green waves (g)
Blog recommendation of the week – interview
Tell us something about yourself for a start and how did you come up with photography?
Who am I? I am a cardiologist. Placing stents in coronary arteries and implanting pacemakers or defibrillators, using a very huge, biplane x-ray-camera, was my priory work the last decades. Since DSRLs were affordable, I started shooting, read lots of books and changed very fast to professional gear.
What inspires you?
What inspires me? The first years, I tried to improve my skills, looking for the perfect picture and there was something great in Sebastiao Salgado, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Anton Corbijn and Nan Goldin, who’s hands I shook and had the honor of talking to, as a member of c/o Berlin friends. But soon I found out, that nature itself, painters, for example abstract impressionists, and the abstract world of Wolfgang Tillmans were more inspiring. This and the thoughts of the radical constructivism, concerning your individual, reflexive way of seeing and feeling.
What do you want to show with your work?
What I want to show with my work? The recent series were sort of landscape postcards, showing their extracted, overdone color palettes and blended forms, with extinction of all inorganic structures, leading to non-objective pictures, with readable recognition. I want to show my own sight of the prospect, the appeal, all kinds of perception, like wind on the skin and the scent of the bay and the mood I’m drifting in. It is a hard piece of work, technically and in the creative process, abstracting pictures and coming across comparable, to a perfect color-postcard.
Do you plan your shootings or are you more spontaneous? Would you tell us something about your creative process?
Planing the shooting and creative process Most of the bigger series were planned. I love sailing and skiing/snowboarding. At the end of the day, full of happiness and impressions of nature, I figured out a certain place, that is suitable for the shooting. I use some neutral density filters, allowing daylight long exposure. Now your experience and endurance is asked, finding the right mixture of exposure time, flare, movement artifacts, warmth of colors, bokeh, sharpness. In the obey series, I experimented with 180 degree sweeps, double exposure, inverted camera back sweep. Post processing is sparely done in Lightroom, dust removal, color, contrast, etc.
You often shoot abstracts, what is it that fascinates you about this kind of photography?
What is the fascination about abstract? The early series “lines” was a sort of initiation, for what I call ‘serious’ part of my work. A sharp line, edge or something else in front and the colors, forms of the background, abstracted by the bokeh effect, ended my super sharp, perfect lighted shooting attempts. If you scroll down pictures in social media, or looking at photo books, some fascinating pictures make you stopping by a second, if they talk to you. Storytelling and effects of light/shadow etc. catches your eye. But an abstract picture is catching your brain too. It is running hot, while trying to find a matching, proofed memory or tries to learn what is new. I look every day at abstract pictures and they are always sort of new to me.
Cheers from Berlin! MOG
Thank you for this interesting interview.