Once each year, the BFF – aka the Professional Association of Freelance Photographers and Film Creators – offers a one-of-a-kind scholarship to promote twelve participants with BFF mentors, including illustrious names such as DARIUS RAMAZANI, MONICA MENEZ, KATJA RUGE, MAXIMILIAN KÖNIG, STEPHAN LUCIUS LEMKE, ASJA CASPARI, TOBIAS HABERMANN and KAI UWE GUNDLACH, as well as multiple-day workshops culminating in an awards ceremony in the beautiful Baltic Sea resort Zingst, followed by an exhibition tour.

This year’s theme is ‘And then everything was blue’. BFF is looking for the twelve best young photography talents with inspiring perspectives of the world of tomorrow. Awaiting the participants chosen by the expert jury is a unique BFF photographer mentoring program, € 1000 in production funding, multiple-day workshops, prizes from EIZO and ADOBE, as well as presentation at the exhibition premiere in gallery quality produced by Whitewall in cooperation with Epson, the awards ceremony, the promotion awards magazine and plenty of media attention!

“Back when I was the BFF Chairman, I already loved the days in Hamburg and Zingst, when all of the participants and mentors would come together, work on the concepts, exchange ideas, cook together in the evening and spend an intensive time with one another,” Darius RAMAZANI tells GoSee.

This year’s jury is made up of Alice Feja (Head of Art Buying, Kolle Rebbe), Anna Gripp (Photonews), Simone Gutberlet (Head of Art Buying, C3 Creative Code and Content GmbH), Prof. Dr. Markus Hilgert (Secretary General of the Cultural Foundation of the German Federal States), Sebastian Lux (F.C. Gundlach Foundation), Götz Schleser (Photographer, BFF Chairman), and Edda Fahrenhorst (Curator of horizons zingst Environmental Photo Festival).

The works by the new finalists will be produced by BFF main partner Whitewall in cooperation with EPSON and presented at the opening weekend of horizons zingst Environmental Photo Festival from 20 – 29 May, 2022. During which the three winners will also be awarded.

Eligible for application through 14 November, 2021, are students of Photography, Photo Design, Communication Design, Visual Communication and Liberal Arts in the fourth semester or higher, as well as freelance photography assistants, with at least two years and a maximum of four years of experience assisting, from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Applicants can be no older than thirty years of age.  Further information is available via BFF. In charge of the competition are BFF members Sonja Hofmann and Götz Schleser.
21.10.2021 show complete article

The portraits of the endangered animals by Tim Flach are touching for the heart, mind and soul in a forceful way. The award-winning London photographer, bookable via GoSee member SEVERIN WENDELER, is known for his extraordinary imagery which captures the beauty and the special character of the animals. For years, Tim Flach has been looking for the answer to the question of how humans and animals relate to one another. With this project, he is dedicated to the rare species of the world whose existence are threatened.



Tim Flach has worked on the project for about two years, for which the preparations alone took six months. The photographer's research was thorough: He traveled around the globe to the regions where rare animals on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) live – these range from endangered animals such as the polar bear or the giant panda to species already extinct in the wild such as the northern white rhino. Sudan', the world's last northern white rhinoceros bull, died in mid-March 2018 in the Kenyan wildlife sanctuary of Ol Pejeta.



Tim Flach's photos show the personality of the animals. His emotional animal portraits forcefully affect the viewer, for which he uses a common method of human portrayal: the portrait. Tim Flach achieves this effect quite consciously. He chooses this form to amplify the feeling that animals are close to us humans. Tim Flach: "I have acquired important knowledge from studies that deal with the effects of animal photography on our hearts, minds and souls.



Traditional wildlife photography depicts animals in their natural environment – wild and free. This amplifies the impression of being different and their distance to humans. "His message is clear: we have to do something to secure the future of the animals now before it is too late. Since his earliest childhood, Tim Flach has felt a strong bond with nature and sees it as his calling to raise awareness for nature and help viewers immerse themselves in it. As he writes in the foreword of his book, "The balance of power has shifted, and nature depends as much on man as he does on it."



Production of the exhibition went in a particular direction and was realized according to the ChromaLuxe process. Instead of printing on paper, the motifs were applied to coated aluminum plates by means of thermal sublimation.



Plus, Tim Flach can be experienced live in the multi-vision show “Endangered Animals”. In his keynote, he lectures on the connection between conservation and saving endangered animals. He shows his animal portraits as well as detail and landscape photographs of the corresponding ecosystems. Tickets are still available. Sunday, 27 May, 2018 | 8pm | Multimedia hall. The keynote is in English



Venue of the exhibition: Postplatz Zingst. Duration: 18 May – September 2018. Vernissage with the photographer present: 26 May, 2018 | 11am

03.05.2018 show complete article

On Saturday, 28 May, the health resort on the Baltic Sea will become the mecca of photography for the ninth time already. The highlight of the photography year in Zingst is the Environmental Photo Festival "Horizonte Zingst", which is organized by our GoSee friend, Erlebniswelt Fotografie Zingst.



"Awaiting guests are a total of 21 ‪Fotoausstellungen‬‬ – or horizons, as we lovingly refer to them – distributed throughout ‪‎Zingst. The exciting topics range from classic nature observation with the camera to international, high-performance wildlife photography, admirable works of photographic art and photojournalistic depictions of dramatic phenomena of our time," the festival team tells us. And this year, the main focus is once again on the love of nature and treating it mindfully. Hands-on photo technology with trendy brands and products can be found at the photomarket on the last weekend of the festival.



This year's patron is nature photographer Michael Poliza. “Poliza is an environmentally aware photographer, who has dedicated his life to photography, making him the ideal patron of our environmental photo festival. This combination makes him the ideal patron of our Environmental Photo Festival” press executive Simone Marks tells us. The photos on display this year are among his latest creations. He was once again unrelentingly on a hunt for new motifs from a bird's eye view. He has traveled the northern hemisphere just as intensively as he has the East Asia. The results of which can be seen in Zingst.



A highlight is the exhibition 'One World' in the art gallery hotel Vier Jahreszeiten. The photo show is a collection curated each year deliberately from opposite motif areas with the intention of conveying to visitors contrasting impressions and, by doing so, give them critical food for thought. The selection is about the originality of the idea behind the photo and the creativity of the visualization. On display are, among others, circus photos from Walter Schels, which are shown at the photo festival for his 80th birthday and the 40th anniversary of Roncalli Circus.



GoSee member DARIUS RAMAZANI presents his portrait spread 'Old People' – authentic faces far from beauty standards, which tell the biographies of elderly people. “There is a story behind every wrinkle from smiling, every age spot and gray hair, which the beholder wants to know more about,” the people and advertising photographer tells GoSee.



The festival provides the perfect framework for the series 'Grey Matter(s)' – Architecture of Extreme Landscapes. Tom Jacobi, former Art Director of STERN magazine, has returned to photography after a creative break and presents the grandeur of nature in archaic nature photos. The project took Tom Jacobi and his camera to the most remote corners of six continents over a period of two years – always in search of locations suitable to be photographed in color and radiate in gray.



See the entire program at HORIZONTE ZINGST.
24.05.2016 show complete article