some sun beams from LA...

Once again, it's been a while since I last blogged. I will do more, I really will. After receiving another warning from facebook for showing indecent nudity, which I sure did not, I deleted all my images on facebook. I do not know what they want from me. One day I am going to chase them legally for having all my images on their sites without my consent - I mean there are hundreds if not thousands used without my consent, even by quite a few of my so-called facebook "friends".

I am back in LA since a couple of weeks. Normally, I take it slow for the first days, but we had Dominik - my partner in MAXX (a video/ web company) and Peter from Sunbounce here and started filming a DVD for the photokina this year. This year, it's gonna be a real blast.

Unfortunately, I have a meeting coming up and need to get ready, so I will tell you more about it tomorrow.

Greets from Zingst, Germany

at the Baltic sea. There is a great photo festival happening here, and I can not wait to see Gerd Ludwigs show tomorrow. Am talking a short break, few days off with my wife at the most beautiful village by the sea.

Am leaving now for the evening to enjoy dinner with Greg Gorman, who flew in from LA today, and of course, our dear friend Peter Geller of California Sunbounce.

Latest newsletter mailed off

so if you did not get it but would love to have it, send an email to contact(at)guidokarp.com. Have a sunny weekend!

Flash crack wanted

Looking for a "flash crack" who can syncronize my photo sessions with music to a short flash film. If you (a) very experienced with flash programming and (b) interested :-) - please send an email (please no facebook entry, thanks!) to my email contact (at) guidokarp.com.

Sending some sun beams from the Koblenz Münzplatz

Good morning, who ever you are reading this. I hope things are well for you. I am sitting in the Global Coffee Lounge and enjoy my day off. I rented off my studio for the weekend to my land lord, so: no photo shoots.

Have been away for the past two days to Munich: business meetings. First a very exciting meeting with ADAC, not to be mixed with AC/DC though ;-). ADAC is the German society of motoris, and it seems as if we have some business in the future. Then, I met with the director of RIVA, who possibly want to do some books with me. So maybe I will spent some time today on a small proposal of "my version of happiness", at least as far as it comes to books. Also, I will definitly have to blast out a newsletter to my German followers. I hope they still know who I am.

Yesterday was well spent on a business venture, who wants to do an extensive exhibition series of my work. I will sure let you all know once we are getting closer on this.

Enough for today. Enjoy if not by means of weather sunny weekend, then at least sunny by heart. Love, Guido

I'm back

I know, it would be quite an understatement to write I know it's been a while. And I feel guilty about it. However, there were a zillion good reasons and I save my breath by listing them all.

I am back here on my blog, and that's all what counts. There are a number of good news, though. First of all and probably most important:

I will open my new German studio this coming weekend. There will be a party on Friday 31, which is limited to 100 guests. So if you are not invited, I am genuinely sorry. I already cut and cut and cut the list to those I had to invite to 150 -and thankfully, it looks as if we will actually be the 100 I was hoping that night.

For those uninvited, the house will be open Saturday, May 1 from 3pm. Come and take a view, have a chat, and meet loads of friendly people. I fear, there will be more that the studio will hold, but hopefully the weather god will be open minded and we have plenty of space outdoors too for some great laughs and chats.

As you may easily imagine, my time there will be quite limited. However, there will be time slots for sessions with my staff, and few with me - at hefty rates :-)

From May, I will do some shows with AC/DC, Rammstein, Bon Jovi, so I will be on the road most of the time. On May 25th, one of you may serve as my Assistant for one day at AC/DCs show in Hannover, Germany. If you care to get this job, log into http://www.guidokarp.com/workshops/en/acdc.php for the English application (or http://www.guidokarp.com/workshops/de/acdc.php for the equivalent in German). There are no costs. And again: you may work as my assistant, so if you think that makes you the photographer for the show, dream on ;-)

In the end of May, I will be on the great photo festival in Zingst. Check out yourself, this is going to be awesome. There are loads of further news for the forthcoming events - an exhibition, Photokina 2010, my workshops, .... but I'd say I delivered plenty for the day, and leave some for the coming days. Thanks for your patience, I will be back soon. Promise!

Guido Karp photo shoot with AC/DC - London Aug 2008

Here the full video of my session with AC/DC last year. Enjoy. Please do me a favour: please do not copy it and release it on any other websites. I've been in trouble before because of this. Thanks, Guido

Yes, I am alive...

Good evening - at least to those where it is already evening. I think I just passed the longest time off my blog since I started it, sorry for that. Many best wishes from sunny Marbella in Southern Spain, where I have locked myself away for almost five weeks in the infamous Clinica Buchinger since last Friday. Having been on the height of my weight career - 125kgs (little over 275lbs) I decided it was more than time to cut it - dramatically.

So I have not had any food since a week, and am already down quite a bit to 116,4kgs (256lbs) - with over three more weeks to come. So let's see where we are getting.

Since I do this and share the results - much to my shame - more frequently on my Twitter and Facebook-Accounts, most asked questions were (a) how can you survive with just water (b) why do you do this to yourself and (c) why Marbella, a city I am feared to believe the youngest visitor now.

