Who is behind?

The two creative heads behind the idea of PRESS THE BUTTON are Silvia Wittmann and m-art-in Arbeithuber. We have formed a studio community called martinundsilvia.at for 13 years. We have always been faithful to our motto “Exceptionality as a method” – always trying to take a new, unusual path and steadily develop our creativity.

Silvia sill works as an exceptional photographer (www.martinundsilvia.at); m-art-in now focuses almost exclusively on PRESS THE BUTTON. This project is the logical consequence of everything that has happened so far in his career; the master photographer is as much in the game as the marketing and software entrepreneur.

PRESS THE BUTTON has become a heart project. We will continue to develop it with our people and all our creativity, so that it stays what it has been since 2011:

The FIRST & BEST Do • it • yourself photo studio on this planet!

Coreteam Heart and head of the PTB universe

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

In summer 2011, PRESS THE BUTTON inventors Martin and Silvia were invited to the wedding of a mutual friend and office neighbour in Slovakia. The celebration took place in an old spa hotel, which, with its morbid charm and wild absence of luxury, took us to a completely non-ordinary world (especially in conjunction with weddings).

We have known the bridal couple for several years then and knew that “unusual” was the “usual” for both of them. As a wedding present, we had decided to simply mount camera and flash lamp on tripods and build a small do-it-yourself photo studio, similar to a passport photo machine. At one or the other private party we had already done that and always got very funny and crazy pictures.

As it hast to be at a cozy wedding in Slovakia; we did not only find new friends of flesh and blood, but also the Slivovitz offered his friendship, which let us forget our present …. … until it popped back in our minds – after midnight.

Reluctantly and with a bit of motivation, we were finally able to bring our photo station up an old, beautiful, scary wall and opened our small photo studio!

However, we had technical problems and the flashlight ignited incorrectly because an important cable was broken. We had to improvise, we were able to deliver only half the quality, leaving the setting to the guests demotivated.

Turning back to the wedding party, we paid no attention to our giant passport machine and noticed that many many hours later people were still taking pictures there. A bunch of people “besieged” the photo booth and developed one creative idea after the other. We watched the events there and were astonished to the innermost photographer’s heart, which funny and unusual images were created.

For a long time we were looking for how we could free our group photos from the stuffiness of the “posed” image – and suddenly we got the solution presented: Without a photographer!

The next day we rested on a large lawn in front of the hotel. We slept, chatted, waited until the level of alcohol in our blood was low enough again to drive back home.

Just then a thought flashed. We looked each other in the eye unexpectedly and said “this is the idea”. In a few minutes, we developed the principles of the PRESS THE BUTTON concept and gave it the provisional title “R.O.S.T.” (Rent our Studio).

In the following weeks technology and marketing concepts were developed and already in December 2011 we had the first shootings following the motto “YOU ARE THE PHOTOGRAPHER!”