New Customer Gallery - Nightscapes by Dirk Raffel June 10 2014
Our new customer gallery is up! Our featured artist of June and July is Zurich-based photographer Dirk Raffel. Using the M9-P, Dirk creates surreal nightscapes. While we see a lot of great street photography shot with the M-System, it's not too often that we see a body of nightscapes such as Dirk's.
Q: How do you like using the Leica M9-P?
A: I like the Leica M9-P a lot, it is a great camera. I like the way how you have to understand the camera, how to take pictures, how to handle the camera and how you have to do some manual work. And it is also a very stylish camera.
Q: Would you say that the Leica M system allows you to travel light, without compromising on image quality?
A: Currently I travel with the Leica M9-P, the Leica M Monochrom, three or four lenses, the SF 58, tripod and some small stuff as well. I guess all in all my ONA backpack weights more than 10 kg. So, I wouldn't call that "travel light". I didn't choose the Leica camera because it is lighter than other cameras, I choose the Leica because of it's quality.
Q: What aspect of the night cityscape interests you most?
A: The colors and the lights. The colors are much stronger and much intensive at night.
Q: How do you go about selecting scenes to photograph - what draws you to a specific scene?
A: I try to do some research in advance about nice spots.
Q: Do you feel that the Leica M system allows you the creative freedom as well as the technical performance to help bring to life the images you envision?
A: Absolutely! Especially the technical performance is hard to beat by any other camera. In my opinion it is one of the best cameras for night photography.
Q: You have a very consistent color palette for these images. What is your post-processing workflow like? How do you obtain this look?
A: I always shoot in DNG format and then I use Adobe Lightroom to develop the pictures. I like to give them a light HDR look.
Q: What inspires you most in photography?
A: I started with photography as a balance to my analytical job. Now I see the world with different eyes. Things that I haven't noticed before look beautiful now and I'm thinking about how I can capture them with my camera.
Q: What are currently working on? Are you continuing your night scene series or are you working on other projects?
A: Currently I'm working a lot with the Leica M Monochrom and I try to get some experience in black and white photography.
You can see more of Dirk's work on his Flickr site: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dirkr1977/
Make sure to stop by Leica Store Miami and see Dirk's prints in our customer gallery.