Light, Structure and Silence

My name is Jörg, I grew up in Lörrach, a city in southwestern Germany on the border with Switzerland and France. I took my first steps in photography with my father’s Kodak Retina Ib. When I was about 15, I bought my first camera, a Ricoh TLS 401.

My first Olympus was a OM-2 with Zuiko lenses ranging from 21 to 200mm. I had one camera body for black&white (B&W) negative film and a second one for color slide film. In the mid-1980s I also acquired a Mamiya 645 1000S with a 55mm lens. With this 6×4,5 (4×3) medium format camera, I always used a tripod to expose 25-ASA Agfa B&W film which I developed myself and printed on Kodak Record Rapid paper. Since I had only a single lens and the shooting process was also time-consuming, these circumstances taught me to find the right perspective by varying the camera’s position. During my time as a chemistry student, money was tight, and the high cost of film, chemicals, and paper taught me to be very careful with exposure settings and the number of shots I took of a single subject.

My economical use of film is still reflected today in the minimal amount of space I take up on SD cards; although I plan and execute my shots quickly, I do so in a very controlled manner—I usually only need one take, maybe two at most, and I still like to use a tripod.

I began participating in group and solo exhibitions with my black-and-white works in 1984. And over the years and decades, I’ve always enjoyed showing my work and talking about it.

From about 1996 to 2007, I took a break from my photography; I took only a few pictures with the sleek Canon IXUS APS film camera. But I missed taking more artistic photos, and I was also dissatisfied with the limited quality of the APS film format, so I decided to buy my first digital camera: an Olympus E-510 with 12–42mm and 40–150mm zoom lenses. 10 MP was enough to start with, but in 2013 it was replaced by an Olympus OM-D E-M5 with M43 lenses. I loved this powerful and compact camera, but at the end of 2016, I got my first OM-D E-M1 II with the PRO Bundle consisting of the 12–40mm and 40–150mm F2.8 lenses. In early 2020, I expanded my gear with an OM-D E-M1 III and the fantastic 12–100mm F4 PRO lens.

I don’t need much to be creative. I’m drawn to structures of all kinds—whether created by light and shadow or by lines and planes with an interesting, captivating contrast. Or I capture melancholic moods in landscapes—not particularly spectacular, but rather calm and understated.

For example, I’ve created a large series in which I photograph hunting blinds in their rural surroundings.

Although I’ve acquired a considerable number of different lenses over the years, I use the 12-100mm F4 very frequently because it offers excellent sharpness and a wide zoom range suitable for almost any application. I use it to shoot most of my photo series; the other lenses are used only occasionally, mostly for individual subjects that I photograph primarily for documentary purposes.

And it’s just fun to use the extremely compact 150-400mm F4.5—with its built-in and additional converters—to photograph the moon or details of a landscape at a focal length of 2000 mm, even handheld. Even at night, distant industrial facilities can be captured well from a very stable tripod.

Black-and-white photography best suits my documentary style. In many situations, color itself is too distracting. This simplification allows me to get to the heart of the subject and the message of the image. While color itself usually results in very appealing images, it carries a certain risk of coming across as kitschy. Occasionally, I also take color photos when color is an essential, indispensable part of the scene. But I feel more comfortable with black-and-white and can express myself better that way.

When taking photos, I select black-and-white mode, which gives me a good idea of how the image will look. Most of the time, the JPEG files are sufficient for minor adjustments to brightness and contrast. However, I also save the RAW file, which I sometimes edit using OM Workspace. Since I’m not a fan of software subscriptions, I use Darktable and Affinity. But I can also achieve the results I want using the Windows Photo Viewer, IrfanView, or the basic image editing tools on the iPad. I don’t work with layers and always edit the entire image, rather than, for example, adjusting the sky and foreground using masks.