Hello,

I sat down by my computer wondering how I should start writing „About myself“. I began to realise that there is no exact way to describe the how people work, what makes them do what they do or their reason for doing it. Even clearly defined motives are never truly clear as every individual is influenced by people, things and situations they have encountered. This process is ongoing and we keep reassessing it thanks to our continuously acquired knowledge.

I were to try to express my initial motives, they would be as follows: Since an early age, my main interest was animals. I researched pretty much everything that was available about them, I even used to wake up in the night to note down some information, which I thought I could be missing. Back then I was already using a camera and taking photos of animals almost every day. That was the start of me using a camera (ZEISS IKON, medium format). In those days I used the camera to capture the object of my interest.

As time went on things changed because I started taking photos for the pictures themselves. I guess I could say that the captured object, however important for the photo, was only its supplement. This change in my approach was logically followed by many other changes.

I should also mention picture galleries, which are useful for observing the authors‘ work with light and colours. The fact that light can draw and help the overall effect has been known to people for a long time but we must not omit facial expression, captured eye direction and the position of the body and fingers. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that sometimes too many colours and details lead to „blindness“, when an average consumer may not notice the nature of the picture material, which is a shame for any work, providing this caused „blindness“ is not the author’s intention.

The trends and interests within the content of individual photographs are very different. Everyone searches the content of a photograph for something else. Thanks to this and also thanks to technology being easily accessible, the style of today’s photographs is very fragmented as everyone can easily build their own niche. Classification and categorisation is very individual nowadays. What happens to today’s photographs is very positive, because everyone is unique, everyone has the ability to develop and improve. Some people get stuck in a rut and everything stays the same, others learn and observe and continue their development.

I would like to point out that digital processing of photographs offers far greater freedom than in the past, and even though some photographers criticize any compilations or editing, I would like to state that the combining of individual compositions, whether on top of each other or in any other way, has been here since the beginning of photography. Among the pioneers of this type of photo we could include the following artists: Henry Peach Robinson, who around 1869 became one of the first photographers of „Royal artistic photography“. His photograph „A Holiday in the Wood“ is composed of six photographs, which he took in the same place. The first part was taken in April, and the next suitable weather conditions did not come until September, when he finished the photograph. A montage by Oscar Gustave Rajlander „Two ways of life“ might be more familiar. This montage is composed of about 32 expositions. The way of working with the photograph, in other words the montage of several compositions, was in those days frowned upon in England, especially because it captured several naked girls, who appeared in a large format of the photo several times.

On the internet, I display only a tiny fraction of photographs. (I deliberately suppress conceptual and emotional photographs for internet presentations, even though they are key subjects for me.)

I think that these few words that I have written will indicate much more about me as a person than if I quoted my biography. Creativity is my hobby as I am always full of ideas …

With regards to my priorities during photography, I like to take photos of people and I am mainly interested in conceptual photography and portrait photography. Of course I also carry out advertising photographs. I take photographs inside as well as outside, all over the world.

Photographs I have made to order I never publish without mutual agreement. I find publishing such photographs quite tactless towards the client as well as the photographed persons. For me, it is important how I work and I do not want to rank myself among those who feel the need to say: who I am working for and who I am taking photographs of.

Should you be interested, I will look forward to possible cooperation.

 

Michal Sneberg