Image of the Week #2: Michael Färber

“Photography doesn´t need to be with perfect techniques, as long as it transports feelings. When I see this picture, I will remember the days after 2014´s Christmas Eve, a lot of snow, the freezing cold and the silence between the trees.”

— Michael

How the image came to happen!

A few days after Christmas 2014 i went out into the forrest with a friend of mine, Jo Brenner. The forrest is where I usually shoot, as it sort of feels like the noise from the crowded city and the streets is left behind and you open yourself for the silence.

I know Jo from university and I did already shoot with him in the summer. I am in love with his beard and so seems to be everybody else. When he came back to Munich from his exchange studies I knew I had to shoot him again. The days after Christmas Eve were full of snow and so was this day.

I did a few other shots before this picture, but I already had this picture of him sitting in silence, with snow around him, in my mind. So I told him to sit down on this tree trunk. As is wasn´t snowing that much at that time of the day, we collected snow on a reflector and sprinkled it on his beard. I did a few shots with opened eyes, but I liked the ones with closed eyes better as they have more of this "calm" feelings I wanted to evoke.

What kind of gear did you use?

The picture was shot with my Nikon d600 and the  NIKKOR 50mm 1.4 at an aperture of 1.8 (as I do most of the times). When I took it and reviewed the shots taken, I already new that this one was my favorite. He really looks like he sat there for hours, waiting on someone or something.

How did you edit the image?

When I went home, with a camera loaded with a few hundres pictures taken, I knew I had to edit this one first. Most of the times, like in this case, I post-work on pictures with my best friend Sebastian Hübner, who is a professional photographer. The picture itself is not very much edited. There had been a little crop to make it more symmetrical and a few other adjustments like lightning, sharpening and tones (more blueish for a colder feeling).

I didn´t really do much in photoshop either, I think a good shot does not need that much of editing, especially if it is no beauty shot but rather transporting emotions. We only did a little bit of dodge&burn on this on and finally finished it by using the VSCO FILMS. In this case, we used the FUJI 400H+1 ++ and did play with the presets a little bit. The FUJI 400H+1 ++ is one of my alltime favorites and did work out very well on this picture.

What do you think about the image?

I always like the pictures I edit and upload (otherwise I wouldn´t do it). But in this case, even though I am usually very self-critical, I was 100% sure that this one is one of my own favorites.

What are your thoughts about Lookslikefilm?

Lookslikefilm for me is a great opportunity to present my art to a big audience. It is also a great platform to meet new photographer´s and get some inspiration. Lookslikefilm is gathering many VSCO artists and is presenting them in a beautiful showroom.

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