Industrial Nudes

I created this teaser for my photography project. Happy to hear comments about it!

When I started with photography Black and white development kept me busy for entire weekends at University. I had transformed my bathroom is a dark-room, and I believe my mates with whom I was sharing the apartment were not so happy about that. This image though is not a classcal B/W. Photoshop is a fantastic tool for “developing” digital images. What I did here, in order to make this image look like a “real” black and white, was to increase selectively the contrasts in order to accentuate the silhouette and the shades on Gesas´s back. I also added a 2% of gaussian noise, to imitate the texture of a 400ISO film. There was no additional lightning. I believe I underexposed by 1 1/2 stop and has a ISO setting of 400.

If i see the images of Conny taken back in 2004, I can hardly believe they were taken with a Nikon D70 and a Nikon SB-600 flash mounted on a tripod with a silver diffusing umbrella and remotely controlled. Technologocally the D3 and the D300 now are quite a different standard and I would not go back to the D70, however this is to show that even with very simple equipment and by positioning the light correctly one can take images which look very good and professonal. The photoshoot with Conny was taken almost completely in the dark. We were getting unconfortable because we did forget a flashlight, and could almost not find the way back out from the site. The images were taken with a 17-35mm zoom with ISO setting at 400.

Bianca was one of the first Models willing to work with me in 2004.

It´s more a coincidence than anything else. When I was living close to Frankfurt I accidentally entered in a closed location where I´ve been told this could be an interesting location to tray some ideas. And there you go… an abandoned railway workshop middle in the city, with big signs “keep-off”. This is how it started. I was captured by the idea of the contrast between the elegance and beauty of women and the dirt and darkness of these places. Germany is a perfect place to find such places for shooting in this style. What I like particularly is that all places are very different from each other. So after 4 years, although I see a lot of people also try similar stuff, the fascination still remains, and my work continues. I currently shoot in NRW, the region of the Rhine, which is perfect for finding these abandoned places. All you have to do is keeping your eyes open when you travel!