A little throwback and the story of how I became part of the Adobe Family...
Many cooperations arise via email inquiries or Instagram DMs, nowadays often via agencies. However, many such cooperations are relatively anonymous. The cooperations with my most important partners all came about in completely different ways, but what makes these cooperations special is that they are very friendly. This creates trust and, of course, not only makes work easier for both sides, it is also a lot more fun. Today I'll show you how to do this using Adobe as an example.
Like many others, I started photography and image editing at the same time about 10 years ago. Back then there was no cloud, so I bought a Lightroom version. Lightroom was already powerful back then and I easily need a year of intensive 'training' to understand RAW development... Even today I'm still learning, and of course Lightroom itself is constantly evolving... After I started with portraits I tried it for the first time in Photoshop, I realized relatively quickly that it wouldn't work without literature or training... I think it took me 2-3 years to understand Photoshop well, the phase in which I got into city and landscape photography helped me . I started traveling, looking for good spots in Europe to compete with the best. At that time I was very active on the 500px platform and very quickly developed into one of the hottest HDR city and landscape photographers there. I spent nights trying out working with Eben and all the color and contrast correction tools and plugins... I think I sat on my photo 'City of Gold' for 3 days at the time... It's all easier today because a lot happens automatically, and even if it changes my style has changed, I have learned so much about Photoshop through intensive editing of the images that today I can solve 'almost' all problems directly...
Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop are of course essential for many of us, but InDesign came into play relatively early on. I love 1. cool modern designs, and secondly I like to see my pictures or those of my customers printed. InDesign is just awesome for this...
I had my first mini campaign with Adobe in 2018 when Adobe wrote a small article about me. I felt very honored that a company like this asked me, it was something special...
In the summer of 2018, I got a messenger message from an Adobe marketing employee, he had been following my pictures for a while and would just like to invite me to an Adobe event... This event was the Adobe Night, back then parallel to Photokina as an after party invited guests in Cologne with well-known people from the creative business... It was a cool evening where we got to know a lot of nice people. We must have made a relatively good impression :D because that's when everything really started...
In January I was a guest at Adobe Live for the first time with Rufus and Can. For three days, I was able to show, edit and answer questions with Can and the Creative Cloud community...
In June 2019 we were even Sven Doelle’s talk guests at the Adobe Night 2019 over the roofs of Hamburg, a great experience where Martha and I were able to talk about our small family business…
At the end of 2019 came my personal highlight. To be honest this experience comes relatively close after my marriage and the birth of my son.
We were in the German team of attendees for Adobe MAX in Los Angeles. As Adobe Family Members we had access to everything that was on offer there. and there was really a lot on offer :)
Performances, concerts, training courses, parties and much more...
The largest creative fair in the world with 16,000 participants, stars and starlets from music, film and art met here. For three days, the LA Convention Center and surrounding buildings and hotels or the Staples Center was reserved for Adobe MAX guests and visitors only. And we were right in the middle, we got to experience it, and even better, we even got paid for it. Of course, our task was to show people at home what Adobe is developing, what trends and possibilities there are now in the creative sector. In addition, we were able to exchange our experiences with many other creative people. What we experienced there was beyond our imagination on the first day. I think about that time so often today, it's just unbelievable what was going on there :)
This was followed by many smaller actions with the German Adobe team, the next great big action was my contribution to Adobe - Make it Happen. A Youtube video with a topic that is very close to my heart. InDesign, I use it every week, almost as often as Lightroom. Maybe you wouldn't necessarily think of a photographer now... But that's how it is :)
I hope this story could motivate you to believe in your dream, no matter how unrealistic it may sound. Sometimes simple coincidences are enough, and suddenly your dream even makes it to Los Angeles. Today we have a great friendly relationship with many Adobe people and a lot of incredibly beautiful memories together.
My Name is Guerel Sahin, i'm a self-tought freelance photographer based in Germany.
