Simone was born in Dresden, lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years and has an extended family in Norway, Brasil and Germany. At the moment she lives in Munich, where is is a freelance photographer since 2009. In addition she studies the Art of Photography at the Prager Fotoschule.

1. You are diverse when it comes to photography subjects: Products, landscape and photographic projects as well as artistic photography. What is it that fascinates you about photography?

I am fascinated by different aspects of photography, hence the variety of my work. First of all, I enjoy the technical side, working with different lights, various equipment and not least the finishing touches at the computer.

Another highlight is working with people and the unending possibilities to put people into a composition with either nature or architecture.

Art in photography is often a mixture of both with no fixed boundaries.

2. A look at your website told me that you can be proud of a couple of publications. Congratulation! Was it hard work to get published in those magazines?

Thank you! To get into a magazine sometimes depends on being at the right place at the right time but more often of the ability to meet the clients needs regarding qualitiy and the subject of the photograph.

3. One thing people connect with you is your “Project Components”. What was it all about?

“components” is my part of a larger project of the Prager Fotoschule Austria. My lecturer Reinhard Reidinger chose the subject social media. Social media plays a big role in my life. I use social media tools a lot, for business and privately. So it was obvious for me, that my project would show the worldwide connections between artists, photographers and in general art loving people all over the world.
Getting in contact with hundreds of creative people all over the world , led to the creation of an wall installation with 200 portraits. The visitors of the exhibition, that took place in St. Pölten Austria, were able to actively explore the project and the people behind it.

4. You just exhibited this project. You told me the next exhibition is already in planning? What is it and when will it take place?

The exhibition was called “Elements”, on display between the 28.06 and the 02.07.2012 in the Geranienhaus in Nymphenburger Schlosspark Munich. It was an joint venture of the goldsmith Sigrid Wagner and myself. The work shown on my part where photographs featuring people and rooms, of different years in different sizes.
We were very proud to have about 80 guest on our official opening night despite tropical temperatures.
For anyone who might have missed it, I will show these photographs again under the title „Räumlichkeiten“ in the Dachauer Forum this autumm.

5. Where do you want to lead your photography? What are your goals?

My maxim is photography on a high level. I work in event, documentary, portrait and product photography, so the aim is to achieve a very high level of quality for the client but also for myself. It will be the second year that I will work on the Munich Shopping Night by City Partner and I enjoy doing so immensely.

All above that I am planning two long term art projects, I will not give away any details yet, but you can follow the latest developements after the summer break on my blog www.simone-nauman.com

6. Everyone needs something that keeps the balance to daily work. What’s yours?

I enjoy working so much sometimes that I tend to ignore the stress and hectic of the work. I often only realize after a couple of days after a job, how exhausted I am.

I unwind spending quality time with my familiy and friends. I read, watch a film or relax in the garden.

7. Thanks for your time! Anything else you want to say?

I am really chuffed to be discovered by Kategraphy and very much enjoyed our conversation.

„Umwege erhöhen die Ortskenntnisse” (german: Detours increase knowledge of place”)
Catharine Avak at Components

I really enjoyed the interview and am looking forward to many more interesting interview partners!

Thanks,

Kate

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I´m in a bad mood. Again. At the very very very early morning I’ve had cold noodle salad with ketchup and a ice cold coke. yummie.

Next week we´re going to holiday.

love Paupi

Lexi Vornberg
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Sebastian Buff
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paupi is a bit strange today so he asked me to translate this edition,too. In the German version he wrote about getting up at 5.04am… Well, I’d be strange, too, if I had to get up that early Nevermind. New inspiration today!

Fotofup

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Sarah Rhoads
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kate/paupi

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sorry, forgot to translate last week’s installment of the weekly links. Here they come. Well, Paupi will publish this weeks edition tomorrow or Friday with new inspiration!

Paul Müller-Rode
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Katja Schünemann
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paupi/kate

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I already told you that I print my own photo albums for my lovely bride and grooms as I want something special. After the post about designing them I thought I’d tell you more about the printing.

In a FotoTV Tutorial (I think it was about Lightroom) I mentioned in passing that I print some of my photo albums myself. Since then I often get mail asking for more info on that topic, if it’s expensive, how it’s working, where to get the material from and so on.

The main principle

The main principle is quite simple: You buy a DIY set including a cover, screws and paper and print it yourself. Well, the books are available in different sizes and paper qualities. I print on 21x21cm (not including the area where the screws hold everything together) and on 33x33cm. This way the couples get books for themselves and smaller ones for the parents if wanted.

The producers

I work with paper from Tecco as I met the guys at an event in Cologne and liked what they told me. By then I didn’t know there were alternatives but as I am happy with what they sell me I have no reason to switch. But some collegues tested the Hahnemühle paper and were happy with it.

Well, as I cannot speak about what I haven’t tested, I’ll write about Tecco

You can buy DinA4 landscape, 21x21cm square, 33x33cm square in different paper qualities. I love to print on matte paper (really matte, so with a rough surface) called PFR Duo 200 but I also offer semi-glossy paper for couples who like the photo paper feeling.

I really love the quality of the Tecco paper and use them for “normal” prints, too. You can buy the books as a set (25 sheets of paper, cover, spine, screws) or as a refill with 25 sheets of paper.

Printing – and the problems you can stumble upon

For the small books (21×21 and A4 landscape) you only need a normal photo printer. For the 33×33 books you need an A3+ printer with 33cm width. I use the Epson Stylus Photo R3000 which really does a wonderful job.

You can choose between printing front or back feed. It depends on the paper thickness and your perfectionism. Using the front feed sometimes asks for a lot of patience as the printer needs some tries to get the right position. But you can print using the back feed without any problems, if you use some overprinting.

