I am Florian Hofer. I grew up in the ‘Lesachtal’ valley in Austria, which is known as the most naturally untouched valley in Europe. The first time I ever picked up a camera was at the age of 6; an old Kodak camera with film option. I still remember how excited I always was when I drove with my mom to the shop to pick up the developed film roll after waiting for it for a long time, which seemed to be ages for me. However, after some time the camera got broken and I forgot about it.
So I continued my life without camera… I finished a study in tourism and started working in the upper hospitality as a chef in some renowned hotels and Michelin starred restaurants in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. I love cooking, but at some point I needed a break from all the stress. So I decided to do a trip to Thailand with my best friend Mario. It was only on my way to the airport that I realized I didn’t even have a camera on my phone to take photos and bring home some memories. So I stopped quickly at a camera shop on the way and told the man that I need a camera.
Upon arrival in Thailand, I started to take photos. I was amazed by the different landscapes and the beauty of the country and I took many nice shots to remind me of this experience. Once back home though, I got back to my routine: a 14 hour working day, six days a week. So you can imagine that I didn’t pick up the camera at all. I was just doing my thing, and enjoying it, but also feeling the stress and the routine again. So when an old coworker and great friend who moved to Canada called me one day and proposed me to work with them, I didn’t hesitate a second.
Every day off, I was out doors, exploring the area in the Okanagan valley and travelling to the rocky mountains, taking photos of wildlife. We even had a deer with its cup standing at the reception! There were so many new things to see for me; I was surprised by the nature all the time. I hadn’t seen such magnificent landscapes before. It was because of that, that I decided to upgrade my camera. I just loved everything about taking photos but I didn’t know anything about editing and I didn’t feel like learning about it. I just brought my camera to visit places and shot.
I moved back home after a year, got back to the kitchen, doing what I love and forgot about the camera again. But I guess that my travel to Thailand and my experience in Canada had shown me that escaping from routine is so much fun. I didn’t stay home for long. I went to Florida, working in a beach club on West Palm Beach with an acquaintance during the Winter season, and not even home an old studymate contacted me and asked if I wanted to go to Iceland for Summer…
I got obsessed with photography; I spent every single minute outdoors, driving around the island, hiking mountains. The more I got familiar with the areas, the better I knew exactly what I wanted to photograph. I got myself Lightroom, and step by step I upgraded my camera equipment. I discovered that being outside in the nature is where I feel home the most. I love it, it’s almost everything to me. And then, coming home from a great trip, the finishing touch is to edit my shots and create that what I had in my mind for quite some time.
I worked more and more on my style, thinking about how I want to highlight the subjects of interest and it has undergone quite some changes over the past two years. It became more simple, negative space, a subject of interest, not too much different colours… I have developed a minimalistic, centric style of photography, and create as well different series where I focus on specific colours and tones. The most important to me is not to falsify the moment that I captured; I rather tend to desaturate specific colours and don’t want to overwhelm the viewer with too much saturation. Anyway, in my opinion, you can never reach the ‘perfect result’.
If there’s something I’ve learned over the past years, it’s to enjoy the moments you are living, to truly appreciate them. Don’t look at our beautiful world only through the viewfinder on your camera and don’t always focus on the ‘perfect’ result, because you will miss out on things. Also, being passionate about something is great, I believe having a passion is healthy. But even if it’s a passion, working continuously under pressure or stress isn’t healthy.
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