NEOFOKUS Denise Bergert

At the foothills of the Ore Mountains is Chemnitz, the third largest city in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is a unique city, not part of any county, and home to the Chemnitz petrified forest, one of the very few in existence in the world. Formed hundreds of millions of years ago in connection with the eruption of the Zeisigwald volcano, these trees were uprooted in the blast and lathered in volcanic tephra which, over time, fused with the trunks, freezing them in time to create well-preserved and rare fossils of a forest that once was. You can also find this combination of nature, beauty, fragility and preservation expressed by Chemnitz’ citizens as well, particularly with fine art photographer, Denise Bergert. However, what erupts from Bergert is her undeniable talent and drive for mastery–her ability to capture and hold the fragility of beauty within the gentle click of her shutter will unleash emotions that will surely melt your heart. Working as a freelance journalist for different IT-websites, Bergert finds photography to be the creative compensation for her job. An autodidact, she began four years ago with pictures of family and friends, but over the past few years she started conceptualizing photography projects and realized them with local models from her hometown. Now the founder of NEOFOKUS, a media agency for conceptual fine art, one thing is for certain, Bergert’s creative juices are always flowing, and her camera will never lay dormant for long.

“...with every shoot, I looked for a fresh challenge to master…”

I was an artsy child. I could sit for hours in my room, drawing and painting. As an adult, as I started photography, I found that passion again. Taking nice pictures of children, friends and family at some point just was not enough. I started connecting to the local model and photographer scene and soon found hobby models who wanted to work with me. At first, I just wanted to take beautiful pictures of beautiful faces; later, with every shoot, I looked for a fresh challenge to master different lighting, posing and retouching techniques.

In the last two years, photography got more conceptual for me–I want my photos to create emotions in the viewer, positive or negative. The chief reason I got this far, is my longtime boyfriend and now fiancé. He always supported my ideas, enriched them with his views, built me up when my motivation was low and helped me build lots of DIY-photographyequipment. I‘m incredibly grateful that he always stands by my side no matter what.

I used a lot of resources. At first, I tried to understand the technical part. How does my camera work and how do aperture, shutter speed and ISO influence the picture that I take? I mastered it with lots of reading and watching videos on different websites. With time I created my own Photoshoptechniques which I am still using.

I learned the most through challenges. I would take the photo of famous photographers and try to recreate the lighting and the look. The results often came out very different, but with my own style. With this trick I learned a lot about light and shadows, communicating with the model and DIY-equipment, while I was practising.

I find inspiration for shootings everywhere, in movies, paintings, books or other photographers. When the idea gets more explicit, I create a mood board that catches the mood of the set that I have in mind. On the day of the shooting, I‘m usually very well prepared so that, to the best of my ability, nothing can go wrong.

I try to give the model direction for the desired emotion for my shoot, and within this emotional frame, she can pose freely. However, I almost always get the best shots after the actual shoot when the model and I are improvising on a mutual idea we had just at the moment.

For my next project, I want to try posing my models in lost places as a contrast to the nature projects I worked on in 2016 and 2017. I also want to try to distance my new projects from the polished, glamorous and excessively retouched style my photos had in the beginning, in order to achieve a more natural and darker look with less retouch and more emotional expression. Therefore, I will shoot my models entirely without makeup. Social media gives me a platform to show my art which would otherwise waste away on my computers hard drive or in a photo book on my shelf. It‘s also very motivating for me to compare my work to other photographers and get feedback as well as recognition. I can reach an international audience and at the same time get inspiration everywhere.

Equipment

Sony Alpha 7

Zeiss 35mm f2.8

Zeiss 55mm f1.8

Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8

Lighting

Natural light from outdoors or the huge windows in her home studio. She uses a pair of studio strobes during the winter months.

Preferred Post-Production Process Approximately 45 to 60 minutes per photo, using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop for skin retouch and colour grading.