Page 12 - Cape-Camera-July-August-2021

July/August 2021 Cape Camera

A Member’s Profile

All images by Sonja Grünbauer
Sonja Grünbauer

APPSA*, LPPSA**, LPSSA

My interest in photography began already in my teens when shoot of its campus from a helicopter, which was my first experi-
I spent many happy hours with my father - the famed Werner ence of aerial photography that would later in my career stand
Grünbauer - at the legendary Protea Film Productions Compa- me in good stead. The next unusual request came from a client
ny. I had a twin-lens Rolleiflex with which I took many memora- who wanted pictures taken inside a massive water reservoir. A
ble photographs of everyone on the numerous film sets I was water reservoir? Where? On a farm and far away from civiliza-
fortunate to observe. This enabled me to gain valuable expe- tion - certainly not your regular reservoir!
rience in techniques and skills that placed me squarely on the The company which approached me for the job had construct-
road to becoming a professional photographer, which I have ed a giant dome-shaped water reservoir of which they required
now been since 1976. a selection of photographs in order to register a patent. This was
After school, I enrolled at the Pretoria Technicon’s Art School one of the jobs that I regard as my baptism of fire – preparing
where I learned the finer points of photography, including all me to cope with difficulties and obstacles in my career. It taught
the techniques in film processing, transparencies and prints and me to think outside the box.
getting to know the complexities of studio lighting. After com- To reach the place in the middle of nowhere, we had to fly in a
pletion of my studies, I was first offered the position of photog- small private plane for three hours from Pretoria. Nearing the
rapher at UNISA and then at the University of Pretoria. site and gaining a birds-eye view of the gigantic construction
I opened my own photo studio in Pretoria in 1984, where I spe- was exciting, however, what followed after our landing was
cialised in portrait and wedding photography. During that time nerve-racking, to say the least. I had to climb down from the
I received a request from the University to do an aerial photo top of the dome into the reservoir, which is the stuff that would
excite acrobats, but not me. It took 20 minutes for my eyes to
adjust to the darkness and come to terms with the photograph-
ic challenges I was facing. I felt dwarfed by the sheer scale of
this ‘thing’ and my courage began to fail me. The ceiling of the
dome was about ± 50 meters high, accentuating its vastness.
“How must I take these images?” I shouted into the emptiness
out of sheer frustration.
Loaded with a Metz Flash 402, a Hasselblad and a 50mm lens,
a long exposure cable release and a heavy duty Manfrotto tri-
pod - thank heavens for that, I started smoking one cigarette
after another to try to calm my nerves and suppress my mood
of despondency. Eureka, here came the first bright idea when
my little cigarette lighter presented itself as a useful and make-
shift torch for reading my hand-held light meter. I used my Metz
flash to ‘paint with light’ for the timed exposures – a technique I
had learned at school with tungsten light. I flash-painted all are-
as several times - upwards downwards and sideways. It worked
like a bomb when I set my exposure time on Bulb for 20 minutes
at f/22.

11 Cape Town Photographic Society