Western exposure
German photographer Carsten Krieger has captured the stunning scenery of the West of Ireland in all its natural glory.Ed Power "It all started with the book The Lord of The Rings," says Krieger. "I had read somewhere that the scenery described in the novel was inspired by Ireland. I grew up in rural Germany and the landscape in Ireland is so different. The variety is astonishing. You have so much in such small areas. You have the coast, then you get in your car and you are in the mountains." It's a windswept summer morning and Krieger is in the kitchen of the family cottage on the Loop Head Peninsula in West Clare. In 2002 he and his wife, weary of the rat-race at home, relocated permanently to Ireland. Though his background was in nursing, Krieger decided there could only be one career for him in so stunning a corner of the world: landscape photography. "I like the isolation," he says of his adopted home. "The people are very friendly. It's true, the Irish are talkative and outgoing. It's easy to strike up conversations. You can have a chat and get to know people. In Germany it's different. Where I come from in Bavaria the locals tend to keep very much to themselves. Every outsider is seen with suspicion at first. In Ireland, everybody is so much more laid back. They don't take life as seriously as the Germans." Krieger has just published his second retrospective, entitled, with quintessential German directness, The West Of Ireland. In it, he casts an assured eye over many stunning vistas along the coastline from the Ring of Kerry to Ben Bulben in Sligo. Throughout, there's a haunting quality to his work that makes even familiar images feel eerily new. "I try to avoid man-made things: people, fences and so on. In recent years that's been getting more difficult," he says. "Especially in terms of fencing. Almost everywhere you go, the fields are fenced off with barbed wire. You have barbed wire running through the landscape, which can be annoying from time to time." What advice can he offer budding photographers planning to snap exotic landscapes on their holidays? "I give workshops and people are often hung up on exposure and things like that," he says. "I tell them that, with digital cameras, you can correct exposure afterwards. I'm obsessed with composition -- how you arrange the subjects inside the image frame. You can only do that in the field. You have to get it right. There is no option of correcting it afterwards. So I focus very much on how you frame the rocks and trees and mountains in the picture. My basic philosophy is that less is more. Take less pictures and spend more time with one picture. It's better to get one good one than five mediocre ones."
Saturday July 04 2009
Several years ago a rather serious young German named Carsten Krieger came to Ireland in search of hobbits. They proved surprisingly elusive but, smitten by the landscape, he decided to stay.
If you have the luxury, you should also try to plan ahead, he advises. "In most cases you don't get the picture you are looking for on the first occasion you use a location. I try to figure out my composition. I work out how the landscape would look at other times of the year -- during sunset and sunrise, where the light would come from, how the colours change over the season. Then I go and calculate what would be the best time of the year to come back and take the pictures I want to take."
He makes it sound like tremendously hard work. Still Krieger has some good news, too: you don't have to splurge on a state-of-the-art camera to get memorable pictures. "One of those professional, eight or nine thousand euro cameras -- you don't need them. What's of greater significance are the lenses, if you are looking for the quality of the image in terms of sharpness and colour. It's more important to invest in the lenses than in the camera."
As a photographer, what is Krieger's opinion of the incessant creep of one-off housing through the countryside?
"It is understandable -- I like to the live like that myself. On the other hand, it's a pain to have all of these bungalows across the landscape."
You can't help but wonder why Krieger picked Ireland. Surely there are landscapes in Germany worthy of his photographer's eye? "I haven't seen much of the German landscape," he says.
"I have never been to the Black Forest, for instance. The distances are far greater than in Ireland. You have to travel for hours and hours to get to the beauty spots."
Krieger thinks he has come to understand what Tolkien -- and countless others -- found so magical about the West of Ireland. "It's so beautiful. That's probably why artists are here in such numbers. They are inspired by the landscape."
The West of Ireland: A Photographer's Journey by Carsten Krieger is published by The Collins Press
