 How's it, how's it guys? Got a fantastic treat for you today. We are talking to Obie Oberholzer, who is one of South Africa's most famous photographers. His landscape photography of the South African bush or Southern African bush and people and landscapes is just a joy to behold. It was wonderful to spend time talking with him, hearing about his approach to photography, advice he would give, you know, photography might be a little bit stuck. And of course, how he goes about creating these fantastic and unique images of the landscape of his homeland. Anyway, without further ado, let's go over here from the man himself. Right, so here we have today the great Obie Oberholzer, who I am exceptionally fond of. He is one of my favorite photographers all the time. So how's it, Obie? How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. I'm wearing my favorite John Lennon T-shirt just in case you know, give piece of chance. Absolutely, absolutely. So just, you know, to give the guys like a little bit of a background to you, because obviously, while in South African circles, you're very well known, and you know, for viewers in America, you may be less well known. So briefly, you know, how did you get involved in photography and give us a quick view of your career up to this point? Well, it all started with my mom who took me on long journeys when I was a little boy of 1911. And then I had a Kodak reflex camera. She took me to Pisa. This is actually my first picture I ever took. Took me to Pisa. And I straightened the leading tower in my frame. And then when I came home, I had it printed and I told all my friends that churches were falling over. So that was when I started on an old Kodak camera. And then I went to the University and studied photography amongst other things, like I made Tassenberg famous with other friends. And then the teacher who was German said, you've got to go and study photography. And I said study. She said yes. I did no school in South Africa in 1968, 1969. So I went to study at the Bavarian State Institute of Photography in Munich in München. And in those years, there are only two photographic schools in the world, the one in Vienna and the one I went to. And it was very difficult because the first time I learned how to work and to play, not like at Stellenbosch. And I worked extremely hard and I had to learn better my German. Yes. And then to make a long story short, I came back and I hummed it in a hard photographically, came back in 1974. And then my mom again, I saw this ad in the newspaper that said lecture I wanted for first a start of a graphic school in the urban. So all for a young OB went and became a lecturer at the Natale Technicom. And I was very enthusiastic and I tried to, about my own work, and I tried to instill this enthusiasm with the students. And I have so many quotations I used to say to them. I always used to start my lectures by saying good morning class. But I said to them in photography, if your sales are not filled with passion, your ship will never leave port. And then I really instilled contact with so many of those students who are now my first year way over 50 years old. Harry lives in Sweden and Janine lives in Sweden. And like I said, and I look back the scatterlings of Africa. Yeah. And then I got a better, better post or a situation because nature's valley where I got it. And I went to Rhodes University in Graham Stone, which was a great time. And I had some fantastic students and I lived quite hard and I worked extremely hard. And I rose university from the great British colonialists. I always spelt Rhodes, R-O-A-D-S so that the administration people would never get me to do any admin work, which was great. And then during my long vacations, I had the opportunity to travel this southern lands of the great southern lands, which I've always done. First with a combi and this and that and slept outside and engraved us. And it became a thing that I really love to do is to share images of, you know, like I call it, even from those years, the happy sad land. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, it's a happy sad land. Is this is your new monograph that's coming out soon? Yeah. This is the new book I've just managed to, it's still on the runway. We still need a couple of orders. I think this will be my speaker. I think it's my 14th coffee table book. And it's about this incredible countries, well, let's include Mozambique and Namibia. And fortunately, I was a person in Nongrata for Zimbabwe for many years because I called Bob McGabe the biggest asshole in Africa. And then I couldn't go back there for a while. So yeah, so happy sad land tells the, with hope, I hope the story of this incredible continent, which is indeed, there's a lot of happiness and a great deal of sadness. Indeed, indeed. And I think anybody who's been to, you know, to Africa will get a feel of that. And the images in this new monograph, are they new or are they some like a collection of your previous work? That's a good question. Look, they're quite, they're one or two or 10 out of about 150 that are quite old. But I've always, you know, I've become fairly known for my writing. And believe it or not, I had extra lessons of English in metric and high school. And I can't write. I only write like I photograph. Always in a slightly haphazard way. That's, that's what it's a lot of stories. So, you know, people