Dealing with the new technology can be a bit daunting at first. Add on to that moving to a foreign country where your command of the language is not total and you could have the start of a business nightmare.
That is unless your name is Jochen Brennecke, and you not only have a talent for photography but a determination to succeed.
Jochen describes himself as a "photographer and digital artist". Many photographers could learn from his business card which is both eye-catching and effective. It has his tel/fax ,e-mail and WWW page address on it. And what's more printed clearly!
As a child in Germany he had a small darkroom where he developed his skills. A short stay at university studying electronic engineering found him bored and eventually led to him doing features work in Frankfurt. Two years of his own studio in Paris saw him working in fashion, portraiture and landscape.
"I don't want to be labelled as just doing one thing. I use 35mm Nikon and Canon gear but when I've got something that needs medium format I'll use Hasselblad or my Pentax 6 x 7."
"As far as film goes I prefer to use Fujichrome Velvia for landscape work as I like the colours, and Provia for portraiture as I find it gives such nice skin tones."
The spell at university was not wasted, as now he finds the knowledge useful in the digital side of his work - especially so in the case of constructing his own World Wide Web pages, which he did after buying some books on HTML and experimenting for some time before being satisfied with what he had created.
By placing his work on the Web so quickly after his arrival he has shown that he has a business acumen missing from many other professional photographers. His portfolio, too, is presented to clients either in the traditional manner or on an image disk.
From his South London studio, Jochen is beginning to seek out British clients to add to his extensive list of those based in Germany.
"The problem I am discovering is that although I creating all this new work my established clients when they see it automatically assume I am no longer doing the work they associate with me."
Jochen likes to mix all aspects of his photography together to create his new images using a flatbed scanner and a Nikon Coolscan. By using a Power Mac and a range of software including Photoshop, Live Picture, Painter and a 3D program he builds up his images spending a great deal of time and effort on each.
"I like very much to switch between the different software. Some people prefer only one but I like to see and experiment with the possibilities in all of them."
Unlike most of us, though, he prefers to be both behind a lens and in front of a computer screen.
"I want to enhance the type of photography that we are already familiar with, to create images on a photographic base by using computer technology. Thus I want to produce images that I have never produced before.
"I am making more of a change of direction in my work but if there is a fundamental truth in photography it is that a good shot is the base of all materials. You must have good content to work with. Although I call myself a digital artist, I have to take good photographs in the first place, otherwise I do not have a firm foundation to produce the type and images I require."
Jochen feels that we are at the beginning of a new age where digital imaging is going to be extremely important. To those photographers who do not yet use it in their work he says
"Don't be afraid of the new technology. Rather, use it to improve and adapt your own work. My own work does not go away from photography even though I use digital imaging to change my photographic content. Digital imaging my way - I call the results hyperPhoto - is merely an extension of photography and certainly not all photographers will go this way. However, I firmly believe they must go digital".
Jochen Brennecke's work can be seen on Internet WWW at http://www.art.net/Studios/Visual/Job
- words by Steve Newman (Photon freelance writer responsible for interviewing photographers and sourcing portfolios, also writes and provides personality features for other UK photo mags and national newspapers and magazines) e-mail CompuServe 100540,570