I started shooting my first portraits after finishing high school with some of my classmates from university. After starting out with some old hot lights, used on construction areas, I decided to get my first studio flashes a few months later, which made things a lot easier.

That was the time I set up my first small studio in my flat in Vienna. During that time I think I developed my love and discipline for portraits with every shoot, as there was no room for shooting whole body pictures in that small DIY-Studio. I had to learn to set up the lights on a very limited space and to guide the model properly. Nowadays I have the opportunity to shoot in a big studio with lots of space around me, and I have to admit, that I really like having the possibility to move around the lights everywhere I want.

Work

I love working with people, and I love the way you can connect with them during the shooting, also if both of us know, that it is (most often) just for a limited period of time. That’s why I chose some of my portraits to be presented on dodho.com as it is the genre of photography that I´m really falling for.
It´s the endless repertoire of different expressions, and the way light and shadow work together on a face to support the transported feelings and sculpture the face, that’s been fascinating me from the first time I started shooting portraits till now. I prefer a strong, sometimes unreachable expression in my portraits. Close framing, straight look, clear background would maybe describe my work in a few words. But it´s that pureness, the concentration on the subject, that I´m going for, when shooting with the model.

When I´m on the set with the model, I try to have just a few people around me. I want to have as little distraction as possible. So most of the time it´s just the hair and makeup artist, the model and me. I try to keep in contact with the model during the time I set up the light, so they know they are important to me, and they are not just some object I place in front of my lights. I´ve noticed that it is possible to build up a kind of trust level with the model, that’s making work so much easier. A model that trusts you will go the extra mile during the shooting to get that one picture, and he/she will not be afraid to show emotions.

Within the last year I started shooting some portrait projects with my analogue cameras. Don´t worry, I won´t tell you that analogue is better than digital or the other way round. I just found out, that I like the workflow to shoot with a 4×5 largeformat camera, or a medium format camera. And I think the working process of the 4×5 camera fits better for some black and white portrait settings, than the DSLR. And the fact that you can´t see the model through the viewfinder the moment you press the shutter and take the picture, makes it even more special for me. But as mentioned before, there are other portrait sessions, where I absolutely prefer working with my DSLR. [Official Website]