say that I'm a storyteller, amongst other things. Yes, absolutely. And I see, you know, you talked about something like being in a haphazard, sort of your approach. And I find this is one of the joyous things about your photography is that while the technical aspects of things are very, you know, well thought out and they're, you know, they have a serious approach, but an approach takes it properly for one of a better word. That there are within a lot of your photographs, you know, like random elements that just sort of turn up, I think also because of the, you know, the style that you photograph using the long exposures and the torchlight. So, so, you know, so these kind of haphazard, as you said, events turn up and you, but you're happy to keep them in that they are not mistakes that maybe somebody else would go, oh, that's a mistake. And I'm thinking specifically one, which I don't have in front of me, but I'll put it up on the screen for the viewers is from, and there's a book where there's the, you're photographing a family at a table. And you've obviously, I think been running around popping flashes. And the little boy's been following you around the room as you move. So every time you pop a flash, his face is in a different place. And I just love that because the parents are very much like, I'm just gonna stand because I've been taught to be still. And there's little boys like, no, dude, I'm just gonna do nothing. And I love that because it, you know, so many people would go, man, the kid moved, he's ruined the picture, but you're just like, leave it in. So, so I love that sort of thing. And we're going to look at some of your, some of this work that I think is, is, it's kind of, certainly for me, you know, my favorite sort of period where you drink lots of the, you know, the painting with light, and we're going to talk through it because I think it's a, it's an approach that a lot of people could, you know, connect with. I mean, anybody can do this, it doesn't require specialist's equipment. And it tunes us into, or something I feel that tunes us into the playful element that we can have in photography, where you go from thinking that light is something that is beyond our control, but we can only kind of modify it with, you know, flash heads and reflectors and things, that it becomes a tangible object that we can actually physically hold and splatter where we want to on the images. So with having said all that, I'm going to, we're going to jump into an image that, that I recall you talking about many, many years ago when I was, as a long-haired student full of, full of snot. And, and this is the, the very wonderful photograph of, I forgot the name of it again, silly of me. It is, what was it, it's a pass. Swabberg pass, yeah. Swabberg pass, there we go. So here we go. So this is, for those of you who are sort of not familiar, and this is obviously a pass like a sort of thing in South Africa. And actually rather than me waffling on about how you do this, we're going to talk, talk to the man himself. So Obi, would you like to talk us through how you, how you did this? Well, you know, I'm going to say before I start that this, I never coined this term painting of light. I mean, I started doing this in the late 70s and early 80s, and somebody came up with this idea, are you painting with light? So I never claimed to have started it, but I have sure used it. And it started in the, on my long trips when I slept, still slept outside, because I was younger and under the stars in a sudden cross. And I would then be in a canyon or somewhere and at night, I would just paint and play around with these very strong, powerful hunting torches, which you can see over here. This is a delet torch I had. And then I started to use it in my photography. And one of my, also there were, I must say that that what's important of these long exposures that in the heyday of when we use a thing called film, and after two or three seconds, the, the firm loses its sensitivity tremendously. So after two or three seconds, six seconds, immediate six seconds becomes 12 or 15 and 12 seconds becomes two minutes and two minutes becomes 20 minutes, so on. So it gives you the opportunity, this failure, which we call the reciprocity law failure, enabled me to drive up and down a pass. So this is a SWAT back pass. It's the most beautiful area of Sarifika at night with the full moon that that streak up there. Somebody asked me, what is that neon, neon tube in the, actually the moon moving a time exposure. This exposure, obviously I'm using F16 or F22, so a small aperture. So I can slow my exposure down for two, three hours. I see there are three hours moon rise. So the moon rises and young OB then started at the top. It's pitch stock. There's not, I mean, it's not pitch stock, but there's no car around. So for funny places, a bottle of wine tells he's at the top, puts his light on, it starts the exposure and travels down the S bends down the sparse and it puts another bottle of wine at the bottom. He goes up again and has a sip, comes down again. But in the, during this drive, he's armed out the window, he's got torch and he shines up the edges. So you can see the lit edges as he goes and then coming back again on the other side, he lights up the side. And then what was funny in this story, and then of course, with all this drinking and driving with nobody around, I