Many years ago I got my hands on a very cheap DSLR camera with the clear intention to learn something about photography and get away from smartphone and point & shoot photography.  

But what truly changed my perception on photography was spending an evening with a friend from Vienna - an experienced photographer - who showed me how to manually adjust my low budget camera to get a clear photo of the Big Dipper star constellation in the night sky.

That experience fascinated me so much that I started a never-ending journey into professional photography.

Since then I made it a habit to have a camera with me at all times. I trained myself to see the world differently through the viewfinder of my camera by choosing the right lens. And I truly enjoy having captured a moment with a photo and then realising later that this moment will never come back. Photography is timeless art.

My academic education is Mathematics and Computer Science, holding a Master and a Doctoral degree in mathematics and being a post-doctoral researcher in mathematics at Cornell University in New York State in the United States many years back. My research areas were Probability Theory, Stochastic Processes and Analysis. I also started to code in various programming languages already at the age of 14 years, making money with commercial coding before I finished high school. Here are some selected books and papers I published over the years in my areas of research and expertise.

Over the years I grew into professional photography, doing commercial shootings on weekends and selling large prints of my photos within my network of clients and friends. Most of my photography is suitable for very large prints since I typically shoot with high resolution cameras from around 45 up to 400 megapixels on full frame or medium format sensors. I am capable to produce photos in the Gigapixel range if demanded by a client with special needs and interests; see photography on demand.

For more than 25 years my photography remained my "professional hobby" and my professional career (means my daily job) was developing in the financial industry.

I worked as a risk manager in banking from summer 1999 until summer 2024 with fully packed work days leaving never enough time for my private and personal interests.

My last role from January 2016 on was Group Chief Risk Officer of UBS Group and I was a Member of the UBS Group Executive Board for 8.5 years until summer 2024 when the legal merger of UBS with Credit Suisse was completed. I stayed at UBS Group as a Senior Advisor to the Group Chief Executive Officer until end of January 2025 and then left UBS to finally build-up my own business in 

• Photography,
• Trading, and
• Consulting

allowing for much more flexibility and freedom in time allocation and capacity for my own personal interests.

My new professional home is our family owned company as follows:

ME   |   (C) Photo by Nico Schaerer (www.nicoschaerer.com)

ME   |   At the Leica Summit 2023 at Leica's Headquarter in Wetzlar