This year’s PIXEL.POWER ran under the theme “Breaking The Frame”, and it delivered. Six talks, six very different speakers, and a mix I loved: a bit of tech, a bit of AI, but mostly about how photography really works once there’s a human in front of the lens. Here’s my quick tour.
Stefan Voitl: Being faster than a Red Bull photographer
Stefan has shot ten years of Mountain Bike World Cup for Red Bull, and his workflow blew my mind. He picks his keepers right in the camera, uploads them over a mobile hotspot, AI edits them automatically, and the client sees them in the online gallery almost instantly. Speed plus relevance equals value. And the best part: no more editing late into the night. He got his joy of shooting back. This talk gave my inner nerd a lot to ponder!
I always shoot wide open. Stop down and you see all the dirt on the lens.
Wolfgang Gangl: The business of fine art
You’d think images like his take hours and hours in Photoshop. Not quite! Thirty minutes of editing at most, in Affinity Photo, and that’s it. Everything else happens in camera. On top of that, Wolfgang pulled back the curtain on how the art market for photography really works and how he finds his way through it. Super insightful stuff you don’t hear every day.
Raphael Mittendorfer: Life in movement
Raphael used to be a dancer, and you can feel it in every frame. He walked us through an impressive set of projects, from stage to studio to fashion. What stuck with me most, though, wasn’t a technique. It was how much he cares about communicating with the person in front of his camera. He keeps checking in:
How are you today? Does this work for you? What’s doable?
Jolly Schwarz: Beyond the mirror
Everyone brings invisible luggage to a shoot, for reasons we as photographers simply can’t know upfront. When someone says “I don’t like this photo”, they usually mean “I don’t like seeing myself”. So Jolly builds trust first and skips the barked orders. A really moving talk.
Don’t photograph people. Photograph the moment they stop fighting themselves.
Mathias Kniepeiss & Cliff Kapatais: Shoot real, build unreal
Live on stage, Cliff photographed a cosplayer, and Mathias turned the shot into a whole virtual world with AI, step by step, right in front of us. Super fun to watch! The takeaway: AI lets you do almost anything, but you still have to know where you want to end up. The vision is still yours.
Photography means creating an experience. AI can’t do that.
Susanne Hassler-Smith: Why some images get under your skin
Susanne showed how where you put the camera, and how you move it, shapes what we feel when we look at an image. Eye level, from above, from below: each one tells a different story. Her examples made it all click instantly, and she reminded us why asking the right questions upfront matters so much.
People want to work with people who are human.
Verdict
What a day! Great talks, a perfect balance, lovely people to meet and a head full of ideas to take home. PIXEL.POWER, I’ll be back next year!