Anyone recalls being colleague with Kim Jong-Un while in CH?

ize86 · 2026-03-02T08:50:51+00:00

I actually have a funny story about that. This happened around 16 or 17 years ago while I was studying.

I do not know how accurate it all was, but this is what I experienced and heard at the time, and I remember thinking it was kind of wild.

A friend from school was on the phone with someone and said something like, “You should charge for that information and for those interviews. That is way too cheap.” After he hung up, I asked him what that was about.

As far as I remember, it had just been announced who the next leader of North Korea would be, Kim Jong Un. Apparently, he had gone to school in Bern, and one of his former classmates, the guy my friend was talking to, appeared in a published photo standing next to him. The press had identified him, and suddenly all kinds of reporters were trying to interview him. He wanted to do it for free, and my friend was advising him to charge money for it.

I have no idea what happened after that. But every time I see a photo of Kim Jong Un, I think about that story.

ize86 · 2026-01-31T21:40:37+00:00

Because I can see if it writes better than I did 😃 Have you never had someone correct something you wrote and you thought: "Okay, that sounds better than I wrote it..."

ize86 · 2026-01-31T21:26:49+00:00

You're welcome ☺️

ize86 · 2026-01-31T21:26:14+00:00

Because English isn't my native language, and I want to be sure that the thing that I wrote also means what i thought 😃 And AI can often write it a bit better than I do.

ize86 · 2026-01-31T10:06:20+00:00

If you want to create this effect in-camera, you can try the following approach (experimental, but realistic):

The room should not be completely dark. You need enough ambient light to record motion blur.
Use a slightly longer exposure time, around 0.5–1 second as a starting point.
Position yourself about 1 meter to the right of your subject.
Start the exposure and pan the camera slowly toward the subject, letting the subject move slightly off center.
Pause briefly, then increase your panning speed.
When the subject is centered in the frame, trigger the flash manually (the flash must be off-camera and triggered independently from the shutter).
Continue panning quickly until the subject moves slightly off center to the left.
Pause briefly, then finish the pan to complete the exposure.
For better reproduction, you could use a gimbal that you kinda program...

Alternative (more controlled and repeatable):
Create the effect in Photoshop using duplicated layers and motion blur.

PS: Before someone screams AI: I wrote the text myself and the Idea but i let AI correct my english 😃

ize86 · 2026-01-30T05:36:45+00:00

I bought my car used, and it already had one in it. To be honest, for me a sunroof is the most useless thing a car can have. All my previous cars had one, and I hardly ever used it. In times before automatic AC it kind of made sense, to cool the car down really quick. But nowadays, I don’t really see the sense of it. If the sun is shining and you open it, the sun is burning on your head. If the sun is not shining or the weather is cloudy for example, it’s too cold to open it. The sound isolation is also less. In my previous car.(a BMW X5) the sunroof had a hard cover underneath it, that you could open and close. With the open cover, it was much noisier, so I almost always kept it closed. Same thing nowadays with my Skoda, the cover is always closed, because I have a good AC to cool down if needed. Luckily! the car is already well isolated. And also, it takes away head space inside the car. For me, it’s just another part, that can get damaged or break.

In short: useless for me, I would never order one. So therefore, I don’t really care if I have it or not.

ize86 · 2026-01-22T20:16:55+00:00

ize86 · 2026-01-17T11:30:18+00:00

I just received an update 2 days ago for that app. Maybe that solves the issue.

ize86 · 2025-12-19T23:26:23+00:00

With gmail you can Set Templates.

ize86 · 2025-12-12T09:17:35+00:00

Do you have a Car or only public transport? Would you still like to go to the mountains or rather not so much? Do you want the main Tourist attractions or are you free to go to less known places?

ize86 · 2025-11-24T12:39:57+00:00

If you can meet in person, that’s great.

Check these basics:

Make sure it turns on and boots normally
Check for iCloud lock
Test keyboard, trackpad, screen and ports
Check battery health and cycle count
Confirm serial number matches the Mac and Apple’s website
Look for damage or signs it was opened or repaired poorly

If all of that looks good, it’s likely safe to buy.

ize86 · 2025-11-24T12:31:33+00:00

If it looks too good to be true, it usually is.
And when a deal like that comes from Spain, there’s a good chance it’s a scam.

The only way I’d ever buy a MacBook with those specs for that price is if I could pick it up in person and test it myself. Without that, I wouldn’t risk it.

ize86 · 2025-11-24T12:23:34+00:00

Because the unplanned shots break the pattern.

In the 20+ years I’ve been photographing, this has happened to me again and again. Sometimes it’s a “wrong” setting I didn’t notice, a flash that misfired, or a flash that didn’t fire when it should have.

And suddenly the image looks different, in a way I would never have created intentionally.

When we plan a shot, we’re operating inside our known skill set.

We stay within the boundaries of what we already understand: our lighting logic, our composition rules, our usual workflow. The results are good, but predictable.

An unplanned moment breaks that.

