Shooting Techniques

How i work

The path to the perfect photo

Evaluation of scene and motif

As a photographer, I perceive places more intensively than I would without a camera. This begins with planning. In this phase I try to understand the place and find out what kind of shot is suitable for this place and how far I want to move away from reality in favor of aesthetics.

Each shot creates a certain perception and association. This can be calmness, relaxation, but also hectic, stress, drama, joy, sadness or any other sentiment. The scene, lighting mood, weather conditions and shooting technique specifically intensify desired associations. The first question I ask myself as a photographer is, what mood do I want to achieve with the shot of a scene?

Planning

With my photography I want to bring the beauty of places and situations to the viewer. The lighting mood has crucial impact on each shot. I focus on capturing special lighting moods. Tiny differences in shooting and post-processing result in big difference in the final picture. Locations and buildings need special moods to capture the viewer's attention. Does the scene come into its own best in daylight or in the golden or blue hour? The weather, season, accessibility or visitor frequency can also be decisive factors. Based on these considerations, I determine a time frame that gives me a good probability of encountering the desired conditions.

For compositions that include celestial events, there is often only one day of the year when everything fits perfectly. For rare events such as a lunar eclipse, the planning is also done in reverse. If you know at what time the moon is at what altitude, you have to find a suitable subject that can be photographed at the right angle from a calculated distance.

Thanks to apps like Photo Pills or The Photographers Ephemeris, it's easy to determine when an object will be illuminated at the right angle with the desired position of the sun, so these calculations usually specify the time window for a shot.

Shooting

Before the shooting I have to decide which shooting technique I want to use and which equipment I need for this. It is necessary to heed one of the most important rules of photography: "Be at the spot in time!". Determining the best composition, setup and configuration take time.

I am particularly interested in the fusion of natural and artificial light. I like to work with long exposures but also with multiple exposures and different filters. For Panorama shots i use a nodal point setup.

Time as fourth dimension

There are several ways to add time as a fourth dimension to an image. Classically, time is captured as motion blur by tracking or by long time exposure.

In prefer a special technique that is less common, I call it "Fusion of Moments". Similar to an HDR shot multiple shots of the same scene are done, these shots can span up to several hours. In post processing, the perfect lighting mood is selected for each area and these moments are fused together to create an overall image. The fusion is not limited to the dynamic range as in HDR brackets, rather real scenes are merged, the local contrasts are preserved, the HDR effect is avoided. The compression of time creates unique shots that would not be possible as single exposures due to technical limitations and selective lighting. It can be seen as a kind of hybrid technique between long time exposure and HDR whose result cannot be achieved algorithmically but requires a completely manual workflow. Shooting and post-processing often takes several hours each.

Post processing

The camera sees things that remain hidden from the human eye. It's impressive what dynamic range modern cameras can capture. In the last few years, completely new possibilities have opened up in the area of capturing and post-processing. Post-processing is a fundamental part of my work. It is done in two steps. In the raw converter I do the basic adjustments that should be made on raw data such as lens corrections, white balance, exposure balancing, color grading, contrast adjustments, etc. The further post-processing is done in Photoshop. Photoshop offers editing techniques that are not available in any raw converter.

Photography is an art,

it is about finding the extraordinary

in ordinary places

I hope I could give an insight into my work and thank you for reading.