward to a short email from you. Please include a short description of what you do and why you fit into the studio. Contact information are in the sidebar.

Cheers! -Andreas

Deutsch: Da ich in den nächsten Monaten mehrheitlich ausserhalb arbeite, vermiete ich ab August für mindestens 7 Monate Schreibtischfläche in meinem wunderschönen Studio an bester und ruhiger Lage mitten in Stadt Zürich, zwischen Bellevue und Grossmünster.

Für CHF 1280.00 pro Monat und Schreibtisch bekommst Du:

• Schreibtisch
• WiFi
• Farblaser-Drucker (A4) und Grossformat-Drucker (A1)
• Nespresso Kaffeemaschine
• nach Bedarf & Availability Studiofläche für Photosessions oder Events

Ein kleines WC, ein Kühlschrank mit Tiefkühler und ein kleiner Ofen sind auch vorhanden.

Bei Interesse oder bei Fragen, melde Dich bitte bei mir per Email und einer Beschreibung, was Du machst und warum Du ins Studio passt. Kontakt-Infos findest Du in der Sidebar.

Ich freue mich! -Andreas

Here are some of the best photos from the photo corner. Okay, it was more of a photo wall but it worked as well… Selina put up some more photos on the Curious Courses blog.

Please drop me an email if you want to have your photo without the watermark and larger.

Also my thanks to the sponsors who donated some excellent food and body learning and stuff:

• Michael Jones from the British Cheese Centre
• Michelle Sabatini from Body Learning
• Mike Goguen from Fork and Bottle, Melt Catering
• Tammy Furey from Furey Coaching
• Edson Williams from Lead by Example

The workshop is still about the basics of photography, except this one is longer and you’ll get the chance to work with your camera and ask questions about your camera, which I will answer. So, without further ado, here are the details:

Course Summary

No experience necessary! I will provide a basic understanding of photography and light, guiding you through practical exercises that illustrate the elements of photography. You will then have the chance to put into practice the theory you have learned by using your camera to take some interesting pictures in and around the studio.

Bring your own camera along with you and get to know it better while learning simple tricks to help you take beautiful pictures.

Course Elements

1. Theory

   • What is a camera, back to the basics
   • How does the camera see the world
   • How to make the camera do your bidding
   • How to the eye sees a picture and how to guide it in your photos

2. Practice

   • Metering & Exposure, Exposure Compensation
   • Aperture (f-stop, depth of field)
   • Shutter Speed
   • Choosing your subject
   • Rule of Thirds

3. Photo Analysis & Discussion

   • Discussion of the photos taken during the course
   • Personal experiences of today’s session
   • Good vs. bad photos

Course Details

Course language is either English or German. Depending on the demand for a course I’ll fix the language to one or the other, I will definitely let you know beforehand what it’s going to be.

• Duration: 3 hours
• Group Size: minimum 5, maximum 10
• Course Leader: that’d be me, Andreas
• Venue: my studio, AfB Studio GmbH, Trittligasse 4, 8001 Zürich
• Price: CHF 180.00 (includes 8% VAT)

Dates available for courses (times still have to be defined):

• March 10 (Saturday)
• March 11 (Sunday)
• March 31 (Saturday)
• April 1 (Sunday)
• April 28 (Saturday)
• April 29 (Sunday)
• May 19 (Saturday)
• May 20 (Sunday)
• June 2 (Saturday)
• June 3 (Sunday)

Registration

Follow the sidebar or go directly to the event page on EventBright for registration.

Boris Mersson began piano and violin lessons at the age of five. He later studied piano with Isidore Karr in Geneva and Henri Stierlin-Vallon at the Conservatory of Lausanne. He studied conducting with Hermann Scherchen in Zurich and Herbert von Karajan in Lucerne.

During his varied career, he has played in piano and chamber music concerts close to home in Switzerland and Europe and as far afield as the USA and Brazil. As a conductor he has worked in Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy and Germany. As a composer he has received numerous awards and accolades at home and abroad.

All I can say is I hope I remain so active and creative when I reach the same age.

