Wolfgang-Peter Geller was born in 1945 and in his teen years, while going to boarding school, he made extra money with his first camera by shooting young girl portraits and printing the negatives at night. Since he had no strobe lighting he got the idea to use glass mirrors to reflect the light onto his subjects. After high school and law school calling to him to become a famous lawyer, he took his photo skills along as well as a way to make extra money. His first photo jobs were working for hte Hamburger Newspaper ABENDBLATT and STERN Magazine as a press photographer. He found he was very good at making images, and this worked out quite well economically as he made much more money than his student friends working regular jobs - and much more than even the photographers who were emplyed by the papers.

Peter Geller's big break came when he was assigned to cover the story of a bank robbery in the South of Germany (500 km from Hamburg). The images he made were exclusively published first in Europe's most famous magazine STERN and later were picked up by all the major newspapers and magazines worldwide. For these amazing shots he received the greatest award available to a press photographer for 1971, the WORLD PRESS PHOTO AWARD for the best single image of all the entries, as well as the best photo story of all the entries. This was, to put it mildly, was the turning point in Peter's career.

From this point on Peter Geller worked for all major papers and advertising companies from his studio in Hamburg Germany. Such clients as KODAK, AGFA, ZEISS, BAYER, and POLAROID. For these clients he spent the next fifteen years bounding around the globe and spending at least two thirds of each year sleeping in hotels.

On one such assignment Peter was shooting in Los Angeles for Agfa Film. With three AGFA clients from Germany, three models from Paris and a crew of four assistants from Hamburg they found themselves stuck in their hotel rooms by a freak storm. As the clouds went away it left beautiful sunshine, but also gail force winds on the beach where they were to shoot. They had to improvise as all of the portable reflectors were too wobbly in the wind and the shiny boards that they use in the movie industry were far too heavy and he did not want to hire extra grip people just to move and hold reflectors. So in his hotel room during this downtime the first prototype SUNBOUNCE was born and worked adequately enough to get the job done. With this success Peter set out to redesign his prototype and came up with the CALIFORNIA SUNBOUNCE (named for where it was born) SUN-BOUNCE PRO reflector which he immediately patented worldwide.
At the same time there was one firm that wasn't on Peter's published list of famous clients. His little dark secret was a very lucrative contract shooting for HARLEQUIN / Europe. Yes, Peter shot Harlequin romance novel covers - for which he he has shot more than 10,000 (yes, ten thousand) cover shots - most of them still published. It was HARLEQUIN that improved his design of the first SUNBOUNCE production model. The romance covers were similar to a traditional fashion shoot, with two models, and the need for locations with great romantic ambience. For this the most expensive homes in Hollywood, Bel Air, and Beverly Hills were rented, as well locations in Hong Kong, Cape Town and Paris also. These homes had the greatest variety of backgrounds for indoor and outdoor use. As one never knew whether it would be sunny or rainy from day to day and because of the cost for Models, Hair and Make Up, and Assistant crews, Peter needed to shoot every production day no matter what the weather.

As the weather went so did his schedule - Rainy Day: Indoor, Sunny Day: Outdoor, and even a stormy day did not restrict his outdoor work, but what did was the sun at high noon as the harsh light was bothersome and shortened the working day to eight hours. So he decided to design something simple, fast and effective as the SUN-BOUNCE PRO to help tame the sun or get rid of it altogether when it was not wanted. His design of the giant Fly-Swatter shaped overhead, which he baptized the SUN-SWATTER PRO, turned out to be the most famous and fast solution for controlling the sun. As a brand new design never before seen, it too got a worldwide patent.

This speeded up his production by an amazing amount. When he started to work for HARLEQUIN his budget was calculated on 8 to 10 shots per day. That was reasonable with the old lighting techniques available. As the locations got more expensive he needed to do more shots per day to compensate for the expense of the location. With the SUN-BOUNCE he made it to 25 shots per day, but the addition of the SUN-SWATTER - this unbeatable team was able to produce 40 shots a day. As the calculations went: $9000 a day for location, models, and crew which did not include the photographers day rate, hotels, airfare, and clients tagging along. Because Peter was able to increase his output from 15 to 40 shots a day he bought the clients cost per shot down from $600 to $225. HARLEQUIN could not find another photographer who could compete with Peter's speed and quality.

Amazingly while he was still traveling as a photographer he found time to get the SUN-BOUNCE into production and then distribute them worldwide. After the introduction of the SUN-SWATTER, Peter was forced to stop his shooting and concentrate on design, production, marketing and export business full time for the growing demand of the unique CALIFORNIA SUNBOUNCE products. Photographers all over the world have found the SUNBOUNCE system as something completely different, unique, and reliable system to manage and enhance the outdoor or indoor light to a level that they only knew from a completely controlled studio enviornment.

" Peter YOUR CALIFORNIA SUNBOUNCE SYSTEM IS AWESOME!" yelled Greg Gorman (one of the most famous celebrity, fashion, and commercial photographers in the world) when he first met Peter in person after having used the SUNBOUNCE system on location for the first time.

Like a HARLEQUIN romance the CALIFORNIA SUNBOUNCE system has become the leading light enhancing and light modifying reflector and scrim system worldwide.