Patrick Steger | Videographer & Drone Pilot | South Tyrol

About me - Agile Production.

I started with photography in the early 2000s. My first camera was a Nikon D90, later a D850. What fascinated me most was light painting: I went into the mountains at night with lights and steel wool and made images that simply do not exist in daylight. Long exposures of the Milky Way and my first timelapses followed. Moving images appealed to me more than stills from the start, and in 2015 I switched from photography to videography for good.

The trigger was a project without a client. I drove through the Gsieser valley, visited every mountain hut and turned it into a web series, each hut its own short episode. That was my test of whether this was really where I wanted to put my time. The answer was clear, and it is still the project I look back on most fondly. I have been self-employed since 2020 and have completed more than 80 projects, for hotels and tourism businesses, industry and trades, event organisers and wedding couples.

I did not learn this in a classroom but on real projects, over years. I started out on a Nikon D850, a stills camera with a few video functions rather than a cine camera. Compared to the equipment I work with today there are worlds between them. It never held me back though: a camera like that teaches you what actually matters, because it does nothing for you. The essence has stayed the same ever since.

On a shoot I rely on a feeling that built up over the years. While recording I can tell whether a scene works or whether we go again, whether the light carries it or something needs to move. Light is the deciding factor. When it shapes a scene rather than merely lighting it, the shot is right. That is why I plan shoot days around the position of the sun rather than the calendar, with fixed times for each subject. That applies to a hotel just as much as to a construction site or a wedding.

I work as a solo video production, with a small, well-practised team on more extensive projects. One contact person from the first idea to delivery, no agency overhead. Then there is local knowledge: I know which access road is open in winter, where flying is permitted, and when the light works over a particular valley. For aerial work I am certified to A1, A2 and A3 and fly both drone and FPV myself.