We started the course with some theory and I introduced the girls to my field camera. Belonging to the digital age, seeing me open a box to fold out a camera consisting of a lens at one end, a bellows in the middle and a film holder at the other was a real eye opener for them. None of the girls could remember a time when cameras took pictures on films that needed to be developed so watching a polaroid develop in front of their eyes was a blast from the past for them. And a firm reminder to me about just how quickly technology has advanced in the field of photography just in the last decade.

By the time I handed out the Nikon D300s, the girls were ready to take as many pictures as they could and the sound of shutters clicking filled the rest of the morning.

We were lucky enough with the weather to be able to visit the Villa Tobler for the practical part of the course where the girls were set the task to take a number of different types of pictures, including “something moving”, “something against the sun”, “something you wouldn’t normally take a picture of”. The last category raised lots of laughs back in the studio when we looked over the shots.

To create a picture showing “something in focus with the background blurry”, the girls had to put into practice what I had taught them in the studio about “dragging” the shutter, i.e. using a low shutter speed while following a subject so getting a picture with the subject in focus and the background blurred.

When the girls finished clicking, we headed back to the studio where I downloaded the photos for a debriefing session. This time turned out to be as equally entertaining to the girls as the rest of the course as the snacks that they were served while I worked consisted mostly of cakes, which they devoured with a relish as their reward for a hard morning’s work. The healthier snacks were mostly ignored… don’t tell their mums.

After discussing the photos that had been shot, the girls all went home ready to become their family’s official photographer.

A big thank you once again to Nikon for supplying the cameras and lenses, without which the day could not have been such a success.

There’s going to be a theoretical part and a practical part. The theory part of the course will take place in my studio, also giving the kids a chance to see the ins and out of a working photo studio. If the weather permits we’ll head outside to take some photos of the surroundings and each other. “On Assignment” the children will be asked to take 12 photos on different themes and the course will end with us going through a selection of these photos, discussing their merits and trying to guess who took them.

Cameras? Of course! We’ll have small digital SLR cameras (Nikon D300s) kindly provided by Nikon which the children will learn how to use for the assignments.

After they leave my workshop, the kids should be primed and motivated to become their family’s “professional photographer”.

I am expecting a lot of fun, a few scary moments and a lot of satisfaction from the 3-hour course which I hope will instill this future generation with a healthy joy of taking good photos.

• Venue: AfB Studio, Trittligasse 4, 8001 Zurich
• Date: Saturday, 24th September 2011, 09.30 – 12.30
• Group size: Min 4 - Max 8
• Cost: CHF 148.- per child

If you would like your son/daughter or godson/goddaughter to take part, please visit the Curious Courses website for more details and registration information.

As well as finding us in Zurich at the Cafe Casablanca, sister events are held in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and soon Chicago and London.

May saw my chance to stand up and speak about the subject that is closest to my heart: photography.

Not only could I use this opportunity to explain why and how the process of becoming a photographer has taken up so much of my life over the past few years, I could also use it to introduce an organization that I have become very attached to during this time - the vfg - to a wider audience.

The vfg, for whom I have been voted on as Actuary, is an association of around 270 creative photographers whose aim is to strengthen the position of professional photography, and raise public awareness of photography in general. The yearly ewz.selection competition that they organize is a very successful way to achieve these aims.

ewz.selection has become the Swiss platform for professional photography. With its Preview Day, Swiss Portfolio Day and Photo Collection, it lends visual media professionals support and provides them with a network. It has been raising public awareness of photography since 1997 by means of its award, its exhibition, its catalogue and other features.

As I am proud to be an active member of the vfg, which of course would not have been possible if I hadn’t discovered photography - or did it discover me? - I found talking about my growth to becoming a “professional” photographer and the growth of the organization that supports them in my home country of Switzerland, linked very nicely together.

Of course I was also influenced by Mike Monteiro’s talk “Fck you, pay me” from the San Francisco chapter of CreativeMornings, I nearly called my presentation: “Why the fck should you get paid like a professional?”. But because I’m not known for my expletives, I went with: “Am I worthy?”

The only way you can make up your mind if I am or not is by clicking on this link and viewing what I had to say for yourself.

How did my talk go down? Well very well I would say, although I was a bit over ambitious on the amount of gipfeli I brought with me for the audience to nibble on while listening to me. Perhaps they were too engrossed in my presentation to eat! What is for certain is that I didn’t want to waste the pastries so consumed them for breakfast, lunch and tea and convinced everyone who came into contact with me for the rest of the day to help me out in this task.

