INTERVIEW
From magical Paris to the glitz of Los Angeles, Serge Ramelli discusses his inspirational photographic journey and ambitious future plans
This issue we hear from photographer Serge Ramelli about his photographic journey and inspirations
Serge Ramelli is a photographer with multiple strings to his creative bow. While his photographic portfolio alone demonstrates his skill as a stills photographer, his artistic repertoire extends far beyond this visual medium. Before he’d ever picked up a camera, Serge channelled his ambition to become an actor into developing his talent as a film-maker and producer.
The quality and popularity of his signature cityscapes, landscapes and architecture images seem even more remarkable when you consider that he is entirely self-taught, and only started experimenting with digital photography in around the mid-2000s.
“Before 2005 I had almost never taken a photo in my life,” explains Serge. “At that time I was really focused on getting into acting and producing short movies. The difficulty with that was building a crew to pull everything together and enable me to tell a story – it was really painful.”
It was then that Serge discovered another outlet for his creativity, when a close friend demonstrated the power of Photoshop on one of Serge’s informal photos.
“I had taken a photo of another of our friends while we were all on vacation and he made it into a magazine cover using Photoshop. I realised that although I really wanted to be an actor, I just wanted to do something artistic, and with a camera plus Photoshop you could do anything!”
Once he was aware of the creative potential of photography, Serge yearned to learn all he could about the topic. His favourite genres have evolved over the years, but cityscapes have played a big part in his photographic development.
“I was working for my brother in some of the nicest areas of Paris, so I was finishing right around sunset and taking photos [of all the major landmarks]. I did that for years and that really got me started,” he explains.
From that point Serge started travelling and landscape photography became a logical next step. Today his focus has shifted to combine two major areas of photography – portraiture and landscape
– in a commercial style. These photos now make up a significant percentage of Serge Ramelli’s portfolio.
“I like to shoot somebody doing something in an environment, such as another photographer taking an image in a beautiful place. I’ll shoot the background and then light the subject with flash or mix them together – I’ve been doing that more and more. It’s a portrait, but it’s also a landscape – it’s kind of hard to do, but I enjoy the challenge.“
Today Serge is a pro photographer, retoucher and educator. His YouTube channel (youtube.com/photoserge) has over 455,000 subscribers and he produces a multitude of online training products.
As a photographer of the modern age, digital technology has had an extensive role in Serge’s growth. His first camera was a Canon EOS 350D, which served as a great tool for learning.“It was quite noisy, had a low resolution and a limited dynamic range, but it was the camera of the day,” he reminisces. “From there I moved to the Canon EOS 5D, then the 5D Mark II and I was going to continue to the Mark III, but switched to Sony, using the Alpha 7R, 7S and 7R II, due to their portability.”
Speaking of his professional imagery, Serge describes how the publication of his
“I realised that I just wanted to do something artistic, and with a camera plus Photoshop you could do anything!”
work in book and gallery format has been the proudest achievement of his career.
“It happened in the same week – I signed to have my work shown in over 85 galleries, and at the same time signed a deal with my German publisher to publish books on Paris and New York. Now I was able to exchange my work with a wider audience – that would have to be my proudest moment so far. I’m actually bringing out two new books, one on Venice and one on Los Angeles, this time in colour. Last time the publisher preferred black and white, but I am more of a colour artist, so I am very happy to be working with colour again.”
When asked about what he believes constitutes a successful photograph,
Serge’s cinematic background shines through .“Photography means to write with light, so obviously you have to have great light, but for me it’s good storytelling that’s important. It’s got to say something. If you have a shot of the Pont Neuf at sunset, with a nice lady as a foreground element, you have a clear fore, middle and background, you’re telling a story. In your composition, you have make sure that everything there is helping to convey one clear message. When
“It doesn’t matter what the subject of the photo is, whether it’s macro, landscape, travel
or fashion, you’ve got to have a clear story”
composing my images I always ask myself what I can include and what I can leave out to help me communicate my message. It doesn’t matter what the subject of the photo is, whether it’s macro, landscape, travel or fashion, you’ve got to have a clear story.”
Looking to the future, Serge has far from abandoned his dream of producing movies (see ‘The Hollywouldn’ts’ below), but he has some expert advice for photographers hoping to develop their own style.
“Find photographers you like, watch their tutorials, find behind-the-scenes videos and in the process of trying to imitate their style initially, you’ll naturally find your own. That’s what worked for me!”
You can view Serge’s work by visiting his website at sergeramelliphotos.com and access his popular training courses by visiting photoserge.com. DP