Since I knew this was going to be a long one and thus impossible to twit or facebook, here the answers::

Fastening has proved to be easier and more efficient way for me. I am pretty bad with diets, am way to inconsequent for diets. I can cut down calories so I will not gain, but find it difficult for a long period, and I was eventually always on the bad side - it did not work. Then again, I am sort of fine keeping my weight within a kilo or so. So here I am, trying to lose weight. As much as I can. That aside, fasting is possibly the most cleaning therapy you can give your body. After having lost a lot of water held in the body, the body is eating its own fat - that's exactly what animals do in their winter sleep. So now I am not exactly in my winter sleep, but am really taking a time off. Relax, free my mind, enjoy the beautiful weather and the massage therapies I get.

As some of you may remember, I tried to do this by myself in our LA home last summer - and failed. The seductions were simply to grand, knowing there were these marvelous t-bone-steaks in the market next door, and of course, knowing my beloved diet coke just steps away. In the past, worst parts was the loss of caffeine when dieting - no diet coke. Since I dramatically cut back from diet coke in the summer, it was not so bad this time.

Practicing a rigid diet as public as I do, I knew I was to expect all sorts of wanted and more unwanted advices how to do things best, and until now I was just to polite to ask everyone to p*** off. I guess everyone has to make his own experiences and to decide what's best for her or him when dieting. This is how I do it, and it works wonderful for me. The best advice I would love to take is to simply enjoy the time here - relax, let go ... and dream into the day. I wish I could, but I am in a position of my career where some many things have changed.

The music industry has changed quite a bit in the past ten years (which was, by the way, more or less exactly the first time I did this here in Marbella!). Now everyone keeps moaning - but haven't all business' changed? I remember the slogan "home taping kills music" being asked by some with "and home fucking kills prostitution", and so right they were. I mean cars killed the business of horse carriages, airplanes the huge sea trips. And remember the good fat phone book you got once a year (and being outdated 20% on the day if it's release ;-) - internet killed it.

So yes, as much as we love the www, it did severely harm my business too. Record companies aga former good clients have less money, small to medium sized artists (size in reference to album and ticket sales) have less money - and the massive accessibility of free concert photography on the web did sure its harm to the FansUNITED business, too. Then again, the marketing Princess for one day does would have been impossible without the web, and even marketing tickets for my workshops would have been a challenge, too. No blogging and twittering and facebooking and myspacing off the dates for any shows, whatsoever.

Some people say that portals like Facebook et al are the end of email, and to a certain extent I can follow this. It is so charming to have no spam and communicate with a certain group of people, ... love it. But who knows what tomorrow will bring? If only people would (1) remain to respect other peoples property - and not steal my images ;-) -and (2) if business people could resist the portals who spread same words over all portals. Worst scenario I experienced: Person twits and twit goes straight to Plaxo, Linkedin, Facebook, MySpace - the list is long. Plaxo et al show twit - and report back to Twitter, Facebook - and the same story gets being posted again and again and again. I must admit, I have not found the right balance between all these accounts myself, but I am trying. I am even thinking to employ someone in Russia or so to help me spreading my informations to the world out there - so if you happen to live in a country where the money I can afford to pay for a job like this and Internet is your thing, send me an email :-)

So you see, I spent my days here to do more than fast. Hang out, think a lot, and - unfortunately work more than I should. Then, why (c) Marbella? First and more importantly, the hospital I am in is beautiful and offers right what I need. It keeps me away from the seductions.

Of course I miss my dear wife, her kid, our dog, the cat (I felt it inappropriate to say our cat - she is not ours, I fear we are hers) - mum and dad - friends - all whom I left behind when leaving last Friday, but I did not want anyone around me. Of course I met some nice people at the hospital, but I haven't even asked for their name let alone offering mine. I wanted to do this alone. No plans. No "what are we doing tonight". Care for a nap? Great. Any time? Same for read, work, whatever.

Today is the first day I have really left the hospital, and that because I thought the hospitals bus was going to beautiful Puerto Banus at 4:45pm, so I could buy some batteries for my voice recorder and the current issue of the German mag Stern. It didn't. Tomorrow. I = Idiot. So I left, nevertheless, walked the 30mins down to the beach, and followed it during a most beautiful sunset all the way to one of the world's most beautiful hotels, the Marbella Club, which is where am now, writing this posting, enjoying at least a cold (in the hospital, everything is room temperature) mineral water at a mere EUR 4,75 a pop - a bargain ;-) - with a kind "no, thanks" to the nuts offered with the water.

Left at 4:45, and now it's almost 7:00pm, sun's gone - and posting's finished. The next thing I will try is improve the blog by adding the dates that are going to come, workshops, tours - you see, I'll try to keep you posted. So thank you for reading this long one. And as a little reward - go my facebook site and check this out. If you have not seen it already, I can assure you, this is a real super talent. So enjoy the hopefully sunny and relaxed weekend. I promise it will not be another two weeks until I blog again. Cheers, Guido

06:00am, last day in New York

Wow. It's been a week since Nicole and I landed here, and there are thousand stories to tell. We arrived Tuesday with our dear friend and Sunbounce founder Peter Geller, who by chance happend to be at the same flight as we were. As I did not know then what I do know now, we accepted his invitation for an early dinner at Red Lobsters just round the corner from our Hotel on 42nd St.

