Photography — Portraits
Photography
When I’m not designing, I spend a big part of my day fingerpicking guitar or taking my camera out on the streets of Berlin. I also run my own portrait and wedding photography studio, onedaytomarried.
01 onedaytomarriedA business rather than a hobby — no second attempt, and deadlines that cannot move.
I run my own portrait and wedding studio in Berlin. It is a business rather than a hobby — clients, contracts, deadlines that cannot move, and an outcome that has to be right the first time.
Wedding photography has an unusual property for creative work: there is no second attempt. The ceremony happens once, the light is whatever it is, the room is whatever size it is, and the people are experiencing one of the more emotionally loaded days of their lives. You cannot reshoot, you cannot ask for a reset, and you cannot let technical problems become visible to the client while they are happening.
02 What it gives back to the design workComposition, reading people in real time, and working to constraints you did not choose.
Composition and hierarchy are the same discipline
Deciding what the eye reaches first, what supports it, and what should recede is the same problem in a frame and on a screen. Photography trains it continuously and with immediate feedback, which is a faster loop than most design work provides.
Reading people in real time
A portrait session depends on noticing when someone is uncomfortable and adjusting before they say so — most people will not tell you. That is directly the skill a user interview requires, and it is the reason moderated research feels natural to me rather than awkward.
Working to constraints you did not choose
The venue, the schedule, the weather and the light are given. The job is to produce something good within them rather than to negotiate them away. This is a useful habit to bring into product work, where the equivalent constraints — legacy systems, commercial deadlines, regulatory requirements — are just as non-negotiable and just as often treated as reasons a good outcome was not possible.
Running the whole client relationship
The studio means handling enquiry, expectation-setting, pricing, delivery and the occasional difficult conversation myself. Doing that regularly makes stakeholder work in a product organisation considerably less daunting.
I also spend a fair amount of time fingerpicking guitar, which has taught me mainly that improvement is slow and that this is fine.