just, there was a combi there, Volkswagen combi, and I just went to sleep. I wanted to have a party actually, played the music and had a party and I wanted somebody to join me there. Of course, nobody came. So I just fell asleep in the middle of the road. So that's the moon rise, time exposure, using torches over the sidewalk, both parts. Oh, long story. That is a bit, you know, as a young student listening to you recount that story, we were just like, you know, it was like, this is the leg, you know, we, you know, what young people like, you know, we're all kind of lazy and stuff. And we're thinking, dude, you know, you spent, you know, three hours or something, you know, creating this photograph. And of course, because as you mentioned, this is film, you don't see the results until you go back and, you know, you process the film and you get all the things back. So you don't even know if it's worked. I mean, obviously you haven't, you know, when you, when you photograph a film, you have a rough idea, you kind of get it. But, you know, it was, it was taking a leap of faith that you would end up with this, this photograph. And, and I just, I love this idea about, you know, committing to it, to an image. And not in a kind of a very earnest, serious way. It's more like, okay, I've got an idea, and we're just going to run with it. And this is kind of a thing that I wanted to, to touch on is that you very kindly sent through some, you know, sort of, not necessarily before and afters. But when you've seen the, the scene itself, and then you've, you know, what you've kind of resulted with, and here's a thing. And is this in the middle of like swap equipment around there? Yeah, that is, you know, before I just quickly tell you about that, I think one of the main things that I, that I have in my small kitty is that I always say that in traveling through Africa, your best partner, your best friend to have with you is a sense of humor. And I've always stuck that because, you know, in Africa, in Africa, if you think you know, be where you probably don't. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. This is a, this is a diamond area in the Norma Desert in Namibia. It's a place that I love greatly, loved by all photographers in, in Southern Africa, it's called Kolmanskop, with all these, these abandoned diamond trousers. And this, this specific place is called Gras Platz of Deutsch. And that means grassy area, area of grass, which they named it because during the Kaiser Titan, the German rule, they used to drop food for the horses at this place. So I saw this, I went for a, what we call a a wrecky and I saw this potential and then came back much later, had a long exposure on film, where, in which I could then actually walk up to the house, lighted with my tungsten halogen beamer of a spotlight, walk down again and blight these railway tracks and throw some light on the grass plots. And there we have the scene before and after, which is so important in this, doing this thing. It's obviously now much difficult on digital film because it's so much more sensitive. I still do it, but my exposures are much shorter. The most important thing in the heyday of film is that I would peg my, my exposure, peg my, my time on the sky. So I would wait till it's twilight, dark and dark until the sky reads F16. And then I know of my little chart that F16 would be five minutes or 10 minutes. Okay, as you mentioned, you know, obviously digital these days has kind of changed the landscape, as it were, sort of completely. But you know, look at, you're talking about landscapes, what is it that you are particularly drawn to? I mean, is it, do you just kind of go with a gut instinct when you see an image and then sort of give us some ideas or, or what, what, yeah, what attracts you to the possibility? Well, that's, that's a good, good one. You know, when I've learned I'm looking over my screen above my Mac and the upper little frame thing that says a man, a man can make mistakes for years and call it experience. Anyway, yeah, you know, with all the travels I've done over 50 years, one learns to, to visualize. I can, I can go past an image and I would know how it, how it would look to visualize the final print. And that's the art for me. I don't snap around or, or take many shots. So if I think inside my diesel and dust filled mind, and there's a good, I will stay and come back and do it again. So all of these you're showing, always the, that's a digital one on a Canon, I think. Yeah. And that's a short exposure where the sky is quite dark already and I've walked off camera, use, what is interesting now, I'll show you just not on the screen. I don't know if you can see me. Can you see me on the screen? Yeah. You know, I'm using a Clara's LED now, which is a very, very powerful 1800, 1800 lumens. But it's a very cold light is LED. Yeah. Light emitting diode. But so what, what I do now is I use, I cut up an old color negative, six, seven color negative, you can see that there, which I now place in front of the, front of the camera to give me a warm light. So I have a cold light. Okay. Yeah. And I've got a warm light. So you can see in that previous shot of the, somewhere, I've forgotten the name there, I used the, I used the warm light on the, on the quiver trees and that old broken building. And I used the colder light on the sort of dead plant in the front. Yeah. It