My passion for photography and video has been with me since childhood. I started with stills, then moving image came along, and at some point clients stopped asking only “can you shoot this” and started asking “what should we even show”. That is why planning is as much part of the job now as the camera is.
I am one of those people who see beauty in the everyday. That sounds like a line written for an about page, but it is the practical core of the work: the best shots rarely come from staged scenes, they come from the moments beside them, when someone briefly forgets the camera is running.
How I work
1. Understand what it is for. Before anything gets planned I want to know who should see it and what should happen afterwards. A video for a shop and a video for recruiting look different, even if both should look good.
2. Concept before the camera runs. Hook, structure, shot list. It costs one morning and saves hours on the shooting day.
3. Shoot. Calm, unhurried, with enough material for several versions. I would rather shoot too much than too little, reshoots always cost more.
4. Edit. Rhythm, sound, subtitles. This is where it is decided whether someone swipes away after three seconds or watches to the end.
5. Hand over. Finished files in the formats you actually need, not one file you then have to re-crop yourself.
Website or bot alongside
Websites, messenger bots and automation run under a separate brand of mine, Phantom Lab. Same head, different craft, one person to talk to.
Languages
German, English, Ukrainian, Russian. On set that turns out to be useful more often than you would think.