Petra Stadler: A model approach
Petra Stadler isn’t the first fashion model to carve out a career on the other side of the camera, but she might be the most successful. The Munich-based fashion, celebrity and lifestyle shooter, who started posing for brands like Benetton while a teenager, now numbers many of Germany’s most important magazines, entertainment companies and fashion houses among her photography clients. CPN’s John McDermott spoke to her about her career to date.
At high school in her hometown of Essen, Petra got top marks in a rigorous program that prepared her to go to university. Her plan was to study mathematics and become a teacher. “My boyfriend was a photographer,” she recalls, “and he needed to go to Munich for his job, so I decided to go with him and attend university there, in Bavaria.” The move to a different state meant a six-month delay in finding place at university, so in the meantime Petra continued to do modelling jobs and helped her boyfriend on some of his assignments.
“He was covering football and Formula 1 and also a lot of celebrity events,” Petra explains. “Sometimes he would give me a camera - he would set the aperture and shutter speed, choose the lens and just tell me to try and get an interesting shot. All I had to do was compose a nice picture and focus. It seems that I had an eye for it, because pretty soon people began noticing and encouraging me to take more pictures. Eventually I said to myself, ‘this is a nice job and I really love doing it’.”
Petra’s next move was to postpone her studies again, this time to look for work with one of the big photo agencies. She went to see Reuters, Associated Press, DPA (Deutsche Presse Agentur) and also Werek, then the biggest sports photo agency in Germany. Werek offered Petra a two-year contract to do an ‘ausbildung’ (a low-paid formal apprenticeship) to become a professional photojournalist. At the end of the two years she would be certified and qualify for an official press card - no small matter in Germany.
Petra recalls: “I started out at the bottom! They threw me in the cold water and I had to swim from the first day. Right away I was doing the film developing and the printing. There I was, 19-years-old and the only woman working in the office - 14 guys and me! I had to start shooting football games, ice hockey, ski jumping, horse racing - everything. I started on Wednesday and the following Saturday I had to shoot my first Bundesliga football match. They pushed me out the door and said ‘Don’t make any mistakes!’”
Former Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher.
When Petra was starting out as an apprentice at Werek she had to make a decision on which camera system to buy. “At that time,” she says, “that meant either Canon or Nikon. There was no other real choice. For me it was easy. Every week in Stern Magazine there was double page advert for Nikon that featured a well-known sports photographer. Most of them were using Nikon in those days. I’m the type that always swims against the current. I didn’t want to be like everybody else. I thought, ‘if they are all using Nikon, then I’m going to use Canon!’ I made the right choice because, of course, within five years almost all those photographers had switched to Canon. It changed totally!”
The workload at Werek was heavy, typically up to about 90 hours per week, and the pay for an apprentice was low, only 280 Deutschmarks (approximately €140), per month. Saturdays were especially tough. After shooting a football match the film had to be driven back to the office, developed and then 120 copies of each selected picture had to be printed, captioned and delivered in time to make the Sunday morning newspapers.
Petra also had to provide her own equipment - a basic kit that included a Canon F-1 body and all the lenses she needed for shooting sports, including an FD300mm f/2.8. Petra says: “I was lucky that I had saved most of the money from my modelling career because my parents couldn’t afford to support me living in Munich, and I wasn’t making enough money to support myself. I had to be very careful, but it worked.”
Petra gradually became an accomplished sports photographer, one of the very few with such talents in Germany at the time. But as she approached the end of her apprenticeship something radically altered the course of her career. She recalls: “One night a small plane crashed into a gas station and exploded next to a McDonald’s on the highway near the old Munich airport. Five people were killed. Normally this would be a story for Reuters or DPA, but my chief insisted that I go there and take pictures. I’d never seen dead people before and I was totally shocked. I did my pictures - it was a horrible scene - and they were sold all over Europe.”
She adds: “It was terrible for me. I was beside myself and I couldn’t sleep. Finally, I came to a decision. I never wanted to take pictures like this again and I swore I would never work for anyone else who could tell me what I have to photograph. I would work as a freelancer. Three weeks later I finished my contract at Werek and the chief of the agency offered me a permanent job. I said ‘no’.”
German tennis legend Steffi Graf.
As Petra faced an uncertain future her parents made a suggestion that would prove serendipitous. “They told me I should take some time off,” she recalls, “and encouraged me to go to Los Angeles and stay for a while with some old friends of our family, Bob and Ann. Bob worked at KTLA Channel 5, one of the biggest television stations in LA. I took my cameras with me as I had arranged to do one freelance assignment, a home story with the German actress Heidi Bruhl who was living in Anaheim. Bob told me that if I wanted to do more stories like that he could put me in touch with other performers in Hollywood because the station had all the contacts. We made a list of 12 possibilities and I started calling.”
She adds: “I was just Petra, a freelance photographer from Munich who was asking them to come to their home and do a story. I couldn’t believe any of these people would talk to me, let alone say ‘yes’. But they did! Pretty soon I had appointments to do photo shoots with some of the hottest TV stars of the time - Larry Hagman, Al Corley, Deborah Shelton and others. They were all starring in Dallas and Dynasty and this was a time when those shows were extremely popular in Germany. Three weeks later I went home to Munich with 16 stories.”