Just now, before I started to write this blog, I was visiting my usual morning place ;-) and read the current issue of W - featuring a spread about Peter's son Robert, who is hitting it big time here as a fashion designer (most currently voted "New US fashion designer of the year"). Congrats on this, and I can assure you, Peter's such a proud dad.

But what made me green with envy was that I read that Peter's wife and the kids had a session with Andy Warhol. I find this GROSSLY UNFAIR PETER. So.

Wednesday Nicole and I went for lunch with ex-James Rizzis agent John Szoke, who became a dear friend over the years. Having lunch at Zoe's in Soho became sort of a tradition whenever we are in NYC, and then to the Javits Convention Center to meet Tim Mantoani, who was shooting Peter and Mark Selinger (and few others) that day on his 20x24" polaroid. After that we were invited for Jim Marshall's grand opening at the famous Morrison Hotel Gallery. Having been up since 4am or so in the morning, we went to the hotel for a quick nap - and woke up at 3am... :-( So sorry Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones and all the others who went, you missed a real opportuntity to meet us :-)

Thursday was the first day of the Photo Plus show - US most important photo show, somewhat similar to the Photokina, but much much smaller - actually, the whole show is one grand exhibtion hall. Honestly, I love it! You can see the entire show on one day, and not having the feeling to have to rush in order not to miss anything. And the amount of talent there is amazing. I met Jim McHugh, Douglas Kirkland, Rolando Gomez - and of course Greg Gorman, Tim Mantoani and David Mecey and many more - not to forget the wonderful Lobster Pasta I had with Bert Stern, who just turned 80 earlier this month, at his favourite restaurant Bice for lunch.

I purchased two HUGE prints of "Marylin Monroe - the last sitting" many years back, possibly the biggest prints he ever made (the one you see here is in the entrace hall of my German home) - and we stayed in lose contact over the years.

Back to the Javits, the rest of my day was filled with one meeting after the other: Canon, Lacie, Graphistudio - and the grand reception of the Lexar Elite Photographers. I did not know that there are only 30 photographers in this worldwide programme - and I am one of them :-)

Friday I went to see our buddy Greg Linn, head of marketing with Columbia Records (we worked on AC/DC's Black Ice together), and then to the presentation of the new Michael Jackson album. I am very proud that one of my images was selected for the front cover - the one with him and Jennifer Batton.

Then back to the Javits, more meetings - and finally the grand party of Bron Imaging. I had never worked with their para - and I must say, this is an amazing piece. Also, their generators hold up to 50 flashes a second, so they would stand for the frequency I shoot on Princess for one day. I am seriously considering getting one - and use it on the next tour.

Saturday was the last day of the show. We started off meeting Tim Mantoani in my hotel room, as I had printed 100 digigraphies for ProfiFoto to be given away (this mag is starting to sell this week, and I can only URGE you to get one soon, and subscribe for this sensational print, as its value is $500!). After breakfast we once again went to the Javits, only to meet David Mecey to sign his share of the limited edition he did for FotoHITS. You see, I carried a lot of paper with me :-) I wish I could post the images I took with my IXUS, which is, apart from my Cyber-shot phone, the only camera I took, but I forgot my card reader :-(

When doing business, not everything can run as smoothly as one would wish things to be. For my LA workshops in April I was seeking to communicate with Hensel USA's Marc Gottula - and did not receive any response to any of my mails. When meeting him, he could barely look at me - and now I know why: He used to be the distributor for Sunbounce in the US - and with this falling apart, not only Peter Geller but also me as his friend sort of got blacklisted. What a kindergarten.... Bron US's president Michael grabbed the opportunity of that sour relation and so, who knows, maybe Bron will supply us for the workshop events.

In the afternoon met Calvin Hollywood and his buddies, who were in town for a very facinating project, and also my ex-assistant René Bially (who is now working for Martin Schoeller) - we all shared some beers at the Hilton, and then off for an early and quick dinner with Ulrich Goetze, formerly Olympus, now vice president marketing for Sunbounce and Sun-Sniper, once again at Red Lobster's around the corner from the hotel.

