Name: Franziska Ostermann Country: Germany Job: student (Gymnasium) URL: on Flickr About: My Name is Franziska. I am 19. From Germany. I love photography, thinking, dreaming and trying to make the world a nicer place. In my opinion Empathy is the key to nearly everything. Starting as an observer I noticed that I want to do something on my own. Photography for me is the medium to express what’s inside of me and to tell people a story that they wouldn’t understand if you just told them. The language of images is very special and unique, like everybody may interpret a photograph differently. But the main idea, that’s what I like to transport through it. Giving an impulse to think and reflect themselves, the world. I’m in the middle of my last year of school and going to write my Abitur soon. Nevertheless, I always try to establish photography in my life and take pictures whenever I have a second left and an idea on my mind. Get Inspired by: I think that inspiration is everywhere- you just need to look at things open- and differently. Since I started photographing, I see way more than I used to before. There is much more in everything, telling stories and showing secrets than we notice in our fast way of living. When I get home from school, the sun is already gone. Then, I went searching for lights in the dark, and found loads. You just need to actually see it and look closely. I like to think of photography as a mixture of subconscious and consciousness. There is so much art around us, everywhere. Of course there are many artists out there you get inspired by, but most I get inspired by life and living, by society and nature, by interaction. There are many artists that inspire me because of their way of observing and creating: Alice Springs, Helen Levitt or photographers I noticed on flickr like Dara Scully Literature has also a great influence that inspires a lot. I admire Franz Kafka for the surreality and the dream-logic he created in novels like “The trial” and like to try expressing it on my own. Surreality and asking questions is one thing I am fascinated about. Sometimes, inspiration is like a dream you cannot wake up from until you get it behind the mirror of your camera. Like our minds are put in order while we are sleeping and dreaming. Tools/Techniques: I love my Canon 450D and my 50mm/1,8 lens and use them for nearly every picture. Light tones and clear lines express the surreal atmosphere that you can find in many of my photographs. Creating one image out of several I do because there are many versions of seeing the world and how life could be. A dream is a concentrate of many realities and so are my pictures ( I hope ). Adding different ideas and creating a new point of view , a new space, that’s what I love about photography.