Music has always played an important role in my life – already as a child. I can still recall the first record I consciously listened to together with my parents, which was a record of E.L.O. This experience dates back to before I learned the usual nursery rhymes in kindergarten. Towards the end of the 80ies, at the age of 11, I discovered Depeche Mode and David Bowie. I started studying music magazines and the red record button on my cassette recorder became more and more battered.
On our travels, I initially took pictures using the simplest of cameras and usually a 36pictures film. After each trip it took about two weeks to find out whether the photos turned out all right. All of them were kept, even the failed ones, as developing them was quite expensive. Thankfully, those days are long gone… Then, in 2010, we travelled to South Africa and it was clear that now the time has come for a professional camera in order to capture all the beautiful impressions. I got my first SLR that accompanied me on many trips to come.
But now back to music. At the age of 18, I attended my first big concert - Michael Jackson's impressive HIStory Tour in Prague with 127,000 spectators. At the time, I was not yet thinking about taking pictures. However, another hobby came to the fore: attending rock concerts. It was only over the last decade that I developed the desire to take pictures of my favourite bands, just as a souvenir for myself. Everytime I visited a concert, the aim was to get as close as possible to the stage equipped with a small digital camera or only my smartphone hoping that I’d manage to take some good pictures…However, the pictures all looked the same, not to mention the poor quality. Various picture editing programs helped to conceal at least the worst. Over time, my desire to be allowed to a concert with my SLR camera and to be able to take better pictures became stronger and stronger. To see all the photographers in front of the stage filled me with sheer envy. Then, in 2018, I started using my first full-frame camera and shortly after I was allowed to take pictures as a photographer for the first time ever at a rock concert: EUROPE in Stockholm. The magic I felt cannot be put into words. I felt like a skydiver before and after her first jump. What makes it so exciting? It is the unpredictability, the unforeseeable, the tricky circumstances like time pressure and bad light conditions, to capture music in pictures and to then feel the music in the images – simply the magic of the moment. That was the motivation Ihave been looking for.
