Welcome to the Chateau le Payral winery aka Bed & Breakfast - a report by photographer Yoann Stoeckel

Can you imagine the smell of a bakery? Fresh, warm bread filling every room. That is the world I grew up in, my parents' bakery in Nuremberg, where I was born in 1960. Before I found my way into advertising, life took me through interior design and organic farming. I founded one of the first certified organic sheep dairies in Franconia. I have never been afraid of a completely new beginning.

In 1990, I arrived in the advertising photography market and never left. For nearly three decades I ran a classical representation agency, coordinated thousands of productions worldwide and built long-term relationships between photographers and clients across the international B2B landscape.

Then, at the end of 2017, I almost stopped.

After 27 years, I was close to burnout. And then, in that stillness, something became clear: the love of photography was still there. That signal was enough.

Since 2018, I have been doing what I was always meant to do. I work with a small, carefully selected group of photographers and visual artists as their strategic visibility partner and mentor. No commissions, no cold calls on their behalf, just consistent, curated presence in the B2B advertising market and honest guidance from someone who knows this industry from the inside out.

Over 32 years, I have lived through two revolutions in this business. The arrival of digital photography changed everything, and I welcomed it as liberation. Now artificial intelligence is reshaping our market with the same force, and I feel the same curiosity I felt back then. I help the photographers I work with use these developments strategically, without losing what makes their work irreplaceable: their visual signature, their creative authorship.

What I offer is not generated. It is lived.