Sunday Nicole and I enjoyed a REAL day off. Great breakfast at the hotel, and as we were just to leave, we as Hilton Gold VIPS were invited to pre-visit their soon to be opened new hotel on 57th street. Since we wanted to go this direction anyway, we gladly accepted - just to learn that Blain (or so) was completely bullshitting us. There is no new Hilton on 5th street, they tried to talk us into buying a time share. Not only that I find it totally unacceptable how they coned us into this situation, I find it very upsetting how little respect these people show when they realize that we will not sign "the deal is only on the table today" or "no, you can not think until tomorrow" their little deal, which - this needs to be said too - appeared only to be to their benefit. Mia, our sales rep, who was full of compliments about the beauty of my wife, her handbag, her glasses,... did not even bother to say goodbye when we left. Honestly, I can not understand that Hilton permits this treatment to their top customers. Coming back to the Hotel, this guy tried to con three more people into going - three who were fuming when I told them that there is no new hotel, but only a time share offer waiting for them (quote Mia "This is not a time share", you just buy a fraction of a property... yes, and a subscription of a magazine is not an "Abo", you just buy the regular delivery of this magazine ;-)

Yesterday, Monday, we strolled all the way down to Soho again, did some shopping - and eventually landed at Jim Marshall's exhibition at the Morrison Hotel Gallery, where he was happily signing the latest supply of his new book "Trust". Got one, insigned to Guido :-) The evening was spent with a dear buddy I had not seen in almost twenty years, Peter Valentine, keyboarder and later musical director for Peter Hofmann's tours. Time just flew buy, as today - and my wife is now up and running. There's a shower waiting for me now - and breakfast.

I hope you enjoyed this long one. We may have one more meeting this morning - Keith Richards manager Jane Rose, then we'll eventually be heading back to Germany with the 4:20 Lufthansa, to arrive at - ouch! - 05.20am in Frankfurt. Two more than busy days in the office, then off to Marbella for my water-only diet. Sure I will find the time to get back to you from there.

Good morning everyone - I wish you a sunny week!

Here an issue I stumbled across this morning on Facebook:

It sort of frustrates me when people are totalling missing the point: here's the video of a beautiful young woman, who had modelled for Ralph Lauren for 8 yrs. Then RL released a ridiculously photoshopped image as a one time ad in a japanese department store. They understood their fault, and issued an apology on their web site. However, some lawyer smelled $$$ and went after RL. In result, they no longer hire her. Of course not. Now she tells she "thinks" they fired her because she was to fat. It's nowhere in the papers, no one has said that. She has not gained weight since she started with RL. Where is the fucking story? The whole issue has absolutely no substance. No one hires a model who sues the client. She will now learn that no one will hire again. I feel sorry for her and believe she was grossly misrepresented and misguided by her lawyer.

Can't believe....

I haven't blogged in a week. One would think that having been in the office with only one session I would have easily found some spare minutes, but the opposite is the case. My time in the office is packed from early to late. There are always too many things to be done, and I always wonder when it's already dark outside and time to leave.

The week has been an exciting one. I received notice that Bon Jovi's first very own book is out. I guess there have been some official ones before, but this is the first one which comes directly from the band - and has some of my photos in there. Unfortunately, I did not do the front cover. I've only seen the facebook ad you see left so far, and the front cover is awesome - congrats to whoever did this.

I like looking at other peoples images, especially when they are as nice as the one on the cover. For those of you from abroad, there is a community called "fotocommunity" here in Germany, and years ago I had to take care I was not loosing myself by fotocommunity-ing day and night. When discussing images, I always try to criticize as charming as somewhat possible, but unfortunately, some people can not cope with any kind of "not positive feedback". I just had one, who really got exaggerated about my postings - guess that's how life is. Sometimes you win, sometimes you loose.

Monday started off really cool. I had a meeting with the editor in chief of the local newspaper, the Rhein-Zeitung, who were actually the first ever to print one of my images, which was taken with my pocket camera when I was a kid. Can't find it now, otherwise I would have shown it :-)

So that went well, and all other meetings Monday too.

Was supposed to have a lecture workshop about how to protect my most valuable asset (aside my family) - my images. Unfortunately, we had to re-schedule it to Dec 16. Still a good day, as I learned that one of my images is being used on the front cover for Michael Jackson's This is it :-) Spent the evening dining out with my best friend Bernie - we had sushi.

Wednesday was cool too. Got a lot of things done, and had a great meeting with my bank. Have two new people taking care of me - nice :-) The meeting went so well, we totally forgot the time, and it went well past hours, which was a bit of a shame as my buddies from the German pop band Münchener Freiheit played a show in Koblenz - and I missed it.

Thursday started off not so nice. One of my interns left. He was actually to stay for three years, but he left. I learned my lesson - I guess, he too. Tried to upload my LA video to YouTube - and it got declined. I had to prove via Warner Brothers legal department I actually have permission to use Avril Lavigne's long time songwriter (and now even boyfriend!) Evan Taubenfeld's song there. I find this cool, as it shows that people are getting more and more respect for other peoples properties. Here's again the video - from YouTube:

Friday was a blast. We had a guy from Nik Software here showing us some really cool things you can do with their software. Afterwards I had a session with a new set of Coyote Ugly girls in the Coyote Ugly saloon in Koblenz, owned by a long-time buddy Oliver, who used to work for the Backstreet Boys and Britney former agent. We sort of co-used the opportunity to cooperate with LowePro, who really made a perfect bag for me. In return, for the hand-made bags, they made a competition on their blog so one could win being my "assistant for one day". Florian won with a real cool image - check yourself! That aside, Florian was a real cool dude! Dominik filmed the whole thing, so sooner or later you'll be able to see what we did.

