Werner Kaffl

What I do and the reasons behind it

First of all, photography is a very personal thing for me. My images don’t necessarily reflect everyone else’s reality. Everyone’s reality is different in any case, so I show people my personal reality rather than complying with certain sets of rules.

Photography in general is a very wide field, and most photographers pick only a small portion. They specialize in what they really like. This small portion might also change over time.

Here is my personal story, which does have some major twists and detours. Best I start at the beginning. I was born on 23/02/1965, close to Munich, Bavaria, Germany.

My mother was an immigrant from Croatia. She had a formal apprenticeship as a photographer. In that time they used mainly b&w film, but still also those old wooden boxes with a glass sheet in the back. She never worked in that field since I and my sister needed her full attention – This was in the mid 1960s, the reality at this time in Germany.

My dad became a SLR enthusiast when I was around 6-7 years old. He also had his own little electrician company, rented a workshop area in Munich and used parts of it for his hobby and as a darkroom area. This workshop and my dad’s general craftsmanship were to become very important for me.

Well, since his company was only starting up, there wasn’t much money. My dad was born in 1942, we don’t know where, and was adopted during WW2. He only learned of this some 10 years back and is still looking for his real family. This combination of facts meant, we didn’t have much money to spare for holidays or toys.

Pencils and paper were affordable though, and, according to my parents, I used up the first pencils before I could even walk (my sister saved some of my first drawings).

Since I was about 6 years old, I started to accompany my dad in his workshop whenever I could. His mentality was, as an adopted war kid, “if you want something, just make it”, and “don’t buy stuff until you can spare the money”. So basically he showed me how to use tools, wood, etc, to make my own toys. I believe this time led the way to my photography and many related things like making my own props and all sorts of other things.

Interesting is, even though I spent considerable time in my parents’ darkroom, I wasn’t much interested in photography itself, apart from the pure technical aspects – Well, even a point and shoot camera in this time costed a fortune.

So I steered my creative bursts into affordable directions, like making models and drawing. In the 1970s I started to build my own, AmericanChopper-like bicycles, mainly from scrap parts. Having a blacksmith in the neighboring village meant, I really constructed and built, not just assembled.

American Choppers were sort of popular in magazines during that time. They were usually elaborately painted with airbrush. Airbrushing was a popular photo retouching method as well, when my mum had her apprenticeship. So I learned a lot in that regard from her. I started to paint my friends’ motorcycles, my bikes, motorcycle helmets, surfboards.

This time taught me a lot about using layers, which became very important to my editing processes in Photoshop some decades later.

Another important piece of the puzzle was me being sort of a loner. When all my friends were out together, I preferred to wander around in the nearby woods on my own, discovering nature and details around me.

I believe, this keeping to myself in an early age later lead to a very real depression – or the other way around, I’m not sure. Depression and creativity seem to be linked though. I see both in many of my friends.

I left school, had an apprenticeship as an Electrician, started smoking and drinking. After 15 years I finally managed to stop drinking, had another apprenticeship as an IT Systems Administrator, became a Systems Engineer.

Anyway, as you can see, I’ve always been a creative and technology-interested person. But curiously I still wasn’t much interested in photography.

This changed in 2000, when I bought my first digital camera. A Sony Powershot, I think 1.4 megapixels. I literally snapped everything, to a point when I really, really annoyed people around me. During this time I found my eye for details. I got the next level camera, then the next and so forth.

My major subject was nature, trees, certain light, water, and I think I separated myself more from society. In 2008 I decided, I can’t stand this crowded Europe anymore. Germany had a population of 82 million back then, NZ some 4 million – within a not so much smaller area. So I decided to leave. My then-wife (number 3 btw, but that’s another long story) stayed back, with her kids, and got back together with her ex.

I then came to Wellington in 2010. Here things were so much different, including the colors and light. Sadly, European and US mentality slowly took over here too, and I watched the same mess-ups all over again, resulting in the same problems –people obviously hate to learn from others’ mistakes. But that’s also another story.

So, finally in a place with much more real nature, I finally took the step to DSLR cameras, this was 2015 or so. Starting low and working my way up to higher levels. My Depression got so bad that I couldn’t work anymore, at least for a while. This wasn’t “free time”, it was actually “healing time”. People wo understand depression know what I mean. I just took my camera on some long walks, pointing them at details I saw, etc. This did help my healing.

Being an immigrant, I saw much of my surroundings like a tourist does. This resulted in people asking me where some of those locations in my images actually were. Many of those were spots those very people passed on a daily basis. Being new to an area can show perspectives others take for granted or are so used to them that they don’t really see them anymore.

My photography started to specialize. I always liked challenging lighting, darkness, twilight, and most of all the ocean, since there’s no ocean where I came from. Especially in weather conditions when everyone else stays indoors. I think my stormy-seaphotos are by now something like my signature style. I also did some portrait and fashion stuff in professional environment. I did some behind-thescenes stuff in small movies, have been an extra in TV and movies and ended up making movie props in a famous company. I do people photography very rarely now. Only when I really feel like and when there’s a connection between the subject and me. It shows in an image if photographer and model don’t “click”.

I do like to re-create some movie scenes in a photo. Not making a copy, but rather creating it the way I personally see a particular scene. Then I employ pretty much all my skills, from doing the lighting I want to achieve, to making the props needed, to editing the particular mood I want to achieve in Photoshop.

Many of my images show some sort of otherworldly scenes, which can only be achieved via composite imaging. Those images seem to be my second signature style. Photography, for me, is not just taking photos. It’s more like employing all my available skills to communicate a certain mood, feelings or level of reality I experienced when creating that image. Some of my composite images have a couple of years between the single shots they consist of. This happens when I go through my archives and suddenly see a connection between some of those images. Then I create a whole new world.

The red lines throughout my life seem to be my connection to nature, the connection to all sorts of technology, and my rather limited interactions with other people, as well as some long phases of depression and even addiction. I was a loner, I guess by choice, when I was a kid, and I see myself still as that famous lone grey wolf. I believe that’s how I can explore my creativity in the most efficient way possible. And that’s why I allow people to see the world through my eyes.

"I see myself still as that famous lone grey wolf"

JustJust breathebreathe

"We are all on a journey"