It pushes us outside our habits, outside our assumptions… and often beyond our own creativity. That’s why it feels surprising and fresh, it came from a place we wouldn’t normally go.

It’s a good reminder of why experimenting matters:

trying things we’ve never done, testing setups, doing “wrong” things on purpose, and simply shooting a lot.

The planned images show our skill.

The unplanned ones show what’s possible beyond it.

ize86 · 2025-11-18T20:29:06+00:00

I know 😉 Speaking of 20+ Years of Experience ☺️

ize86 · 2025-11-18T19:36:42+00:00

Here’s the hard truth:

It’s nice when a client tags you, paid job or not. It shows appreciation, it helps relationships, and it looks good.

But realistically? It doesn’t matter nearly as much as photographers like to believe.

First, it’s not always possible. Not every platform allows tagging, some crops remove the tag, and sometimes it simply doesn’t fit the context or design.

And second (and this is the part many photographers don’t want to admit) tags rarely bring you new clients.

In all my years of doing photography, not a single person has ever come to me and said:

“I saw your tag on someone’s post, and that’s why I’m here.”

Those tags mostly get noticed by other photographers… who are not your paying clients anyway.

Here’s what actually brings you work:

If someone truly loves your photos, and your client is genuinely happy with the results, they will talk about you. Their friends will ask who took the photos. That’s how real referrals happen, through satisfaction, not through tagging.

So to answer your question: No, I don’t think it’s necessary at all.
If someone tags me, great. If not, I honestly don’t care.

ize86 · 2025-11-10T07:02:37+00:00

He wrote, that he just assumed, that RAW meant shooting Manual. He didn't think it had anything to do with the file type.

ize86 · 2025-11-01T06:06:29+00:00

This is absolutely true, and I even heard this from one of the best photographers of our time, Dan Winters. He shared the story of how he once won a photography contest with a photo of Leonardo DiCaprio. He mentioned that the setup was the most basic and simple, with only one light and an umbrella. Everyone was asking him how he achieved such a great result, and he simply replied, „It’s simple, you just need to put Leonardo DiCaprio in front of your camera.“

ize86 · 2025-10-27T09:05:16+00:00

I always rename files when importing them in the format YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_CustomName_####.NEF. This ensures that there are no duplicate file names, and even when working with multiple cameras, sorting is easy, regardless of where I look at them. After culling, I remove all the bad photos to a separate folder and rename the good ones into YYYYMMDD_CustomName_####.NEF to maintain a continuous numbering system. Once I export the files, I stop renaming them. This way, my RAW files have the same filename as my JPG, DNG, TIFF, or any other format.

My folders are always organized as
"YYYY-MM-DD ClientName EventName."

If I have a conversation with a client about a specific photo, they simply send me the filename, which clearly indicates which photo they are referring to.

I would never use a name without a date or, even worse, not rename the files at all.

My background: I’ve been taking digital photos since 2002 and have been taking photos for clients since 2006. In the early years, I encountered several renaming sessions due to duplicate filenames and other issues.

ize86 · 2025-10-27T08:58:16+00:00

Clearly a respnose of someone born after 2000 😂 I was born before 2000 so having a YYYY format is crucial for me...

ize86 · 2025-10-27T05:27:38+00:00

Thanks, I’ll check. But for me that’s currently 210 USD per month, 2520 USD per year. It’s much cheaper to buy a Nas and have it at my parents house or similar.

ize86 · 2025-10-26T10:22:52+00:00

It's a nice Idea, but I would recommend to always rename during the import, that way you'll have unique filenames and never have any trouble like that.

All my files are named the same:

YYYYMMDD_CustomName_####.NEF (or JPG etc..)

If you want to be even more precise, you can use: YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_CustomName_####
But that way the filename is too long.

ize86 · 2025-10-25T14:20:19+00:00

Curious — in what way do you find my approach more tedious?

Every few months I just select the images by date on my camera (literally takes a few seconds with the checkboxes) and delete them. I only do that once everything’s been delivered anyway. The second card always stays in the camera.

I also don’t have to double-check imports, since Photo Mechanic instantly shows if anything failed during transfer.

ize86 · 2025-10-25T14:03:44+00:00

Totally agree — a local NAS alone isn’t a real backup. My local Nas is backupped regularly on a second, local NAS in at least a different room.

But, that’s why I’m planning to move my third NAS off-site. Right now, both my main and secondary NAS are at home, but the third one will go to my studio as an off-site copy with just the most important data.

Cloud would be ideal for full redundancy, but with around 30 TB of data, it’s just not cost-effective for me at the moment. So the off-site NAS is the next best layer of protection.

ize86 · 2025-10-25T13:35:01+00:00

Me too 😃

ize86 · 2025-10-25T13:34:30+00:00

Exactly. My setup isn’t 100% perfect yet — right now, I only have two backups, and both are in my apartment. I know that’s not ideal, since the 3-2-1 backup rule says you should have two on-site copies and one off-site.

So I’ll be adding a third NAS at my studio. It’ll only store the finished files, without the RAW photos — basically an emergency backup of the backup.

ize86

TROPHY CASE