Saturday I had a true day off. Tooled around in the web, doing some facebook and stuff - check me out in Deutsch or in English on my fan site there. From 11am I was at my favourite home town brasserie, the Bellheimer until the late afternoon. Then I took my wife and Fabienne, her ten year old daugther from her previous marriage, to the Lukasmarkt, the areas biggest annual carnival in Mayen, Germany (which is where I was born).

Met my dad and his wife - my step mother, so to say. When I was a kid, I always dreamed going there with an unlimited, and that's what we did :-)

So finally: Sunday. Got up early as usual, and my appearance in one of Germany's most succesful kids TV show, the Tigerentenclub aired today. If you missed it and can receive German television, it will re-air as follows:

24.10.2009 – 09.15 (SWR Fernsehen)

24.10.2009 – 14.55 (KI.KA)

25.10.2009 – 06.00 (rbb)

Spend the afternoon on the relaunch of some web activites, and am now off to watch Formula One from Barzil. Enjoy the rest of the evening. More later, this week from New York City. Outside the office, I should be able to post more exciting things....

You gotta love this one

Save the dates

Greetings from my German office. I am just about to leave to meet with some of my colleagues from "The Leading Photographers Of the World" in Frankfurt, and we will meet some money people too :-)

Seems as if we finally get things going. We try to keep heads low for the time being, but I will sure keep you posted when things are kicking off.

That aside, here are some dates that may be interesting for you:

Oct 13: Calumet Workshop Düsseldorf

Oct 18: TV Tigerentenclub

Dec 14: An Open Round Discussion with photographers "how to perfectly pack your gear" in Hamburg. More details to follow soon.

March 27: The Bogen Imaging Model Night. This is just to save the date. More information is following soon, too.

Gotta run, more tomorrow. Best, Guido

It is a very special day

my team and I send our heartfelt birthday wishes to the God of lighting, Peter Geller of Sunbounce, who is celebrating his birthday today! Love, Guido

Good morning

and greetings from the Maritim Hotel in Stuttgart. I am here to film two segments for the famous German state TV show "Tigerentenclub" - a kids programme. Also I just learned by mail that the segment for the Landesschau, filmed all Sunday in our studio, will either air today or tomorrow on channel 3 ("dritte Programme") in Germany.

Legal Rights Workshop @ Calumet

Next week Tuesday I will hold a lecture workshop about the legal experiences of my job. How do you secure your images, how do you track them, and what do you do if you realize someone took advantage of your work.

The admission is EUR 79 - and you receive more information from

Calumet Düsseldorf: Axel Findler

Workshop.Duesseldorf@calumetphoto.de

Tel: 0211 - 93 88 46 10

The lecture will start at 10:30 and will, including a hopefully fruitful discussion, run into the late afternoon. To avoid any misunderstanding: the lecture will be in German.

It's been an exhausting weekend

Back home, answering mails. No more princesses for a little while. I honestly enjoy these shows. We get some much love from the people when they get their photos. However, yesterday we were at my German studio for the final day - and simply underestimated that the studio was not designed for (a) so many people and (b) an vast amout of kids, hammering my grand piano and chasing dog and guitars.... So no more kids - and no more Princess for one day events in my studio, which is an easy promise as the lease expires in March I believe and I do not want to extend it anyway.

That aside, we have an awesome weekend. I was shooting two friends Friday night and Sunday morning, here a raw file - straight from the camera (well almost, I resized it to 800pix and put in the credit line):

The sessions were great fun - but then again it is time to move on to new adventures. Today we will be busy bringing structure into the massive amount of data we created during the past four weeks on the road. Our web guy Dominik will "fly in" from Cologe with the Schneckenbus and will make sure he has some new images for the relaunch of www.p41d.com which is scheduled for this week.

Time flies

It is amazing: time flies. I've been in my studio all day yesterday, shooting some nudes with my dear friend Janine yesterday. However, all equipment was still in the truck from the tour, and the studio was a mess. Thankfully, my two assistants Anne and Thea have already been there the day before and thoroughly cleaned it, but still there we so many things to do.

When I was just taking a moment to relax, my landlord popped it. Unfortunately, we seem not to speak the same language, so we will look for a new place soon, as I refuse to renew the lease there. The place is OK, but the guys are ... well.

Am just about to run for a shower and then off for another day in the studio. Our model Heike will arrive at Neuwied train station by 09:30, and then we're off to shoot and film "Princess for one day - The Nudes". From 4pm we will have a full scale Nudes workshop, and tomorrow is the final day of our small tour, testing kids and such, thankfully.

Gosh, I am late. Gotta run. More later.

Haven't blogged in a week

started to write - but was always disturbed. The Princess for one day tour is now over, with two remaining dates in my German studio this weekend. Once again we do nudes (Saturday) and .... the rest (Sunday). Thanksfully this will be my final "You and your kids" workshop on Sunday. I like kids. I really do. But when I started dreaming of Aurel and Chiara I realized, no more Aurelchens and Chiaras - please! So now the tour is over, back to my RNR kids :-)

This one from HIM was done outside their manager's house in the Hollywood Hills, next to where I lived from 2001-2006.

