In Control of Colour

Master photographer Bernhard Edmaier takes to the skies to achieve fantastic visions of the Earth from an aerial vantage point, and his work features in the latest issue of VICTOR and also in his amazing new book.

The great photographers have the vision to extract the essential elements of a scene and to reduce it to its crucial components. The fact that German aerial genius Bernhard Edmaier can achieve this feat from a vantage point high in the sky is all the more remarkable, and his exquisite work, achieved using Hasselblad cameras, is featured in the current issue of VICTOR Magazine and has just been showcased in his latest book, 'EarthArt - Colours of the Earth.'

As the name suggests, Bernhard has been in the skies actively looking for scenes that demonstrate the rich diversity of the planet's natural colours, such as the blue colour of
water and ice, the variegated greens of vegetation, the many shades of yellow, orange, red and brown of rocks and desert sand, the white and grey of glaciers and the surprising colour spectrum of volcanoes.

Edmaier worked over a period of 10 years across all continents except the Antarctic to shoot the images for "Colours of the Earth". The shots for the VICTOR profile were gathered towards the end of 2012 when Bernhard took a four-week flight expedition to the Chilean Andes. One of the most colour-rich regions in the world, the area is bordered by the Atacama Desert in the north and the Patagonian ice fields in the south and hosts more than 120 active volcanoes.

To achieve his striking vistas Bernhard needs to shoot from a high altitude, working from a helicopter or small plane, carefully directing his pilot until the envisaged scene has been acquired. Ultimate quality has always been fundamental to his work, hence the need for a Hasselblad: having started out with analogue, Bernhard switched to the H System in 2007 and now works an H5D-60. Although he's working with digital files, however, nothing is ever changed or enhanced in postproduction, so those remarkable colours you see are exactly as the photographer saw them.

"EarthArt - Colours of the Earth" can be ordered online at Amazon.
www.bernhard-edmaier.de