Time doesn’t stand still

It’s on the OMDS website.

We are the unexpected. We don’t race, never have and don’t plan to.

This is the homepage. It even has the copyright at the bottom: 2021 OM Digital Solutions Corporation. This is the second homepage of OMDS, the first one only showed a short message from CEO of OMDS for a year.

At least the OM-1 is already pictured.

The Europe page kindly states that they are in the process of changing their logistics provider (again), so they won’t be able to ship anything until mid-January, but will continue to sell as normal. (You have to figure that out first. Of course we’ll sell you something, we just won’t deliver it to you. Christmas? Last-minute service? We are the unexpected, we are not in the race…)

Why am I cooking up the website again? Because I was looking for the lost brand ambassadors. OMDS has taken down a bunch of “ambassadors” and still uses their names so that it doesn’t look so empty on the map. You make some funny discoveries when you dig around.

Álvaro Sanz, for example. I found him because I was looking for the one picture on the Ambassador page that didn’t have a name on it. The one with the person in the mountain lake. I found it here. At the Eldorado Agency. That’s Mr. Sanz’s company. And when you read his Spanish “Who am I“, it gets exciting: “If you ask me about my favorite camera, I’ll tell you it’s my coffee thermos.”

Obviously, the problem here is that ambassadors hand over the exploitation rights to their pictures to OMDS in perpetuity – and if they are then kicked out – or leave of their own accord – then the photographers are rid of their pictures. Because nowhere on Sanz’s website is there any reference to OMDS or Olympus. Not even in the references. Something seems to have gone really wrong in the relationship. But instead of OMDS taking the picture off the website, they just delete the photographer’s name.

Hint to Ambassadors, MyOlympus forum members and those who want to become one: Take the terms of use seriously. If you give OMDS photos, they’re gone. Forever. They mean it.

The next one is André Boss from Switzerland – he offers photo courses and photo trips and is also listed as an ambassador on his website – but it’s anything but up to date. The last “news” is from the beginning of 2022 and his last picture on MyOlympus is from March 2022.

And finally, I “stalked” another one: Uwe Statz. Ambassador from Kleinwallstadt. The last pictures on MyOlympus are from 2018. He now works for the Foto Erhardt Academy, is a Manfrotto Ambassador, writes specialist books – on flash, for example – and is a “reference photographer” for Olympus (!) according to his homepage. He runs photography courses that are even affordable. But has also worked for Nikon. There’s not much about OMDS on his homepage, you have to search for it, but he still seems to be working with it. His courses are camera and format independent.

The situation is similar with Lumenman – Bernhard Rauscher. An advertisement for a webinar in April 2023 is the last thing he said. The last picture on MyOlympus is from 2018 and that he is a participant in the “Olympus Visionary” program. You have to search for everything.

If you have time during the Christmas holidays, you can try to find out which of the many ambassadors are actually still active. You’ll find lots of more or less sophisticated photography, strange birds and lots of dead bodies, although OMDS has already removed some of them – Frank Rückert, for example, is no longer on the map. Although he still photographs with OMSystem stuff and his last photo is from July this year. (Hello Frank, just to echo the opinion of most photographers who know you. You are a great photographer. Even if you shoot with small cameras and lenses. FolyFos – you know….)