All that aside, my latest technical gadet

Yesterday, in Hamburg

Claudia at our new cover girl workshop

Berlin, here we come

Left Hamburg just after 22 hrs for Berlin, managed to confuse 5+ members of the Burger King staff by ordering food for the six of us in the van, then off to Berlin. Driving: me first, then Nicole, then our fearless stylist Christine from Austria. It had to happen: Master-Stylist Holger said she will hijack us into the woods - and the Autobahn was blocked. We had to leave - and the navigation system continuously tried to lead us back. Where are the good old days we had a map?

We eventually got back to the hotel and hour later as we thought we would :-( Unfortunately, we could only secure the very nice show facilities at the Hilton, but not enough rooms. I tend to stay with the crew, so we are all at the Estrel now, which is a bit off - but: there was a bed, and I slept well.

Now I am getting set for: A HAIRCUT.

We will have two TV teams joining us today at our Princess for one day adventure, so Sophie will make sure I look my best :-)

Hotel East in Hamburg

Greets from one of the most stylish hotels we have been to with Princess for one day. The picture above shows our styling area. But not only that we find the rooms that accommodate us perfectly well, we found a hotel partner who fully understands that the 120 ladies we have participating each and every day are potential customers for their food, beverage and lodging services.

And so they are not just paying attendees, but receive a full princess treatment with cappuccino and lattes on the house :-) I just signed the deal for our 2010 shows here.

www.east-hamburg.de

The Cyber-shot Nudes

Greets from the beautiful Mövenpick Hotel in Hamburg, where we are ready to face another sold out Princess for one day. Just updated my profile images on most of my networks, and while looking for the image I stumbled accross these images I took a little while ago - actually during the rehearsals of the Genesis "Turn it on ... again" Tour in Belgium. They were all taken with my mobile photo - and have not been retouched at all. For the purpose of display here and in other outlets, they have been resized to 800pix and my credit line was added. That's it.

The project was great fun. It was quite an experience being reduced to a wide angle lense, one lamp, one back drop - and the while box. Deliberately I avoided all accessories - I wanted to see how far I would get with just a phone. I would have never thought this would end up being a europe wide exhibition and a book.

Where are my chips?

The manager's ellbow

Traveling with equipment

As I reported earlier this week, I have a new monitor. To make sure "it does not get hurt", this is the way we pack such cherished things when traveling:

There is a lot of brainwork how we travel with our equipment. I will write an email to my friend Thomas Gerwers, editor in chief for profifoto.de, maybe we should get together with you guys out there and discuss the ultimate way to pack our gear properly.

I like the smell of diesel in the morning....

is what I read on some roadies T-Shirt the other day. Well, it does not smell like diesel in my kitchen at 5am in the morning, but as you may have already realized, I am sort of an early bird lately. Then again, I went to bed at five in the afternoon yesterday evening, after a heartbreaking funeral service of my wife's grandmother yesterday.

Just checked my messages of facebook, and that's what I found posted by a dear friend.

With more than sixty million views sure a piece the one or other has seen already, but nevertheless worth recommending again. Writing this makes me curious to check out what happened to our "united breaks guitar" hero Dave Carroll - he "stalls" at five million fews, with video part two "staying way behind" with just under 400.000 views. I mean: 400.000 views! Most dream of such numbers. However, I find it amazing that even the 60million plus of the video above did not create any chart influence to this or my other favourite

The Mean Kitty song - 25m views - or with up to 100m views (depending which video post you look at)

Achmet, the dead terrorist - this one is my favourite, having him singing christmas carrols. by the way a quick message to my German friends out there: es gibt eine Version mit deutschen Untertiteln, sehr empfehlenswert). So this were my golden words to a hopefully sunny (at least by heart!) weekend. We will be en route towards Hamburg for another set of Princess for one day workshops soon.

In Dusseldorf....

Good morning, and greetings from the Renaissance in Dusseldorf. Have yet to meet a nasty hotel manager ;-) so the young day is still a nice day. As most of you know, we were invited to use the Epson facilities for my three day workshop on the last weekend in August, and I was thrilled to work with their Eizo 24".

Went to Calumet yesterday, got one - and will present it to the boys tomorrow morning. Looks very much as if we will leave our old ones behind - rest in peace ;-)

In all honesty, there is rarely a nicer thing than a hardware calibrated monitor that works in sync with your printer. Ok, re-thinking there actually ARE few nicer things than a hardware calibrated system :-)

The famous five minutes of the day - go to MR KLÜPFEL!

For the past days, my staff and I stayed at the Mercure Wings in Raunheim, close to Frankfurt. Basically living in hotels, I am a bit of a nerd. We all work hard and long hours, and I believe that booking the staff and myself in nice hotels adds to the overall mood of the tour, which is very important when traveling for a long time together.

Sorry Mercure - but normally they are not the standard we are looking for. However, I had a meeting with Joey DeMaio from Manowar - in this Mercure. Knowing Joey for years and sharing our nerd vision of hotels ;-) - I was surprised he picked not only this particular hotel but even took inconveniences in travel to be able to stay there.

