High Fashion Foto-Workshop
Summer Workshop 2017
Students: Lena Jäger, Sinem Misirli, Meri Pydannah, Erdem Tikil, Dennis Eberhardt,
Laura Höntsch, Alex Späth, Ina Kreutle
Supervisor: Prof. Simon Gallus, Thomas Kärcher
Models: Laura P., Sabrina S., Theresa J., Meri P. / Make-up Artists: Adela Filtro, Pia Stockhaus / Outfits: Modeklasse des ZfG Ulm
Equipment: Christian Jorda (www.phaseone.com) und Holger Meseke (www.hensel.eu)
Location: Kieswerk Schäfer GmbH und www.roxy.ulm.de
The two Kieswerk employees feel transported into the second season of “Germanys next Topmodel” when the juror Bruce Darnell produced quotable sayings on a continuous basis. With capi and beer, they joined a small squad between the warehouse, the gravel mountains and the excavator pond, which Dennis Schäfer observes from a height of a good one and a half meters from the wheel of a wheel loader. “Dennis! Draaama, baby,” they shout to him, accompanied by a cheerful chuckle. Lena Jäger (20) on the other hand, advertising and market communication student at the Ulm University of Applied Sciences for Communication and Design (HfK+G), is serious. “Not yet, Dennis, wait yet,” she calls to the scion of the gravel plant owners. She had applied to take part in the first High Fashion Photography Workshop at her university and is now familiarising herself with a high-resolution medium-format camera. To create a photo series that would be suitable for a fashion campaign, she ordered model Sabrina to the gravel plant near Schemmerhofen. To photograph the tender woman in the noble designer coat dress in a coarse and dirty environment seemed an interesting concept to her: “Chin bite in front, face straight,” Lena instructs her. To Sabrina’s right is Workshop Director Thomas Kärcher, lecturer for photography and moving images at HfK+G, who gives tips and throws flour into the air with a plastic shovel. A fan whirls up the white cloud of dust. In front of the model it trickles onto the anthracite grey floor. Another contrast. The photographer squats slightly, presses the viewfinder against her right eye and presses one leg sideways into a heap of sand. The camera for around 39,000 euros was provided by the Copenhagen company Phase One together with two other housings and a selection of lenses for the four workshop days. Communication design Professor Simon Gallus, who supervises the course with Kärcher, presented the outwardly simple professional cameras with unusually large sensors of 50 and 100 megapixels to the students at the start: “If you trigger them, you feel a setback. Lena now pulls the trigger again and again. Holger Meseke, employee of the Würzburg company Hensel, provided a flash system worth around 30,000 euros for the workshop. “For people or fashion photography, I can easily manage with 500 watts per second, since you also want to use open apertures and thus blur.” Further shooting locations were the Wilhelmsburg, the riding hall, the Roxy and the university. The HfK+G lecturers Prof. Simon Gallus and Thomas Kärcher sum it up: The students had a lot of fun. But they had also “become aware that a professional photo shoot must be very well organised and that working with the high-end cameras and a professional flash system requires a great deal of knowledge and practice in handling”.