Thanks to Heike Grasser from the vfg for taking photos

Clement weather leads to warm and relaxed faces beaming happiness at a photographer and from beginning to end, it was obvious that the couple and their family and friends were making the most of the weather and the celebrations.

The wedding had a sporty feel. Patrick is a professional hockey player - ex Zurich Lions and recently transferred to a Bellinzona team. In fact the wedding was to be the couple’s goodbye to the Zurich area as after their honeymoon both would be starting a new life in the warmer Italian part of Switzerland.

Patrick’s interest in hockey is shared by Irina who plays in a hobby unihockey team. so pucks and hockey sticks were favorite props for games and processions during the day.

The wedding took place in Bülach and was followed by an al fresco “apéro” before moving to the Riverside reception venue surrounded by sunny fields of wheat. The fields gave me an idea for some unique bridal shots and Irina didn’t take much convincing to wade into the knee high corn in her wedding dress. Just as I was enjoying this photo opportunity my camera decided to go on strike and stop focusing. Luckily I always carry a spare.

Thanks for sharing your day with me through the medium of photography!

George’s descriptions were accurate and we were all pleasantly surprised. Delft is basically a smaller version of Amsterdam. Its center is at least as lovely. Actually, I think it’s even more so. George had been super at organizing a hotel for us (we stayed at the Best Western Museumhotels Delft) and dinners at two very recommendable restaurants: Friday we enjoyed lots of fish at the Spijshuis de Dis and Saturday we tucked into a 4-course dinner at “De Proeverij” in Stadscafe De Waag.

Here are my touristy impressions of that weekend:

Now, my plans for the following weekend were to make it exactly that: a weekend without any work. But alas, the weather looked good (=dry and cloudy) and might have been the last chance before winter breaks in. And somehow a weekend without work is boring. Hence I called them up and asked if they have time and would be up for the session on short notice?

They were!

On location in the afternoon we got a good amount of beautiful fall portraits of the kids and the family together within two hours. They were playing not just with the leafs but also literally in the leafs, in addition to running and speeding around the area. Some tears were shed as well, but nothing serious and within seconds everyone was up and rolling in leafs again.

To my surprise Micro Mobility Systems added a couple of new colors to their “Mini Micro”, and as you can see, the new yellow color matched the fall theme perfectly.

His ability to put together 6 course dinners with all the natural ingredients and things he finds in the surroundings of Entlebuch and Luzern is something we (two friends of mine and I) look forward to every quarter. And so we’ve tasted things from soup made from the mountain Rigi including its rocks, over hay soup, to ice cream flavored with ant acid.

The one thing I always look forward to is his cheese buffet. The first time I was there I was smitten by the roughly 40 different cheeses from just around 20km of the area, and by now the buffet has grown to 87 different cheeses, still from 20km around Escholzmatt. Incredible.

This time the dinner’s theme was the moor, a wonderful fall theme indeed. The Biosphere Entlebuch has a good amount of intact upland moors and because we know the master himself quite a bit he actually gave us a tour through a nearby moor. There, Stefan gave us some background information about the moor and how he picked things for this nights dinner, made us eat ants, and walked us through the really fantastic, soft, green and colorful underground of the small forest, which is part of that moor.

The other person in my photos is Andrin C. Willi, the editor in chief of the Swiss magazine for eating and trinking culture “marmite”. He came long with us onto the “tour of the moor”. Okay, if I say “us” then I mean he was already at the Gasthof and we joined them… And no, the magazine has nothing to do with that marmite. “marmite” is the French word for “cooking pot”.

It was a very entertaining day, great food, good discussions, and Rolf even got himself a new girlfriend after midnight (as you can see in the last photo). I thought she had a little bit of a wooden impression…

And so, without further ado, here are a couple of photos from that, well, let’s call it “event”.