The hotel is ok - just what you would expect from a Mercure, but the staff is unbelievable. No wish to absurd, even taking new dishes on the menu to accommodate the band and management.

So when Frankfurt was re-scheduled due to my what was said to be Burn Out, the office booked this hotel on my particular wish. We arrived late on Sunday from the Princess show in Cologne, and were both exhausted and hungry. Assuming we would end up with the odd chocolate bar and chips from the mini bar, they went extremes, re-opened the kitchen and served the most wonderful Wiener Schnitzels. The parking was a bit odd - as our truck and the nine seaters did not fit in the garage. No way to far - one of the receptionist found slots for us to park - everyone was so friendly - simply amazing, so our all thanks go back to this wonderful staff there - this is truly awesome one would normally only find on exceptional five+ star hotels.

Unfortunately, Mr Klüpfel - the hotel manager - stands out by far. Just after I paid a couple of grand for the nights we stayed and enjoyed a quick breakfast with our staff, he showed up - and barked about the chaos we created with our parking. Again, we parked exactly as directed. he did not even introduce himself. It was so embarrassing, having him bark at me and the entire staff. I was so shocked. Normally I am pretty good in responding, but I was speachless. I can not recall when some one dared to speak to me like this. Today I learned, he did not only bark at me - but also to the guys from the rental company.

Sorry Mr Knüpfel, maybe you should get some manners. Maybe I can teach you what my mother already told me when I could hardly walk: if you approach people, be kind, apologize nicely if you disturb them while eating, then introduce yourself - and express your wished. You will learn: you will be heard. By telling me a liar and making obscure statements about cars we did not even drive - just because we happened to rent from a company loads of other business people rent from too - made you look like an idiot. Worse: you lost the business. A shame really.

Short break from the princess tour - and some meetings in the office. Then off for a meeting with EIZO this afternoon - and more with ProfiFoto, my CPA and the Nature One team tomorrow.

"Sie und Ihre Kids"...

is the theme of a line we test on the current princess tour on the special request of so many many princesses we served over the years. While one has to be sixteen to participate in "Princess for one day", now our former princesses can bring their kids, dad - and even the dog.

I just finished the current one, and am a wreck. I think I go for a walk. In the rain. Cheers, Guido

I like the idea of ping.fm - but will my followers like to see the same information on all my outlets? Maybe one day one should built the best out of twitter, facebook, blog and flickr ;-)

All set for another cover girl workshop :-)

Yes, we bounce :-)

Princess - technically.

Lately, I have been receiving quite some mails from my photo buddies what we are doing on this tour. Princess for one day is a photo beauty event, and if you would strip it down - a before/ after show, but on a very high level.

We are touring with a staff of 23, 12 stylists, two truckers, project manager, my staff and myself. For the styling, we have six custom built styling desks that perfectly suit the stylists needs with lights, mirrors - check out youtube.com for Princess for one day and see yourself.

As far as it comes to my photographic equipment, there is loads too. I mostly shoot with the Canon EOS 1D MIII. The ten million pixels are fine - and I'd rather have the speed than the 21m pixels. I use 4 and 8GB ProSpec CF cards - they have proved most reliable for our heavy usage. When doing portraits, I try avoid zooms, I mostly use the 85, 100 or 135mm, all high speed Canons. Wherever I can, I try to avoid flash lights. Still we do carry four Hensel 500 compact heads, 100x100 soft boxes, honeycones and the sensational beauty dish with us.

The "classic" portrait series we do is mostly done with 4300K panel lights I bought from Calumet. We actually use loads of them, up to ten, giving me a massive light box, softened up by a hugh Sunbounce sun scrim. I correct the skin tones by using a Sunbounce Pro (zebra) reflektor from below. Using this method, I do not have to flash, which is very convenient for the customer - especially since we, for the first time, are shooting kids - small kids - on this test tour. Also, the constant lights make me very fast, allows me catching just the right moment.

Also, we are testing a new line - cover girl - on this tour. Here I do use the Hensel flash heads - on full power. Panel lights would be to soft for the strong colourful styles we do. I have been tooling around with quite a variety of lights - and am extremly happy with the Hensel heads and their beauty dish.

Once shot, we edit the material with Adobe's Lightroom, and then, of course, use CS4 for color corrections and retouching on our Apples. We have been using Quato monitors for the last year or so, which have been really really great when we started off. Unfortunately, they wore off - possibly they are not designed for traveling each and every day, even though we tried to protect them as much as somewhat possible with custom inlays in our Rimowa cases - and, of course, did never leave them in the truck overnight in low temperatures. We have been testing the new Eizos (24") on this tour - and they are absolutely awesome.... :-)

Finally, we print on Epsons' semi matte professional and Hahnemühle Fine Art paper, using the sensational Epson Pro 4880.

That's the technical side. I will post more images shortly.

Princess for one day on tour

It's been a couple of days since we embarked onto a new Princess for one day adventure. After few days of production rehearsals in my German studio we had a fantastic kick off in Koblenz - basically my home turf. This is where I spent most of my childhood and all my school days - before moving to Bendorf and later Hoehr-Grenzhausen in the early 90s.

