Judge 2007

Franz Pammer

MANAGING DIRECTOR, GEPA PICTURES

Made to be broken: "As long as you are not established, you have to fight to get good [shooting] positions. It's sometimes worth it to ignore the rules to get a different shot."

As co-owner of a major Austrian sports-photo agency, Franz Pammer sifts through literally hundreds of photos a week, searching for images that will satisfy the demands of media outlets all over the world. Good thing his early experiences shooting his own film prepared him for that kind of intensity. "When I was 14 I got my first camera," Pammer explains. "A year later I traveled through Austria, [producing] more than 700 shots. But the results were really disappointing. As I was sure the cheap camera could be the only reason for that disaster, I bought my first professional equipment. From then on, photography became my big and only hobby." A few short years later, after a stint as a press photographer for regional and daily newspapers, Pammer met fellow photographer Ingrid Gerencser, who had just finished her schooling. The two put together not only their heads, but also their initials (GE+PA), to form a stock agency, GEPA Pressefoto, that today supplies more than 600 clients with compelling shots of athletes in their finest moments.

"Ice hockey, motor sports, and soccer are my favorites. I like action and features, but I hate set-ups," says Pammer of what excites him when he's behind the lens. "Sports photography is sports itself, as you not only have to be creative in seeing, but you also have to use your hunting instinct to catch the right moment."

On working from the ground up:

"[When] our main client, a daily paper, had to [fold], we could not live from photography anymore, but just survive," recalls Pammer of GEPA Pictures' early days. "Years of struggling day and night followed. We were able to sell our pictures to various media and to the APA (Austria Presseagentur, the National Press Agency), but the [costs] for equipment and traveling were still higher than the incoming [profits]; we always wanted to be better and more exclusive than our competitors, using the newest and best cameras, lenses, and transmission equipment. An offer from the Associated Press to cover the war in former Yugoslavia helped us both out of big problems." GEPA Pictures now has more than 750,000 photos in stock at any given time, and works with 11 partner agencies in Europe, China, and Japan.