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Posted 1 year ago

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Christoph Spiegl

1.) What is your name and where in the WWW (Whole Wide World) do you live?

Christoph:  My name is Christoph Spiegl, I am located near Hof (Bavaria, Germany).

2.) What do you do for a living, what pays the bills? And what is the thing you do when you are not doing the thing that pays the bills?

Christoph:  Since I am a student attending a College of Further Education I do not earn much, but still I work on the side as a freelance Photographer and Web-Developer / Designer which pays for the gadgets. What I do besides that freelance work: I love photography and try to learn as much about it. In addition I do some personal projects, an example of which is my blog CSPIEGL.com or AIDvertisement.net, with which I spend most of my free-time.

3.) How much of what you do, personally or professionally, gets done at the work space featured?

Christoph:  Pretty much 100% minus the photography done outdoors and the time at school.

4.) Typically, what time of the day do you normally find yourself at this desk, and for how long? Night owl, early bird?

Christoph:  I am probably a night owl. But I hate to be one. I would like to change my schedule more to the early bird side of things, but school starts at 8 AM, and for that I need to leave at 6:40 AM so there is not much time before that. Normally I am back from school at 5 PM and that is pretty much the time I get to my desk.

5.) How much of what gets done at your desk is for work, how much is it to scratch your own creative itch?

Christoph:  Well that need to be differentiated into 3 areas. Work, school and my own creative itch. School is about 30%. Work is about 20%. And my own creative itch makes up the remaining 50%.

6.) What are the essentials that can be found on your desk more times than not? How about those items just out of reach or out of sight? If it’s not on top of your desk what are the things you most often grab out of a top draw or cabinet?

Christoph:  Well just like the most people who are interviewed here on the site my iPhone is always close. I also often need to grab my Wacom Bamboo. I store my cameras on my desk so that I can grab them every time I leave the house. I have a bag with one of them loaded to take with me everywhere I go.

7.) What beverage/food/snack can one usually find at your desk, and why?

Christoph:  What is always there is a nice carafe of water — I am not a coffee nor a soda guy! The snack of choice are my ‘Vital-Cookies (ger: Vitalgebaeck)’.

8.) Do you have any reasoning or anecdotes that lend some insight into why your desk is setup the way it is, or the thinking behind certain item(s)?  How about the things around your desks? Decoration, wall art, figurines, statues, etc? Any particular reason behind those?

Christoph:  The reason for the desk to be the way it is? Well the room is located in my parents house since I am still attending school. It is my bedroom and also my work space all in one. But some insights of how it evolved;

First: I needed a new desk. So we built one by hand. It’s really just a big wood plate with two feet!

Second: I wanted to have at least something green in there. The two plants I have there are a ‘Jade Plant’ and a ‘Fake Bonsai’. The ‘Jade Plant’ — we call it ‘Money Tree’ — well you can guess the reason (it is growing lately) ;-).

Third: I wanted to be able to feature some of my photographs or postcards I either receive or buy when traveling. Therefore I hung the magnet boards right to my desk.

Fourth: I wanted to have some nice light — not just in summers. Therefore I bought the daylight-lamp. It produces a light which is pretty much as bright as daylight and that’s really something awesome to have (especially in long cold winters).

One last thing about the color combinations: White for what it represents - minimalism and tidiness. Red is because I loved that color since I was a kid!

9.) How much of what you do, or aspire to do, influences your desk setup, tangibly and intangibly?

Christoph:  Most of the time it stays the same for a long while — maybe half a year or so. After that I change it a bit — something like rearranging the screen position for example. One thing I can change on the go is that I can transform my desk to a standing desk. Sometimes I love to stand for maybe two weeks. But after that I just want to go back to sitting again.

10.) Are you a Mac or are you a PC? What machine(s) are setup and used at your desk? If you are a little bit of both tell us why. How about any other tech gear that can be found at your desk or in your home? 

Christoph:  Mac! I am absolutely sure that I am a Mac. I was a PC not so long ago. But after switching I totally fell in love! I still own, and am working on, the first MacBookI  ever bought! But still it is a little bit of both since all the humans around me (at least the ones I know except for maybe 2 or 3 people) use Windows based computers, and I am the tech guy around here who knows how to fix problems. So I need to deal with that crappy system every once in a while.

One other tech gear I am sure about who I am is my Canon camera gear. I am a Canon — not a Nikon! The reason for that? I decided it to be that way. The two really do not differ that much. But I am more than happy with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II and my trusty Canon EOS 30D.

11.) What’s the one piece of gear you could not live without?

Christoph:  That is hard to decide. As far as I am concerned you can not use a iPhone or a camera without a Mac. Most of what I do gets done on the Mac, and it also serves as my communication center. So I would probably chose the Mac.

That being said, the two things that are always around me is my iPhone and Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

12.) What piece of gear cannot be found on your desk, but you wish it could be?

Christoph:  Right now I am very happy with what I have (especially after getting the new Canon) but if I had some more money left, I would like to get a new MacBook Pro.

13.) Software; what do you use more often than not. What helps you get the job done? And what do you not use, but hope one day to incorporate in your workflow?

Christoph:  I spend most of my time in Safari, especially in Gmail, Google Reader and doing general research on the web. iTunes is there for the music. For my photography stuff I use Lightroom 3 and sometimes Photoshop. The Coding is done in Coda and TextMate. Notes are taken in TextEdit (I love this app for its simplicity). And to stay in contact I use Adium, Skype and Tweetie for Mac.

14.) If you could change one thing about your desk, or the room it is currently in, what would that be?

Christoph:  Well that is a bit funny - I would like to go travel for a long time and actually have no fixed desk. But for now I need to stay in Germany. As far as my existing desk I would still love to change a few things: I would like to have a much bigger room maybe with enough room for a photography studio. The size of the desk is nice but I would also like to have some more room to move, maybe stand up more often and not just sit in front of the screen all day.

15.) Workspace Breakdown; Think of as many things as possible that comprise the setup of your office or workspace, anything from the paint color on the walls to the floor mat your chair rolls on, and list them out. Who makes your desk, how about the cabinet next to your desk, your lamp, the overhead light fixture? Anything and everything you can see in the pictures shown, give as much color and background on these items as time and memory permits.

Christoph:  Many of the things asked here are already answered in #8 but some more: 

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If you would like to learn more about Christoph Spiegl, his workspace, or his work, you can find him at the sites listed below;

Flickr: cspiegl

Blog: CSPIEGL.com

Photography Portfolio: CHRISSP.com

Twitter: cspiegl

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If you have any questions or comments about this, or any other featured setup, or you would like to have your own setup featured here on SetupsandSpaces.com feel free to email me at FValletutti@me.com.

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