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1) 3 pieces of advice for your 14-year-old self …

You know at 14 what do you tell somebody? It’s going to be okay, it is going to be okay really like

it’s going to be amazing, life is amazing and also here is the thing, it is short, it is very short and so

love it now, love it now.
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2) What's written on your business card?

My name is Adrian Chesser a photographer, artist.
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3) What's the coolest thing about your job?

Any given day I wake up and I’m deciding what aspect of this thing that I intimately, passionately

love more than anything else. What aspect of that am I going to engage with? Initially I fell in love

with light, light is this amazing thing. When you fall in love with something that is unexplainable and

that’s, holds a mystery by its very nature it sort of everything flows up from that. It’s sort of falling in

love with a mystery is the key to being an artist actually.
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4) What are the limitations of your job?

It is the actual setting the intention of doing the work and then doing the work. It is not like setting

the intention and not doing it. It is just like; you just aren’t going to get anywhere. You know what I

mean? So it is being self motivated, I think more directly is being motivated would be the big

challenge, it is like keeping yourself moving.
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5) What's your job about?

I formed a company, Adrain Chesser LLC to deal with the business that is, you know the business

part of making art, which is selling art and photography. You know this involves making photographs

so it’s shooting photographs and then there is a process of taking, if I shot it in negatives making it

into prints to the actual object. And so once you have a photograph this actual object then you can,

you know market it, sell it through a gallery or sell it online or sell it. And then there is the everything

else involved which is the more challenging part which is how do you get people to know you made

this piece of art. How do you build the relationships with galleries and with museums and collectors

and you know, how do you build the presence in the world so that you are, what you have created,

can it have a value. Or then the other people understand the value of what you created and stand behind you and say this is the value. Well actually my like expertise in photography is portraiture, I

certainly do everything. I do still arts and I do landscapes and I do, it just all depends on what serves

the purpose for what I am trying to say but in the end I always approach it as a portrait if by doing a

landscape I am making a portrait if by doing a landscape I am making a portrait of a landscape I am

making a portrait of whatever it is that I am doing. And then the thing that I live for is to make

portraits of people of course, that’s my strength, that’s what I love doing and that’s what I have at

this point very lucky to have got a career doing.
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6) What's your background?

I grew up in a small town in the south in the US and I was trained to be a Pentecostal preacher

because my grandfather was a preacher and my family wanted to have another preacher. So I was

trained to be a preacher but I was gay and so that really didn’t work. So I chose to be an artist

instead. I taught myself photography, someone, a friend gave me a camera and another friend gave

me a dark room equipment and I fell in love with light and I taught myself how to make a picture,

taught myself how to make a print and then after teaching myself for years I had two significant

relationships with mentors. One was David Fleming who is a well known photographer and the other

is Roselyn Suleman who is another well known photographer and they really helped form me as an

artist and specifically as a photographer. One taught me how to be very brave in what I do and sort

of follow my gut and then the other taught me how to love what it is that I am photographing and

how that I should be in love with it. I feel very lucky and very blessed now with what I do and that I

can live on what I have produced now but it took years and years and years of working any job I

could get. Waiting tables, was a Santa for charity, I wrestled alligators, I did whatever it took to buy

film and to make prints and I just wanted to support what I was doing by whatever job came along.
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7) Could someone with a different background do your job?

A photographer, I mean that’s a very specific technical skills and when I taught myself, you know, I

was using negatives and you know how to expose a negative, how to develop negatives, how to

make prints. You know and still to this day even if you are shooting digitally you have got to know

how to make prints or you have to hire somebody who knows how to make prints. So there is a

certain technical expertise that you need to acquire. And actually that’s key to any artistry, whatever

medium you are using you have to develop an expertise in the craft of the medium of what you are

using to express the art.

“My grandfather was a preacher and my family wanted to have another preacher, so I was trained to be a preacher, but I was gay, so that really wouldn’t work. So I chose to be an artist instead”, Adrain Chesser, Fine Arts Photographer, describes his background. The limitation? “It’s being self-motivated. Keeping yourself moving is the biggest challenge.”

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Réka Artner

CEO & Curator

“Don’t compare yourself to others! If you wanna find your way, it’s really hard if you’re always trying to achieve what the other person achieved”, Reka Artner would tell her 14-year-old self. “You’re having an impact you might not even know of, but may it be your spark and a change in attitude or a change in thoughts, that’s supercool and in return, it has an impact on you, because you get to work with all this cool, innovative people”, she tells about her job as CEO and Curator at TEDx Vienna.

Mirjam de Klepper

Social Entrepreneur

“I do have the chance to just try out everything. Especially because I work with people who support me as I do that and give me constructive feedback. That’s the Coolest part“, describes Mirjam de Klepper, Social Entrepreneur, the issues she likes most about her job. Her two main projects are Vienna Skill Smiths, which offers affordable single session classes and Vienna Shares, which focuses on sharing economy and urban wellbeing in Vienna. A piece of advice for her 14-year-old self? „Change your make-up.“

T. J.

Photographer

“In Iraq you are not allowed to take pictures on the street, but here it’s ok.“ He takes pictures at conferences or events organized by TEDxVienna. “The coolest thing about my job is capturing the moments"... "I think there is nothing better than you doing your hobby as a job. I have a lot of fun doing that.“

Wie werde ich
Fotograf/‑in

Wie werde ich Fotograf/-in

Seit du denken kannst, nimmst du die Kamera im Familienurlaub in die Hand und erstellst aus den Bildern ein Album? Egal, wo du hingehst, siehst du immer Szenen, die du einfangen musst – sei es auch nur mit der Kamera des Smartphones – und bei markanten Gesichtern denkst du sofort an außergewöhnliche Porträts? Eigentlich möchtest du einfach so viel Leben wie möglich einfangen und festhalten? Dann mach aus der Leidenschaft zur Fotografie doch deinen Beruf. Als professioneller Fotograf kannst du mit vielen spannenden Aufgaben Geld verdienen. Du fotografierst Models für Werbekampagnen, sorgst für die Bebilderung eines Reiseführers oder gibst einem Unternehmen mit deinen Fotos das richtige Image. Natürlich gibt es auch Fotografen, die sich auf Personen spezialisiert haben. In dem Fall verhilfst du ihnen entweder zu einem Beruf oder zu einem Pass, denn Bilder sind heutzutage allgegenwärtig und werden auch verlangt. Je nachdem, in welchem Bereich der Fotografie du tätig bist, arbeitest du an den unterschiedlichsten Orten und bist viel auf Reisen. Im Zuge der Eventfotografie besuchst du Galaveranstaltungen oder Hochzeiten und für ein Modelabel machst du zum Beispiel ein Shooting in einer stillgelegten Fabrik. Eins ist sicher: Als Fotograf ist deine Welt selbst dann bunt, wenn das Foto schwarz/weiß ist.

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