FUJIKINA Cologne 2025
Last Week-End 27.- 28.09.2025 the FUJIKINA has been opened in the Flora in Cologne.
The Flora in Cologne is placed in the botanical garden and the architecture of this impressive building is such a wonderful location for an event like the FUJIKINA, where creativity, art, history, social live and state of the art technology meets people in Live Shootings and Talks, Workshops, Presentations and discussions and even many different Photo Walks.
One of the many highlights of this event, to me, is the cooperation between Magnum and Fujifilm to digitalize their analog archives. Magnum photographers as Thomas Dworzak or Christina de Middel have not only been showing in Live Talks their photographical art but e.g. Thomas shared with us the story of his life and the not always easy steps of his career path to become a famous Magnum photographer.
The other highlight to me has been those many live shootings/video provided by professional photographers, of people, dance, fashion, portrait and action. The performance of Jens Burger, an extreme creative photographer that is constantly developing with the simplest DIY equipment his own background decorations or even paintings on his models, has been extraordinary. He shared some of his experiences with the audience and showed outstanding effects made by himself. See some of those settings and a result taken by myself, in the pictures below.
Another surprising activity during the FUJIKINA has been those many Expert Talks. Topics like “How to preserve the joy in professional photography” or “Visual Story telling on Instagram”. My highlight has been a full hour of presenting and discussing “How to use AI tools in the daily professional Photographer business”. I learned a lot about the real use of AI tools to generate perfect backgrounds and combine those with real people photography. All this under the aspects of legal rights and demand of customers. Ines Thomsen explained why the use of AI has made her a better photographer with deeper insights into perspectives, shades and light paths in her daily work.
Fujifilm has been an excellent host and provided with their partner Voigtländer, Sigma, Smallrig, Kaiser Fototechnik, Atmos, Novoflex and many others, an open networking and experience sharing environment completed with free coffee and water.
All I can say is “thanks a lot” to the phantastic Fujifilm Team, for those two unforgettable days. I am looking forward to the next event.