This year I escaped most of german's winter while being in New Zealand. When I got back, snow was bascially completely gone. In March I met up with Florian Wenzel, an amazing photographer living close by and we explored some areas in the Black Forest. While driving up higher and higher into the mountains, we were quite surprised about how much snow we still found. Walking through the forest was pretty exhausting sometimes because we didn't wanna stick to the paths but it was worth it. We ended our trip on a place called "Hornisgrinde". I've been there a few times and it's a nice plateau on the top of a mountain with a beautiful view. This time it's been a proper ice-desert.
All those photos are taken on the Fuji X100s
May The Tempest is a pretty new metalcore band based in Munich. They asked me to shoot photos so they can set up a website, facebook page and everything a modern band needs ;-). I had a great time with these funny guys and althought it was freezing cold, they didn't complain a single time!
My girlfriend started playing in a new string quartet called "Sandcastle Streichquartett". They're playing on events like weddings, parties and functions. I did a very short photo session with them and created a simple website. You can find it here:
www.streichquartett-stuttgart.de
All of those photos were shot with only one flash through a really cheap softbox. The whole light-equipment didn't cost more than 100€ and i was impressed by the results!
I did a few very simple portraits with my girlfriend. My goal was to try some new lighting and processing-techniques and keep everything as simple as possible. All these shots were done with only one speedlight and one reflector. Some people asked me about the sharpness already, it was done with my Photoshop action "Sandbox Painterly Sharpness", the trick was just that i used it two times! Thanks a lot to my girlfriend for the trust and perfect execution of these portraits.
Thanks to Pascal Cabitza who assisted me at this shooting, i knew about this awesome area directly in the middle of Stuttgart that was the perfect setting for an urban themed bandshooting. Those four of the band "Destruktivo" did also really good to help me create some cool photos.
This was a very spontaneous and short photoshooting with a Stuttgart based band named Kompass in collaboration with the Stuttgart based fashion label "Life Needs Victories". I really liked the songs of this german indie-band. Facebook links below!
We've been around some streets at night and i used only one speedlight to light these shots.
Kompass on Facebook
Life Needs Victories on Facebook
Life Needs Victories Website
Yes, this is pretty much the same location as the one in my last blogpost! Just these photos were shot about a year ago for a German artist called Impala Ray. I first met this guy when I shot a wedding in September 2013. During coffee-time, I suddenly heard a very quiet acoustic guitar, supported by only a bass-drum and a tuba and this really characteristic singer. I looked around and found this guy with two musicians playing in a corner of the garden for the wedding guests. It was perfect. Just perfect. They were quiet and their sound was so down to earth that i instantly fell in love with the mood they created. I couldn’t imagine any better live music for a garden wedding.
I chatted with him and he told me that he was in the process of recording an album. Everything to do with the album should be very old fashioned, that’s the mood he wanted to create so I offered him to shoot the promotional series for this release. After some phone calls we decided to give it a try. He send me over some pre-mixed songs and I knew exactly where he wanted to go with this release. Have you guys heard Bon Iver’s first album “For Emma, forever ago”? It’s a very rough and straight-forward sound and I found this in Impala Ray’s music too. I tried to give the whole photo series a film-touch by shooting digital but processing with VSCO and Exposure 4 and adding a lot of grain and dust and light leaks. It turned out to be perfectly on the spot what he imagined.
At the moment, the album is getting more and more attention and seems to be pretty successful. And Impala Ray’s success is also my success as I found some of these photos in big German newspapers or on the websites of radio- and TV-stations.
If you want to get the album on iTunes or even as a physical copy, head over to his website www.impalaray.com
And here’s a musicvideo with some scenes shot during the photo-shooting:
Goldmundt. Is a company based in Augsburg, Germany that design pretty unique t-shirts and sweaters. I immediately liked the prints on their clothes when I saw them for the first time because it’s just something different and feels special and carefully selected. Last week I shot kind of a lookbook-series for them and thought a “into the wild”-feel would perfectly fit. So I revisited a place that I’ve been to last year for a shooting (photos will come soon) already and it turned out as the perfect location. It’s the area around the Sylvenstein-lake on the border between Germany and Austria. We spent about 8 hours shooting this series and you can’t imagine how great and refreshing it was to jump into that mountain-lake just after sunset. Was even worth being sick on the next day!
A big thanks to Marcus Hesmert and Nette Schimanski who were my Models all day long. And of course to my lovely girlfriend Tamsin who assisted me behind the camera.
Jeannine Wilkerling is three times german champion in Pole Dance Artistic and runs several schools for Pole Dance Artistic. A few days ago i got asked to shoot her portraits. She wanted authentic and natural portraits of herself with the typical light and style of my people-photos. Although it's been a pretty cloudy day and the sun only came out for a few minutes, i was able to create some nice results by using just a silver reflector. The make-up and assistance was done by Anna Kammermeier.
Lately when i come home, i'm always welcomed by the sound of a cello.
