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Well, I am still working on the wedding pictures. I also had a photo shoot last week on Wednesday with a very cute 2 week old baby girl, a happy but tired mom and dad and an exicted and proud grandmother. There are some great photos that I hope to share some time, but it will be a while… I am heading out of town this weekend!
I have decided to post updates when I ride here, always including the link to my current stats:Â http://www.hepler.org/mybikestats2009.htm
Today I went on my longest ride of the year to date, 60KM. It was pretty windy and a little cool today. First I stopped off in Gräfelfing to visit friends. Then I went up and had lunch at Schloss Blutenburg and afterwards went up through Dachau and headed east. I originally wanted to drop by my work and have some cake with my colleagues but I realized I wasn’t going to make it so I stopped off at the Feldmochinger Lake, relaxed a bit and then headed home.
Well I have been staying busy over the last weeks… A week ago tomorrow I shot a concert. I have had this week off and I was planning on going up to the Handwerkskammer (among many other things), however I haven’t made it there yet and it probably will not happen this week. I have spent time with friends though, which has been great and yesterday I had my first “E-Session” (Engagement Photo Session) of the year. It was great fun! I took all day for it because it was for friends and a present. We went into town and then went to the zoo together! There will be a few pictures to come!
Hello and welcome to my first blog post on my site! I have started this blog to share a bit about me as well as to share about the things I have to go through in order to start a small business here in Germany and ultimately things that have to do with that business… If you know me, big news like this may come as a surprise, so keep reading!!
First a bit about who I am. I was born and raised in Texas but have lived in Germany since 2001. I have lived in the beautiful city of Munich since the beginning of 2004. The very first time I came to Germany was just after high school in 1994 for an internship. Six years later I came to Germany for 10 months in 2000 to do another  internship. I got an internship working with computers; it was something that had been a hobby of mine for quite some time but up until that point I had not taken any computer courses or workshops. Before this internship I was unsure what I really wanted to do in life. However, I quickly realized that I had a God given talent to work with and quickly learn about computers. I soon knew what I wanted to do “when I grew up”! I moved back to the Texas towards the end of the year 2000 and signed up with a consulting company that paid for a 2 week computer course and the related Microsoft exam, as long as I agreed to give them a chance to find me a job that was acceptable. I successfully completed the course and passed the Windows 2000 Professional exam on the first try, but was trying to enter a work world that had just been hit by the bursting internet bubble. This company couldn’t find anything that fit me well and so I contacted the company that gave me the internship in Germany to see if their offer to give me a job still stood. It did and I was back in Germany by mid-2001.
Fast forward 8 years later. I have been working either as a “Systems Programmer” or a “Systems Engineer” for the past 8 years. When I first moved to Germany, I can’t say that I really had hobbies outside of website programming and building computers. Since then I have taken up many hobbies including Cycling (specifically long distance bike tours… this year I would like to cycle from Germany to Budapest Hungary!),  Klettersteigen, and photography. This last hobby I have enjoyed for a number of years, but up until 6 or 7 years ago I only had point and shoot film cameras. I then bought my first digital camera and really enjoyed taking pictures. I took tons of vacation photos, photos at every party I went to and a friend’s wedding at the beginning of 2006. I enjoyed all of that to the point that I eventually bought my first Digital Single Lens Reflex in late summer of 2006. Since then I have poured a lot of time into learning and lots of money from my savings spent on photography books and new equipment. I was asked to be the photographer at a friend’s wedding in 2007. This was really a great experience! I enjoyed the challenge but since then I have enjoyed the many complements on the photos and the wedding album I made for those friends even more. A few months after that I photographed another wedding together with someone else for another friend. Again I really enjoyed the experience and again the bride and groom loved the photos and the album that I gave them. I have received SO much encouragement from these couples and from so many different people that have seen their albums that I have been considering trying my hand at wedding photography as a side job. However I have been busy with many things over the past year and have been missing the necessary push out into the cold deep water of wedding photography.
Since January 2009 I have had 3 different people come to me to about me possibly photographing their weddings. 2 of the 3 have come because the brides-to-be have seen one of the wedding albums I have made. Those things along the encouragement I have received from so many friends, including all of the brides and grooms whose weddings I have photographed have lead me to make the decision to pursue a part time job as a Wedding Photographer!
A number of the first posts in this blog will be about the things I have to go through to become a legally licensed photographer in Germany. This process will be more difficult than in the United States, that is for sure. I hope that this blog will be interesting enough that at least a few people will follow it and that I would write at least a few things that someone finds helpful. If you do find this helpful and interesting I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment!
Thanks for reading and please come back soon!