Koblenz was a day added later to the tour, as the German high end design furniture company Contur Moebel approached the Princess administration office in search for an attractive consumer event to commemorate their 30th birthday, so it was sort of a test for us there. I like working in such outlets, as the rooms and lightings give us so much more atmosphere, which you can eventually see in the images. Even though we've build some nice relations which the hotels we work with, we are still "people renting rooms", whereas for instant the team around Mr Caser at Möbel Bernd were all really excited to have us (and this particularly includes our "princesses") there.

My wife Nicole, the dog and I immediately left after the show, heading for Düsseldorf, where I attended the ZDF TV show "Volle Kanne" mentioned before. Nicole stayed with the crew to start the first workshop at 10:30 at the Dusseldorf Hilton, while I took "Princess" (our dog - so many princesses can be confusing at times) to join me at the show.

The two Dusseldorf days were a blast. We have tested new fields, shooting couples, babies, and our new line Cover Girl (see our cover girl Sabine above :-), which is quite an challenge for both stylists and my photo team. Today we are on Cologne and are looking forward to another sold out day. Unfortunately, our stylist Nadine has high fever, so we had to leave her at the hotel - hopefully the other eleven stylists will be able to take over.

The first of five three-hour-workshops is starting in four minutes, so more later.

fotocommunity, flickr, view....

As many of you sure are aware, I am an active member of some "photo communities". I like to see what others do, and being a very communicative person, I also like to share my thoughts now and then.

Other than in the past, I have been sort of "unproductive" uploading my own images. I completely fail to understand why some people have to communicate on such a personal level, often referring to my status within the photographic scene.

I fear they tend to oversee that the photographic aspect is only one part why one is successful. As in every other business, it is the summary of benefits that builds a business. "Professional Courtesy" seems to be totally unknown. It appears that people are ignorant to the fact that photography is about emotion. Some people like it, others don't. I can perfectly well live with the act that there may be millions of people who see photography different than I do, and are totally open to any well founded critic.

Let's say some one would write a statement like "sorry, that's nothing for me. The way I like photography is...." and would have supporting material in her/ his portfolio, I would totally consent. But unfortunately, there is always this emotional and in the case itself totally useless issue like "I know all the Karp fans will hate me but this is crap". So where's the point?

It does not piss me off. That would be far too much. But a model's statement like "I am missing the sparkle in the eyes" while providing totally unsparkling material herself... I do not get it.

Before I forget

There will be quite some TV appearances in German television in the more recent future. Today, the SWR will be filming, tomorrow morning I will be live as a talk guest for the full ninety minutes on Germany state television, ZDF - Volle Kanne. 09:05-10:30. Thankfully, the studio is just moments away from the Hilton, where we will be starting at 10:30 with the first workshop of our two day sell-out at the Hilton Dusseldorf.

I will try and keep you updated here, on twitter and facebook when these will air. I've been to Volle Kanne two or three times before - and it is always great fun. I particularly like it that they are not so cheesy and we really have time to talk.

Princess for one day - here we come

Sorry for not blogging for a few days, things have been a little crazy here. The team for the forthcoming Princess for one day adventure got together Monday for "rehearsals". I guess we have to train the stylists how to use their colors and stuff just as much as they have to tell me how to use my camera, but still we need to see how to streamline processes and make sure we're all running into the same direction.

This time on tour, we will - on the special request of the long time customers - shoot families, men (!), couples, and - cover girl. This is is a new Princess-line for those ladies, who always wanted a VERY special look/ photo. So besides the "classic" Princess for one day look, we have a small range of workshops, where our stylists really show what they do - and this not on models, but on "people like you and me". I think we can really say "Everyone's a Top Model!". Here's to that with few samples:

And finally here the image how our stylist Britta handles the red lipstick ;-)

As you see, we had great fun for the last days, and will run into another full day of beautiful photography in my German studio today. In the evening, all gear will be packed in a 7,5t truck and the whole 23 head entourage will get on their way.

We'll head off very close, in Koblenz, in a large furniture design outlet - Möbel Bernd. If it was for me, I'd rather skip the 5star hotels we usually reside in and shoot all the way through in furniture outlets. the 5star bit always sounds fancier than it is - but less than that hardly cover the technical requirements we have to the hotels in size and rooms. Still, most of the rooms we use are - conference rooms. Four walls, sometimes with more, often with very, well let's say technical atmosphere. The furniture stores however provide this most beautifully set rooms, which some carefully designed lights I love to use in the background. Then again, to be fair to the hotels, these are not designed to hold conferences in. Still they are big, and provide enough room for us - equipment, staff, and of course our participants.

From Koblenz, the tour will commence through Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Stuttgart, Munich and finally Neuwied, which is where I have my German studio - until Oct 4. We were really sorry we had to skip the eastern Germany cities as well as Bremen, Hamburg and other cities we enjoyed visiting in the past due to the limited days we could have the staff. So stay tuned, I sure will be back with more soon.

By the way: even though we are sold out in most cities, we always have last minute cancellations from people who have booked, but are unfortunately not be able to attend. Feel free to check www.princess-for-one-day.com for available tickets.