Now we are already in the year 2022. Sorry, but I didn’t get the annual review done earlier this time. I hope that you have all “slipped in” well! On New Year’s Eve, the four of us made ourselves comfortable at home with the children, ate delicious pizza, poured wax and drank a little champagne to the successful past year in the hope that 2022 will be even better.
In 2021, it felt like there was only one topic here in Germany. Fortunately, things are very different in the Seychelles, my second home. At least on my “heart island” La Digue. Corona is only a “side issue” there. That’s why I really enjoyed being able to travel to the Seychelles four times in 2021 and spend 148 days on my favorite island!
The fourth trip of the year (it was my 37th Seychelles trip in total) was my longest Seychelles trip to date: I spent a whopping 72 days in the Seychelles from mid-September to the end of November, photographing 21 weddings. Right in the middle of this period were the fall vacations, during which my three nearest and dearest were able to visit me for 13 days. It was our most beautiful family vacation to date and we will certainly have wonderful memories of it for a long time to come.
A very special highlight was on the agenda in March 2021. I was able to visit my absolute dream island for the first time: Frégate Island Private! A nice couple from Austria had booked me to accompany their wedding on the dream island, which has already served Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Brad & Angelina, George Clooney and many others as an ideal place to relax. With accommodation prices starting at 5,160 euros, not too many couples consider this island as a wedding location.
I was allowed to spend three days and nights in one of the only 16 exclusive villas at the bride and groom’s expense. The wedding couple themselves lived just a stone’s throw away in probably the most beautiful of the 16 villas. The villas, the food, the service, the pristine beaches, the beautiful nature and the whole concept of the island: perfect! You can hardly put it into words. The island is currently closed for renovation. It will take at least 18 months until all the villas have been completely rebuilt (!) and the island will reopen even more luxuriously. Accommodation prices of less than 6,000 euros per night will then probably be a thing of the past. The reopening is planned for 2023. But first, let’s take a look at the year 2022:
I will be spending a lot of time in the Seychelles again in 2022, escaping the German media corona madness that you encounter here every day and photographing lots of beach weddings again. It starts again on January 26. Once again, there are 21 couples with whom I will be photographing on location during my 38th trip to the Seychelles.
Some of you may remember the book project that I announced at the end of 2020. Together with an experienced author from Austria, the “Seychelles Nature Guide” – the most comprehensive book on the nature of the Seychelles ever published – should be published in the first quarter of 2021. At least that was the original plan. Well, what can I say: Unfortunately, the publishing world has also changed enormously due to Corona and it is anything but easy to find a publisher who wants to bring a nature guide for a distant destination onto the market in these crazy times when many people are avoiding travel. So our extensive work (over 500 pages!) is now slumbering on our hard disks, waiting to be published and printed.
But coronavirus also has positive effects. Our e-commerce business – the FBA online trade in neodymium magnets – continues to grow. The bestsellers as well as the slow sellers are now gradually emerging, which of course helps us enormously in targeting the product range even more precisely. We are always amazed at how big the market is. Yesterday, the first working day of 2022, was also our strongest day in terms of sales since the start of the business. And there is still almost infinite room for improvement in this highly interesting business! But the photographer’s heart is still stronger and I invest most of my energy in the photography business.
The most negative day of 2021 for me personally was August 19. After a family photo shoot, my bulging photo case was stolen from my car in Düsseldorf when I went to get something unhealthy to eat. I didn’t have my eyes on the car for seven minutes. Mind you, I parked right in front of the entrance to a busy McDonald’s branch! These seven minutes were enough for the professionals to open my car and relieve me of equipment worth over 20,000 euros. Fortunately, I have the appropriate insurance, which covered the damage without any hassle. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Interlloyd Versicherung and the insurance broker Andreas Matthiessen from Wentorf once again!
The positive aspect of the theft: I used the insurance money to switch completely to mirrorless photography. I have remained true to my favorite brand CANON. For my taste, there is nothing better on the market for my area of photography! So I’ve been shooting with three Canon EOS R5s and three RF lenses since September. In the course of 2022, I’ll probably add one or two RF lenses and maybe an EOS R3 – but I’ll probably never carry around the dozen or so lenses I used to own. This will no longer be necessary as I want to concentrate completely on wedding photography abroad. I don’t need high-speed fixed focal lengths there, but am well served with my professional zooms. In the next few years, I will only photograph weddings in Germany in absolutely exceptional cases and will only offer day reportages from a minimum of eight hours upwards.
Back to our family vacation in the Seychelles in October 2021: By a lucky coincidence, we were able to treat ourselves to a short photo shoot with a great photographer from South Africa, who was at the hotel on Praslin at the same time as us. You can see a few of the resulting family photos here. As always, all the other photos – i.e. those that don’t show us – were taken by me.
For the new year, I wish us all that the pandemic madness becomes a little “quieter” and that we all stay fit and lively. With this in mind: All the best for 2022!