But be careful: If you feed more than one paper at once it might be that the printer is too hungry and eats two sheets at once which might spoil both sheets.

And another thing: Don’t be too hasty. I remember printing three books at one day and in the end I had to print a lot of it again due to black stripes on the backsides. I was to fast with printing and the ink had no chance to dry properly. So the left-overs from overprinting at the edges were in the printer and spoiled the following prints. Well, patience is the key

Since realizing that I print while doing something different so that some time passes before I turn around the sheet or put in the next one.

I also realized it’s easier to print all the front pages and then wait a while and print the backsides (careful! don’t forget a page or something or you’ll have to print everything again… I spoiled 20 sheets of paper this way which is a lot paper and ink…).

Printing is something special

The software for printing

As mentioned, I work with AlbumPro, export as jpeg (one per page) and print using Mirage. Mirage is a printer software that is really helpful. In addition they work with Tecco and Hahnemühle so you can download media packages including the paper profiles you just need to install. This way you just need to chose the paper and the software does the rest

In my workflow from the camera to the finished print I use: Lightroom (in rare cases photoshop), InDesign with AlbumPro and Mirage. Perfect in my opinion and it saves much time and trouble!

And this is what it looks like:

In this gallery you can see the black leather books from Tecco (small one), a Saal Digital book for comparison and my self-made books (cover made by a lokal book binder and printed by me).

Love,

Kate

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sorry I had to skip last weeks edition, I just had no time to search for the links – well, today there is new inspiration for you Enjoy it!

Aufzehengehen (german: ‘ToWalkOnToes’)
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Analoges Mädchen (German: ‘Analog Girl’)
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paupi

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today I (Kate) wanna translate another blog post for you Frank got an idea from a comment one of you wrote under an article and thought he’d start a blog post series. More today!In the future I’ll post from time to time “outspoken” posts. Maybe some of my editor colleagues will do that, too, we’ll see What’s an “outspoken” post? Well, it’s short posts regarding only one topic. They shall share advice, tricks or ideas in a few words, save you from trouble or just amuse.

Why that? Well, there are many things, mistakes, problems, everyone will have to deal with sooner or later. And to make it easier for you to find a shortcut or way around, we want to let you profit from our experience and make you reconsider some stuff. That’s why I started this series.

Please keep in mind I am in the planning phase of this project, so it might be that I change something about the concept with time. But: The main thought will stay the same: Much knowledge in few words.

Stay tuned to learn more and find out what it’s all gonna be about!

Cheers,

Frank

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blablabla. Does anyone read this? Hello? Every fuckin week – i considering about cool sentences but nobody want to read this. *Hmpf. I feel like Marvin. Hmmmmm. That´s it. You must read my irrelevant shit. Nothing important. Nothing about the peace in the world. Or about the FDP (German Party). Altough they are not important. Now I take my towel.

Ben Kruse
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Rock´a´Bambi
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Katrin Stein
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yours paupi

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surely some of you have to print photo albums sometimes, no matter if for your business or yourself. Today I want to introduce you a piece of software that makes this a lot easier.

A while ago I stumpled over Album Pro by pure coincidence, because of a facebook group the developer and I are both members of. I had a look at the software and liked the idea.

The goal of the software is to shorten the amount of time, one needs to create an album, using an Indesign script that makes Indesign and Bridge work together more efficiently.

It’s really easy: You create templates (or if printing on square formats use the templates delivered with the software), choose the photos to be on a (double) page in Bride, let AlbumPro look through the templates which templates fit the number of photos and choose one. Place the photos and your done

But let’s start at the beginning. I started by creating a document preset for my photo albums ( I print them myself on Tecco paper, so no standard size). So, when I want to start a new book, I double click my document preset.

In Indesign I can see the library with my page presets on the right (I created the first three, the 4th one is from AlbumPro). By clicking a library you can see the included page presets.

In addition, AlbumPro ads a drop down menu to the menu bar, where you can save new templates, make grids from frames, merge frames, flip pages, swap frames/images and so on…

Well, let’s choose a page and open Bridge

Here you choose the images you want to place on a page. I chose three photos from an {In Love} session with my sister (damn, I think those are the unretouched ones)

Well, I chose three photos, now I choose “Template Selector” from the drop down menu and wait till AlbumPro found matching templates.

As I have more than one library, the software asks me what kind of album I am creating (you can save that for the rest of the session).

You can see there is one perfect template (three landscapes) and one that would be okay. I chose the perfect one and am now back in Indesign. The photos are like “glued” to my cursor and I can fill the frames with them by clicking.

In the above screenshot you can see a problem that can be caused when creating all templates in one go. As I created the templates with emty frames, I didn’t see that they were in the wrong direct. Well, the solution: Right mouse click > transformate > turn in the right direction > Strg + Alt + E > save as new template

And this is what it should look like:

Do this page for page and soon you’ll be done

A normal person would be done now. I need to export the pages to jpegs and cut them in two halfs using a droplet as I need single and no double pages.

Nevermind: Done!

My resumée: The tool saves you a lot of time and once you created your templates and presets, everything goes easier than I would ever have expected. And one more plus: The support is perfect!

Cheers,

Kate

The post Review: Album Pro for Faster Album Printing appeared first on Kategraphy.

it’s been a while since I last posted a review, so today I want to show you the book “From Snapshot to Great Shot” by Suzy Clement. It’s a good read and I enjoyed it very much!

Weddings – From Snapshots to Great Shots

Author: Suzy Clement

pages: 228

buy it on Amazon: Weddings: From Snapshots to Great Shots

I can totally recommend the book to every beginner in wedding photography and everyone who can’t get to the next level. Enjoy the video review:

I hope it helped!

Love, Kate

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