F.W. Scharpf

 
F.W. Scharpf at deviantART, Foto Talk.

"Kat L15"
Art Model and Photographer Kat Love

F.W. Scharpf, from Germany, loves above all B&W photography... But as you'll see it, he's also a great master of color.

Working with strenght and creativity on the human figure relating to a natural environment, his pictures give us the best of his deep and neverendless inspiration.

His elegant models' poses, his tremendous compositions, his beautiful tonalities are quite amazing. His mastered way to shoot great nudes in wonderful landscapes reminds me Steve Johns, one of my favorite greatest australian photographer, in this touch of "wide space" I love so much.

"KatL 9"
Art Model Kat Love













Photography has been my life-long passion alongside a career in research and teaching in the social sciences.

And all my "serious" photography was in black and white, medium format, striving to follow the masters, Edward Weston and Adams, and Albert Renger-Patsch or Karl Blossfeldt.

But my main profession left me less and less time to work in the darkroom, and so my photography was reduced to snapshots or color slides, with no control over the images beyond the exposure. Not very satisfying.

Photography became interesting again with the arrival of digital technology. Without having to set up a darkroom, I could now work on images at the same computer desk where I was doing my professional work. And for the first time, I was also able to exercise some influence over the colors of my images - which was like learning a new language.

"KatL 18"
Art Model Kat Love

Of course I realized that some images work better in black and white. But in general, grayscale conversions were simply not up to the quality that I had obtained in the darkroom with carefully chosen films, developers, printing papers and burning and dodging.

I realize that at the present state of available technology, these are limitations of my own learning, and I am working to overcome them. Sometimes I succeed, and when I do, the magic of black and white strikes me as even more fascinating than the beauty of a well-done color image.

"KatL 17"
Art Model Kat Love

" Kat Love is of course a most beautiful, talented and experienced model with whom (as somebody told me here) "any hack could make good photos". But it helped a lot that I could take her to locations that I had explored before, and with whose "mood" at different times of the day and in different weather conditions I was familiar. And it also helped that we were not pressed for time and that I could become somewhat familiar with her "philosophy" and how it translates itself into characteristic poses in response to a given setting."

"In the Ferns"
Art Model Ruby Jules










"Cavorting"
Art Model Katy T

"Candace"

I have done landscapes and nature photography all my life (and had four exhibitions and quite a few sales during the last two years).

I began to do studio nudes about two years ago (which I found not so interesting), and then decided of join the Community Zoe meeting at Flagstaff, Arizona, in the fall of 2005. Great models, great outdoors settings and a great beginning. Beginner's luck ! But moving foward from there has been slow and hard going.

Finding an interesting natural setting, not too crowded, is difficult in most places, and certainly here in the overpopulated Rhineland. And if you find it, the light is likely to be dull or overly contrasty, or its is beginning to rain. You name it...










"Natalia on the Rocks"



But if everything else is right for once, then all depends on the model - on her ability to relate to her environment, on her ability to express herself through poses that communicate with the viewer - and on the photographer's ability to frame her and the setting in a way that brings out the relationship among both.

Art Model Ruby Jules





F.W. Scharpf ©