The end of an era
Just posted the final message at pandaimonix.de. After six years (2003 – 2009-12-11) pandaimonix.de, a onlinemagazine covering Gothic and Metal-topics I started and ran as a editor-in-chief, ceased existance.
When it began somewhere back in time it was all colorful and exciting. As a photographer I was able to join the photopit at concerts and festivals with pro-equipment and capture the energy and emotions that pass between stage and crowd. Pure life, burned to the compactflash within the fraction of a second.
From the journalistic side it also was special, being at close quarters with bands I formerly just knew from the inlay of my CDs.
But too soon I had to put down the rose-colored glasses. Running a online-magazine on a semi-pro level is hard work. Getting reliable people that know how to write good articles and reviews, the webprogramming and all the other adminstrative stuff slowly eats your stamina away…
Still I did it for six years. Taking photos and becoming acquainted with wonderful people over the years were my personal fuel to keep it going.
The last year, 2008, brought the final turn. Running pandaimonix with handwritten HTML/CSS became to straining so I had to to make a decision whether to switch to a PHP/mySQL-powered CMS or stop it.
I decided to switch to the CMS mostly because of one person I used to know and the help I got assured by my editors. Well, around christmas I was doing the migration all alone…
Anyway, the CMS-solution was the right choice because I could concentrate more on the content instead of shaping the HTML/CMS around it.
But lifes always changes (sometimes very rude) and in 2009 my life brought me work enough for two people – besides my usual job. Additionally a few of my editors fell away and that was the point when it started to get worse.
I had to made a decision again and it took me some time to do it. After the evaluation of different ways to run pandaimonix in the future, the final choice was to stop it. Completely. Forever.
As you can guess it was a hard decision, as I (and my editors) spent blood, sweat and tears for six years and pandaimonix became something of a relationship. Parting after such a long time ain’t that easy but the the morning after the final thoughts I felt relieved.
I do not escape the musicbusiness and concertphotography entirely, as I will contribute photos and articles for other mags as a freelancer. But it will all be run on a very small scale that leaves me enough time to concentrate fully on the other aspects of photography I discovered over the last months.
I’m very grateful for the time I had with pandaimonix and I’m more than happy that I made some friends that still stay with me, but now it’s time to go on.
