With 125 shoots in 2022 and 68 shoots from January to September 2023, Ingo Rammer is insanely active. Who is this man? Where does he get his motivation? And how does he work with models?
To find out, I invited Ingo over and we sat in the Nizza Biergarten in Frankfurt on a hot Monday afternoon in early September. I immediately sympathized with Ingo and wondered what that was all about. It was certainly his open manner and positive charisma. But also the fact that he is a natural born Austrian and I like Austrians may have been an icebreaker.
When I meet with another photographer, I'm always a little bit scared, because I don't know if he has anything interesting to say. What if he's totally boring? Or a total show-off?
Ingo instantly eased my concerns. He just bubbled away and what he said was fascinating.
Cameras were always present in his life from an early age. He grew up with photography because his father built up a chain of photo stores in Austria at that time. Later, there were 120 stores, so he never had trouble getting equipment. Cameras, lenses, films and film processing. He always had access to all that, even as a schoolboy.
Since he was 10 years old, he practically never left home without a camera. He documented everyday life, but rather casually, with snapshots. Today, he is happy because he is almost the only one who documented growing up as a teenager.
With puberty, photography became secondary, but when he was 19, he took a course at the Volkshochschule. His eyes lit up, "The course was even called light". Light is what makes photography special for him to this day. He describes himself as a light fetishist.
The way Vincent Peters works with light is divine to him. But although Ingo is always experimenting with new equipment, he prefers to work with natural, existing light. Horizontal light suits him very well. All he needs is a hotel room and a large window.
A while ago, Ingo found out that he is one of the few people with aphantasy. Aphantasy refers to the phenomenon of a lack of visual imagination. What initially sounds counterproductive for a photographer, the 44-year-old has turned into something positive for himself.
It gives him the opportunity to approach shoots with an open mind. He has no idea what he wants or even needs to produce. Instead, he can completely engage with the subject and capture what a model offers him in front of the camera.
In disbelief, I asked him how this worked, because I have often seen models who did nothing without my instructions and remained rooted to the spot like a tree in the forest.
Ingo told me his trick: he uses the click of his trigger to control the rhythm of the movement. Normally, a model changes her pose after she hears the click of the camera. He now shoots a tad faster than the model can move to get her out of her comfort zone, so she stops delivering standard poses.
In this way, he manages to capture real moments, preferably in motion. Non-verbally, he determines the rhythm of the shoot - like a metronome - until he feels a flow. In doing so, he releases even when he knows that there is no good picture to be seen, just to get into this very flow and rhythm.
Another important aspect of his shoots is music. It can happen that he plays a single song a zillion times in a row, if the model has felt this song and can move well to it.
However, it is not a scheme F that he uses here, but he tries to read his counterpart and adjust to the person each time anew. It is important to him, especially when he works with amateur models, that they succeed in forgetting the camera. They should not think about being photographed.
Since he has a phone conversation with each model for about an hour before they ever met, it is easier for him to adjust to the respective model and to learn what she needs for a liberated posing.
So he may also use loosening exercises such as "hands on, hands off" from ballet, in which only certain parts of the body, but no hands, may be moved at various stages. If you have to concentrate on moving only your shoulders, for example, but not your hips, you playfully forget everything else around you very quickly, Ingo reveals to me.
When I ask Ingo about role models, he doesn't have an immediate answer. He loves photography and there is not one photographer he would like to imitate. But he owns many coffee table books and appreciates photographers like Stefan Rappo, Ellen von Unwerth and especially loves the work of Sante d'Orazio.
I was a bit stunned to learn that Ingo only really got back into photography during the pandemic. And only since last year got away from boudoir photography, to nude shoots. Why should it be nudes?
Because women are beautiful.
Never photograph something that doesn't interest you, is Ingo's credo.
And how the light falls on a woman's body simply inspires him. He loves black and white photography and contrasts. He has set his Sony A7RV to black and white so that he can see the world in black and white when he takes pictures. This is essential for him so that no detail escapes his gaze and he is not distracted by signal colors such as red.
Since he is a tall person and likes to take pictures at eye level, he also often uses the camera's foldable display and trusts the Sony camera's good autofocus. His favorite lens is the Sony Zeiss 50mm lens with an initial aperture of f/1.4.
He appreciates this lens because he likes to operate the aperture ring manually. Directly on the lens, just like in the past. Currently he is experimenting a lot with low motion blur, switching to 1/20s exposure time on the fly via custom setting.
After about 2000 photos in 3 hours, his shoots are over. The work afterwards is not one of his favorite activities. He is grateful to be able to shoot in black and white. This usually saves him the skin retouching as he puts grain on his pictures.
It's not unusual for Ingo to leave his preliminary selection for a few months before making a final selection. He simply wants to look at the photos with an open mind and not remember what exactly he saw when he pressed the shutter. This way, he can view the shots neutrally.
Of course, Ingo also takes photos to be seen. That is his biggest motivation and so he has his own Patreon page. Be sure to check it out!
Thank you very much, Ingo, for the interesting conversation. I was very pleased to learn about your way of working and look forward to seeing you again.