is at this, the quiver tree one. Let me just bring that up for you. Eventually. There we go. All right. Is this the one you were talking about? Those are also the famed quiver trees. Now, again, I've worked on that. I'm going to start with exposure for the normal viewer, for the guy sitting in his, in his tent, it looks like almost dark. But so I'm using the exposure here of a half an hour or an hour F 16 for depth of field where I then leave the camera, obviously a tripod and I walk and I light three, one, two, two or three and four. You can see the one is a little bit more from the side whilst the moon is rising. And the silly student asks me again, is that a neon tube in the sky? Then I say yes. But one of the things that I think you were talking about, because if I'm correct, this is Shobhan film. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that it may be a misremembered memory or what happened, but I seem to call possibly that you said that you did some sort of dodging and burning in the color lab, which to a young student was like, well, hang on, but the colors shift. Can you do that? Is that true? What sort of post work did you do in the dark room on these, if anything? Well, you know, in this, and it was a long time ago, I was quite enthusiastic or I really teach quite a few students how to color print and I made them learn all the color opposites and what to do with dodges and older backers and also the things here. I think because of the warm tungsten light I use in those days, I must have made the final print slightly cooler. In other words, so the tree wasn't that yellow. And then obviously, anywhere there's no light like the sky, sky goes blue. I played with it. I can actually see that I must have also lit some of the rocks in the background. There's little dabs around. And I think this is kind of, because I'll bring them up on screen so people can see them a lot nicer, but you talk about the landscape and you talk about Africa and all these sort of places. And I know that you said you're heading off to Holland soon to do some, are you working on a new book or is it just for a personal work or? You said you're off to, I think you said Amsterdam, is that for work? Oh, yes. So much going on with me. What I did over the last years, I worked for a magazine called Country Life. And here, it was quite nice because I could travel and they really paid me nothing, which I can travel more. Anyway, so I started doing these Dutch, the South African Dutch towns with Dutch names. Because in the early days, when the Dutch, East Indie country, Leanne, and Jan van Rieken, they came up and they were all Dutch speaking. And then the Boers trekked away from the English. And they all formed these little, some of them towns with Dutch names because they obviously longed for home. And I started to photograph some of them, Utrecht and Harlem and Amsterdam and so on. So what I've done now, I've almost finished the South African ones, and I'm going to, in two weeks time, I'm going to the Netherlands, which are called Flatland, to photograph the original. Okay, lovely. Okay, so so again, a nice thing. And that is, you know, for viewers who are not familiar, South Africa was colonised mostly by the Dutch back in the day. So lots of Dutch names. So I like these kind of ideas. You know, and talking about, you know, the landscape and that, you said diesel and dust, that's in your blood. And is that I find the images that you create of Africa, both, you know, sort of interesting because I'm seeing it through the lens of Omi, which I quite like. But also they have a very powerful feel to me. They talked to me of an Africa that was kind of half glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. But what I do find is when I look at, like if you look at some photographers, you can see it very clear influence, but without sort of sounding like a big sort of sycophanticism, I don't see much of an influence in your photography. It seems to be not necessarily devoid of influence, but it seems to be very much yours. So do you have, I mean, who are your influences? Well, you know, to be quite honest, even though in my later teaching years, I had to read a lot about photographers and I was never influenced by any particular photographer. I was influenced by Elvis Presley, who's told me to follow that dream wherever that may lead you. But I was very fortunate when I was at some all, all photographic festival in southern France, I was doing a story on some vineyards or something. And there was this arts photographic arts festival and there somebody said to me, your hero is there. And my hero at that stage or still is Don McCullen. Okay, I love his work and I, you know, I always wanted to be a war photographer, but I just, I think I've got it. I don't think I have it. So thank heavens I didn't become one, because you know, I'm of the age I would have, would have been in Vietnam. So I managed to corner Don McCullen also then quite younger. And I said, we had a couple of glasses of wine together and, you know, I said, I teach about you and say, and then I said, Don, give me one, give me one liner for my students back home. And he looked at me, he took a sip of wine and he said, tell them, I say, I use my camera like a toothbrush. It does the job. So what are you saying? And what I've also followed and use is that you should know your, your, your, your