Finanzfluss Summer Days

Event Photography (2025)

Two people on a raised terrace above the garden and pool, the Atlas mountains on the horizon.
Group working and chatting on floor cushions and rugs in the shade of a large Berber tent.
Two people standing at a table with a laptop, the garden and pool with loungers and parasols behind them.
Person in a blue robe and turban on a camel, the sun setting over the stony desert behind them.
Long red-clothed table with laptops inside a villa; through the open glass doors, more people are working outside.
Person sitting on an ATV in the stony desert, leaning on the handlebars; more ATVs lined up behind.
Group having dinner on a rooftop terrace above the roofs of Marrakech, the Koutoubia minaret on the horizon.
Workshop with laptops at U-shaped tables facing a projector screen.
Long table at night in front of the lit villa, string lights above; in the foreground the pool with reflections and floating candles.

According to my employment contract, I’m a senior software engineer at Finanzfluss. I’m also the company’s unofficial event photographer (self-appointed).

At first glance, programming and photography have little in common. One is abstract and technical, the other tangible and visual. Yet both fight the same final boss: clutter. In code it’s called software entropy – the tendency of a system to get a little messier with every change. Since I started working with agents, it happens even faster – at least as long as I don’t put up guardrails of linters and tests. The same fate can befall a photo, only in a hundredth of a second. So in both worlds I ask the same question: What can go?

At an event, that means five pictures that tell you something rather than five hundred that document who attended. I look for people in the middle of what they’re doing and in their space – and wait until the two come together.

Update 2026: Make that lead software engineer for the Web Frontends team at Finanzfluss.

The Photographic Company Archive (Or the Dream of One)

When I joined Finanzfluss in 2022, what mattered most was finding my place in a team of around twenty people. Through new projects and shared experiences, at work and outside of it, the connections with my colleagues grew closer and turned into friendships. I experienced my first Christmas party, then my first team event. Apart from private snapshots taken by a few people on the team, there was no centralized approach to documenting any of it. You can’t reminisce over pictures that don’t exist.

Out of that, a wish gradually took shape: to capture everyday life at the office and the team events. Who knows where Thomas, Arno, and the whole team would take the company in the years ahead. How good would it be to look back on a small archive one day?

I simply didn’t dare to ask and get started. What held me back were the expectations others might have of me the moment I started snapping away. So for two years, the wish stayed a wish. But with the summer event of 2024 coming up, I felt confident enough to face my hurdle.

The Leap into the Spree

Trust grows through transparency, so I announced openly beforehand that, as far as I was concerned, all photos would stay strictly internal. Whether a picture gets published is up to each person – for group shots, up to everyone in it, together. The pictures in this article have taken exactly that route.

And so, in the summer of 2024, we drifted along the Spree on a few rafts. Having someone photographing alongside took some getting used to for some of the others. Understandably so – it was the same for me. But that was the beauty of starting: with every hour, it became more natural. By the time we anchored the rafts in a side arm of the Spree to jump into the water, everyone was relaxed and the photos were authentic. Perhaps the assurance that all the pictures would stay internal played its part, too.

It was exactly the right setting to find room for my own way of shooting and take on the task I cared about.

Seven people on a wooden raft on the Spree, one at the front with arms flung wide; wooded banks in the evening light.
Heading back from the side arm of the Spree where we had been swimming.

It Will Gain Value … Given Time

Nobody pays me for it – my passion for photography rests on three pillars.

  • First, there’s the technical side that brings me joy: snapping photos digitally with my favorite lens, the Voigtländer 35mm/1:2.0 APO Lanthar. It has no autofocus. What sounds like a limitation feels to me like a welcome counterbalance in a world that automates exponentially. Every image requires a conscious decision about where to place focus.
  • Second, there’s the inner drive that both nurtures and challenges me: composing images I’ll still enjoy looking at a year from now.
  • Above all, though, I find fulfillment in immortalizing moments for the people who are in them.

While you’re reading this, you could – hypothetically speaking – take a minute to snap a photo of your surroundings with your smartphone. It might seem trivial or meaningless right now. The moment is fresh; you’re fully in the here and now. But over time, the historical value of that photo would grow. Look at it five years from now and you might even remember this article.

For me, photos are time capsules for experiences: they carry not only what was there to see, but also anchor the feelings and thoughts of that moment.

Team Trip to the Kingdom of Morocco

With the trust the team had built up in me and my photography, Thomas asked me to come along on our first company trip. The highlight of my unpaid second job so far, no question!

In 2025, we flew to Marrakech for a whole week and spent an intense stretch between downtime, action-packed excursions, and above all productive focus sessions in smaller groups. From conversations to outings to meetings, capturing the atmosphere was a private fireworks display.

That one week produced photos the team reminisces over today. They’ve essentially become part of our collective memory. They live in a Google Drive folder I’ve been feeding ever since, and they’re on their way to what I had wished for back in 2022: an archive you can turn back time with.

From the Conference Room to the Cinema

In the years before, the end of the year came with a small retrospective at the office. In 2025, Thomas and Arno rented an arthouse cinema around the corner and held the annual presentation there instead of the usual conference room.

For me, that was a gift: new location, different light, different angles. As I crept up the aisle to the very back for a shot of the screen, it dawned on me how big the team had grown.

Speaker presenting a slide titled “Wealth creation for everyone” to an audience in a cinema.
At the 2025 Christmas party, Thomas presented his vision for the future of Finanzfluss.

Looking Ahead to 2026

That evening, Thomas presented what will be a main focus at Finanzfluss for the next few years – Community Wealth.

Maybe someone will sit in front of that Google Drive folder one day, scroll back to that evening in December 2025, see a little over 60 people sitting in a cinema, and think: we were that small once.

All Works