About me

My name is Claudio Schwarz. Professionally, I am a Frontend Team Lead at NeidhartSchön, and on the side I am deeply involved in photography.

I was born in Zurich in 1987. After completing compulsory schooling, I started a commercial apprenticeship (Kaufmann EFZ) in 2003, which I successfully completed in 2006. I then joined the Swiss Armed Forces, where I was promoted to lieutenant after one year of training. Immediately afterwards, I served as a officer on a fixed-term contract for 15 months.

In 2009, I returned to civilian working life, initially in the profession I had trained for as a commercial employee. In 2011, I made a career change into frontend development – an opportunity that was available to me because I had already taught myself how to build WordPress themes using PHP, CSS, and HTML since 2005. Since the title “Frontend Developer” is not a protected job title, I decided to pursue further formal training and completed a second apprenticeship as an IT specialist (Informatiker EFZ, specialisation: Application Developer), which I finished in 2013.

Various professional roles eventually brought me to NeidhartSchön AG in 2018, where I started as a Frontend Developer. In the meantime, I work there as a Senior Frontend Developer and, alongside my technical work, also take on team leadership and responsibility for professional expertise.

Photography

Throughout all these years, one hobby has always been my loyal companion: photography. In 2006, I bought my first camera with my confirmation money—an Olympus E-500. After taking my first steps with it, I switched to a Canon EOS 40D and later to a Canon 1D Mark IV.

From Canon to Sony

After photographing with Canon for several years, I made the final switch from Canon to Sony in 2019. Since I no longer saw a future in DSLR cameras and Sony was leading the field of mirrorless cameras at the time, it was clear to me that I would move to Sony, a decision I have not regretted to this day.

Cameras Zoom lenses Prime lenses

Floorball images

One topic that fascinates me in particular is action photography and behind the scenes photos from floorball games. I regularly work with the Kloten-Dietlikon Jets. I also support the federation swiss unihockey at major events such as the Supercup, Cup Final, Superfinal, or World Championships hosted in Switzerland with photos and videos. I have also had the opportunity to accompany the women’s and men’s national teams (Elite and U19) at World Championships (Neuchâtel, Uppsala, Singapore, Zurich, Singapore, Malmö and Zurich) on several occasions, right into the locker room, documenting team life up close.

Events

Front Conference

I photographed the Front Conference (formerly Frontend Conf) eight times between 2015 and 2023.

WordCamp Europe 2025 in Basel

Since the conference was expected not to take place in 2025 either, I decided to support WordCamp Europe 2025 in Basel with my expertise. I was part of a seven-person team that organised everything related to event photography. My responsibilities ahead of time included setting up a workflow for multiple photographers using Photomechanic. As a result, the photo team automated image captioning with the correct credits for the first time and, for the first time in its history, was able to publish all photos on the official WCEU Flickr account before the end of the conference.

Unsplash

In 2018, I decided to make my photos available for free on Unsplash. Back then, I had around 80'000 photos on my hard drive, many of them still unpublished. Today, I am among the platform’s top 100 both in terms of downloads and the number of views. On Unsplash, I mainly share landscape and street photography from my travels.