technical side, your equipment so well that it's second hand. To me, there's, there's nothing worse than going to a camera club or speaking at some sort of photographic amateur and everybody ends up talking about apertures and instops and pixels and stuff like that. So really, it's not about like in the heyday of a Lance Armstrong, he, you know, he said, before he's downfall was, it's not about the bike. So for me, it's not about the camera. Sure. I mean, I try and use the best cameras that I can get. But if you can look past that and you can look not, not what you're using, but what you're photographing, then then you'll be halfway there. And you know, for young, young, if I may, some advice, you know, some young photographers, I'll once too, maybe they walk around and take a picture and then it's like in the bag and then they relax. Sometimes a big pictures happen just around the corner. So always stay alive, always be ready. Don't, don't throw it and say it's in the bag. And another practice that I've always followed since I put the pizza up straight is that when I don't have a camera and I walk around the block, I'm always conjuring up images, make believing somewhere. This sort of adds to my experience. It's staggered in the diesel and dust filled mine of mine. So if you walk around, conjure up, just look at the scene. There's a hedge and there's a plant. How would you photograph it? Closer? Would I use a light here? Would I come back when it's darker? Oh, that's enough. Yeah, any more? Alex? Yeah, that is, I mean, these, I think it's, it's wonderful to hear you say about the fact that, you know, the camera is just a tool. You know, certainly in, in, you know, the modern world, there's, there is, for various reasons, you know, fascination with gear and things. And that has always been in photography. I mean, it's not a new thing, but it's been more prevalent now. And I'm, you know, it's great that you're saying that, you know, if you can understand the camera, so it's second nature, that if you have a, you know, not a comprehensive knowledge of all the technical nonsense and stuff like that, but enough to have to not to think about it too much, that you can spend more time being creative, being more in the moment, as you said, I think that's, that is an absolute joyous sort of thing to hear. I'm so pleased because, you know, the guys on the channel, everybody who watches this channel, you know, we're not about the gear, we're about the ideas, you know, you know, there's all these, that's just the sort of thing. And that's kind of why, you know, listening to photographers like yourself, who have a deep passion and enthusiasm for photography. And I think that's kind of the word that, if I have to think of one to sum me up is enthusiasm for it, that whenever we look at any of your images, that it seems like you aren't just going through the motions, you're not just taking pictures for the sake of taking a picture, but you are to coin a phrase from dead person society, you know, like you're sucking that marrow out of life. And, and whatever comes along, you just like, man, I'm just going to roll with it. I think, you know, the faces of the people who feature in your photographs, all of them look like they're involved. You know, they're not that you're not like pointing your camera at them like some sort of, you know, zookeeper or something, you know, you're you're they're part of the process and you're connecting with their lives in some sort of way. And I hope the viewers who have watched, you know, you speak and listen to your, you know, your extremely interesting talks, you know, get a sense of this from photography. And then they take some of this, you know, that they were inspired the same way that in off camera previously, we were talking about when we very briefly met when I was a student, and you gave a talk about the Swarberg past story. And that evening, we all went out and took our cameras outside and started from the moon and things, because we also wanted to try that. And then, you know, some guy put his camera up the whole night, and then forgot to open the shuttle because he's a nurse. So, you know, it's, it's, I think it's wonderful to hear you talk. I think, you know, it's great. As I said, earlier, you've got your new monograph Happy Sadland coming out, which I will put a link for people in the description box below in the video. And also, you'll see at the back, I've got some of my things. This is one of OB's. I think, is this your first monograph? Yeah. And then I like the fact that, you know, later on, you've got, what was this lady's name? I'm a Rose Clute from XTN Fontaine. Yeah. And then you've got her again. Later on. And I think she features in another one. But, you know, you can find OB's books on various places and they, you know, and I would highly recommend that you go and you check them out. Anyway, OB, I have to say it has been an absolute pleasure. You are one of my photographic heroes. You have inspired me so much both as a young photographer and now as an older photographer where I see all the light you work and publish my NSB in an absolute joy and pleasure. And thank you for being here with us. Okay. If I remember, for everybody out there in photography, if you go, you'll get. If you go, you'll get. There we go. That's fantastic. Thank you all so for watching and we'll see you again soon.