Landscape and professional music photographer Fynn Freund’s work conveys a keen sense of immediacy—whether that’s gifting the viewer with a stomach clenching look over the edge of the Faroe Island cliff faces or his ability to build a flavorful insider’s look into the lives of bands on tour.
Besides music and landscape photography, Freund at 24 years old also loves capturing the photogenic nature of his hometown of Hamburg, Germany, where he is in school pursuing a master’s in the futuristic sounding field of “Sound-Vision” and honing his craft as a photographer.
“Studying at a university in Germany is very affordable and a great time to get to know like-minded people and exploring your own interests, skills, and abilities, especially in the creative media industries. Over the past year, I have started to work as freelance photographer and videographer besides studying. Mostly, I have been working in the music industry.
I'm also a very passionate musician myself, and I love portraying music artists on tour-- capturing their live performances, and documenting their daily lives on the road, while creating cool content for their social media channels. However, while concert and portrait photography are something I do professionally, my chief passion is photographing landscapes and my hometown, Hamburg.”
As a landscape photographer, Freund has some captured some truly spectacular moments on the Faroe Islands, but Freund’s success is the product of tremendous work ethic—miles of cliff hikes and ascents have rewarded him with some stunning opportunities.
“The Faroe Islands are a landscape photographer's paradise. It's been on my list for quite some time and now that I visited this amazing country in April this year, I know that I want to go back and explore even more as soon as possible.
Some locations are already rather popular on Instagram, but the islands make the social media rounds for good reason: Gásadalur is an absolute must see. It’s just 10 minutes from the local airport. I went there with my brother immediately after touching down on the islands. The scenery is just like out of a fairy-tale and pretty much encapsulates the essence of the Faroese landscape - rough cliffs, waterfalls dropping straight into the ocean, and picturesque settlements of a few little houses."
"Some other must-see locations for photographers are of course the unique "Drangarnir," sea stacks on Vágar, and the "Kallur Lighthouse" on the small island of Kalsoy (which is in the more north-eastern part of the Faroes.) However, the most awe-inspiring location wasn't one of the heavily instagramed landscape sites, but rather the Mýlingur-Snubburnar peaks (or coastline) on the northern end of the largest island Streymoy.
It’s a challenge for me to describe the sheer massiveness and almost terrifying sight when on location. The 623-meter vertical cliff is absolutely mind-blowing. It is impossible to do justice to its enormous expanse in a photograph. It's takes a good 5-hour hike there and back, which does require some stamina and sense of direction, but it's well-worth the effort and definitely a must-see location.”
Fynn Freund notes that in his work he draws inspiration from some of his favorite social media photography influencers:
“With landscape photography in particular, I really appreciate the work of Thomas Heaton as well as Mads Peter Iversen and Max Muench. Giulia Gartner's Instagram channel is also a great source of inspiration for travel and landscape photography. I really enjoy her editing style.”
One of Fynn Freund’s hallmarks is the sophistication he brings to photographing scenes involving bodies of water.
“When I photograph a scene that includes water, I always make sure to work with its texture. While many photographers often simply do long-exposures when they have some sort of water in the image, I think it's important that the texture of the water actually fits the scene.
For example, when I'm at a peaceful lake in the English Lake District, I will choose a longer shutter speed of like 15-30 seconds, because it adds to the calmness and tranquility of the landscape. In contrast, on the rough and windy Faroe Islands I don't want to smooth out the water, but rather capture the wild motions of the waves crashing onto the shoreline, because it adds to the character of the scenery.
I usually choose shutter speeds between 1/2 to 1/20 of a second. That's also why my favorite and most used filter probably is a ND8. On my trip to the Faroe Islands I took my Lumix G80/G85, which has amazing sensor stabilization, which allows me to easily get these shots handheld and makes photographing so much more agile and fun. Tripods can be a bit cumbersome at times. It has become one of my favorite gear features, and I love the micro-four-thirds system for it.”
When asked if Freund has any exciting photography opportunities on the horizon he said that:
“Yes! In May I will accompany a German band on tour again, which should be fun, and in December I'm going to Norway, where I have never been before. In the meantime, I will keep chasing the best photographs of my hometown, which is luckily very photogenic as well.”
When Freund isn’t scaling cliffs or on tour doing photography with a band, he is dedicating himself to his music.
“When I'm not doing photography, I'm mostly writing, producing, and performing my own music. I started making music when I was around eleven years old and find it a great way to process thoughts and feelings. I also enjoy video editing and cooking with my friends. And of course I have lazy days where I do nothing but binge-watch series on Netflix.”
Find Fynn Freund’s work on Instagram @fynnfreund and on his website fynnfreund.com