• Goal is to be #1 publishing house in the D-A-CH area. No point in just focusing at CH because of a) the size of the NZZ-group and b) the small number of competitors in CH
• Revenue display online is around CHF 5M.
• 250-300 people would have to find a new job if print-side would be killed right now.
• Findings after starting at NZZ:
  • The CMS Atex/Polopoly doesn’t work for what Peter has in mind, hence stopped its current deployment.
  • Meetings are a catastrophe, happens regularly that he comes in into morning but never sees his office until 3pm, rest is spent in meetings.
  • The size of the organization and target audience means most employees and customers aren’t even in the “early adopters” bracket.
  • “NZZ online” is not the news paper, not representative of the paper and only has very minimal content plus the news agency snippets.
  • The paper has 200 years of experience but only 19 people curate the online part.
  • 3% unsubscribe per year
• Internally came up with the idea to publish the paper as an ePaper app. Peter’s reaction: that’s so uncool.
• However, WEMF numbers are a problem that’s not easily solvable.
• And people love to read the NZZ on the iPad and sometimes make quite an effort to move it there, so ePaper makes sense and makes it easier for those, at least as an interim solution.
• usename: creativemornings, pw: casablanca
• NZZ are the first to bundle the subscription with an iPad for a reduced price, this seems to work well so far.
• Reader feedback for the ePaper app is very positive.
• Ratings in the App Store very split, the tech savvy people complain about the “uncool factor”.
• Will have to live with this split for a couple of years because it takes a while to turn direction.
• Coming from the startup world, Blogwerk, people management is very different.
• Would have loved if NZZ just bought Blogwerk but they already have a team in place.
• Having an HR department makes things difficult, exchanging people is hard and sometimes very frustrating.
• Hardest part of the new job is changing the current team and building a new one.
• How to keep creativity up?
  • The internal PC doesn’t work at all for a creative workflow.
  • Keeping the MacBook, it’s an “identity” thing but it’s also about sanity/personal normality.
  • Introduced “Yammer” as a new form of internal communication. Totally un-NZZ-like.
  • (Internal IT is very conservative and doesn’t like that get-go-do-it mentality.)
  • Hiring a personal assistent to keep the meeting problematic in check.
• Launching “NZZ Labs” for cutting-edge stuff
  • Under an third-level-domain.
  • Because it’s hard to do it on nzz.ch.
  • Because it’s the easiest wat to get things into public hands w/o burning itself.
• Mini-relaunch of the site in November, with “NZZ Labs”
• Trying to create an internal “content startup”
  • Internal team but outside of the existing NZZ structure.
  • Internal competition to get things moving and shaking.
  • Not allowed to book internal meetings.
  • A big problem is internal envy: why do the new guys get to do the cool stuff?
  • Term: Organizational Ambidexterity
• NZZ online has been cross-financed for the last 13 years.
• Trying hard to keep in touch with the community.
• Interesting tidibit: most print journalists don’t want feedback.

The couple got dressed at Daniela’s sister house, which is another very old and lovely building in the area. Even though I started with half an hour spare time I got there just in time: a major section the road there was closed and after a long and time-consuming detour I then managed to not find the door bell of the front door. Man, did I get nervous! Turns out there’s another door inside and I should have just walked in. Live and learn, I say.

After a couple of couple portraits photos in the garden guests started to arrive and Daniela & Eoin left until everyone was ready for the ceremony. This was one of the most emotional wedding ceremonies I’ve seen in a while and the colorful Fatima Dyduch did a wonderful job guiding it. So much laughter and so many tears at the same time. You could not just feel the connection between Daniela & Eoin but also see it. Just look at the way they held their hands while exchanging the rings!

A beautiful day for a beautiful couple, thanks for letting it share with me!

Before the official part started we had about one hour for a very good and fun run of all kinds of portraits.

We started in the courtyard of the Hotel Schweizerhof. They had these fantastic high chairs which looked like they came straight from a tennis court. They needed some cleaning but then I just had to play around with those!

After that we drove to the nearby lake and were amazed how windy and chilly it was, so it was decided to come back, chill out in the hotel room and let the kids got eat some ice cream.

Then the real fun started: a very relaxed ceremony at the hotel and a ride on the chair lift to the apéro location, which was somewhere up on the mountain. Loved the idea and it looked really unusual with all the guests in their various dresses and suites coming up on the chair lift!

As it was also their kids birthday they had a small party for him during the apéro. And while the waiter went back to get some candles he already started to deconstruct the cake, which gave everyone a good laugh.

It was a great wedding, Fiona & Romeo were super relaxed, there were lots of children running around, they chose a great location and we were lucky with the weather!