Encouraged by her success in LA, Petra called the leading news weekly, Der Spiegel, and explained what she had to offer. The picture editor invited her to come in and she presented 12 of her LA stories. When she realised they were seriously interested she took a bold step: “I told them that they had to buy everything, all the stories, or nothing, that I only wanted to make a package deal for everything. They thought about it for a day and said ‘yes’. Spiegel ran one story per week over the next few months and I made about 20,000 marks!”
Barbara Becker on a charity assignment.
Other magazines began to take notice and after a few weeks the picture editor of Bunte, an important German magazine that makes heavy use of photography, called to offer her assignment work. This turned into a 12-year relationship with the magazine - the first three years shooting mostly parties and events like the Oscars, the Monaco Grand Prix and the MTV Awards and, later on, mainly celebrity and lifestyle features all over the world.
The biggest story Petra ever did for Bunte would ultimately lead to the end of their working relationship. One of Petra’s closest friends when she was a teenage model was a girl called Barbara Feltus. Feltus grew up to become a successful actress and model, and the wife of German tennis sensation Boris Becker. When the couple’s first child, Noah, was born in 1994 the Beckers enlisted Petra to help them avoid the photographers that were waiting outside the hospital in hopes of getting the first pictures of the Becker baby.
With delight Petra recalls: “When it was time to take Noah home Boris and Barbara asked me take him out of the hospital hidden inside a Lotto sports bag and drive him home. So I walked out the door of the hospital, right past my colleagues, with Noah in the bag. Fortunately he did not cry. I put him on the back seat and drove the few blocks to their house. They then left the hospital together with the photographers following them all the way home. Later that day Barbara’s father, who is a photographer, did the first baby pictures which I then developed and printed for them.”
Boris and Barbara Becker with their son Noah.
Petra continues: “A year later, when they were ready to present themselves as a family publicly for the first time and wanted to do pictures, they called me. Maybe it was a kind of ‘thank you’. It was January and Boris was playing a tournament Australia, in Perth, and I was skiing in Austria. Barbara said ‘You must come. We’ll pay for everything and Boris will make an exclusive deal with a magazine, but we only want you to do these pictures’. So, I went.”
Once the pictures were done Becker negotiated a deal for Petra with Bunte for one-time publication only in return for 75,000 Deutschmarks plus all of Stadler’s expenses for the trip to Australia. But word leaked out about her exclusive from other photographers who were in Perth and by the time Petra got home to Munich there was a fax from Stern Magazine, Bunte’s fiercest competitor, offering her 500,000 Deutschmarks for exclusive rights to the pictures. But she had already given her word to her best client.
The next week Bunte ran a cover photo and 18 pages - all copies of the magazine were sold out within three hours. Then the problems began. Petra explains: “Boris only wanted these pictures to be published one time, not used over and over again, as that was the deal he made with the editor. But Bunte had sold 43% more magazines than in a normal week. It was the highest-selling issue in the history of the magazine. So the following week they ran another cover and 16 more pages. Boris was very upset. He asked me to get a lawyer and make them stop using the pictures. I talked to the editor and they offered some more money, but they wouldn’t agree to not publish any more pictures. In fact, every week it seemed they tried to invent a new story, for example about ‘The Best German Fathers’ or ‘Beautiful Women After Having a Baby’, that would give them an excuse to use the pictures again.”
Petra reveals: “The last straw was when they made a photo-composite on the cover, which included one of my photos from Perth, and changed the copyright to somebody else. We made a reasonable demand - remove that picture and pay 10,000 Deutschmarks to Becker’s charity and 5,000 Deutschmarks to me. The magazine refused. So our lawyer got a court order that they had to remove all remaining copies of that issue from the newsstands. This fight carried on in the courts for 10 years until I finally won and got some money, though not very much. I had been working for 12 years almost exclusively for Burda Publications, the publisher of Bunte, but once we went to court I got no more work from them. I was unemployed.”
There were personal setbacks at that time as well, including the theft of a lot of her camera equipment and a car accident that put her in a coma for five weeks, followed by a long period of physical therapy. Petra continues: “I had to start from the bottom again, going around with a portfolio. I knew I was a good photographer but I had to present myself to the market and tell people that I wanted to work. It was time to re-invent myself, again.”
It didn’t take long. In 1996 Petra met the European CEO of 20th Century Fox while covering an event. He said they weren’t happy with the photographers they were using and suggested she showed a portfolio. Within a week she had an assignment and she has worked continuously for Fox ever since. “They’ve become like family,” she states proudly. Her relationship with Fox has made Petra the ‘go-to’ choice when the studio has a big star promoting a film in Europe. Once she got a call at 1:30am from Fox to ask her to be in Rome the next day because Tom Cruise didn’t like the photographers he had to work with there. She recalls: “I really couldn’t do it, I had other bookings. But then they put Tom on the phone. He told me I just had to come. So, of course, I went. It’s funny now, but it was difficult. But it was also a great honour.”
Petra currently works with two EOS-1Ds Mark II bodies and loves them. “Changing to digital was a big jump for me. The main thing was to be able to trust this camera the way I trusted my EOS-1V film cameras. I need a full frame body and until I tried the EOS-1Ds Mark II I hadn’t been convinced it would be better. But from the moment I had this camera in my hand everything just felt right - the way it handles, the menus and navigation. The files are beautiful. I normally work with two cameras, but with the 1Ds Mark II it was the first time I felt confident working with just one body. That’s how comfortable I feel with it.”
Petra leases her cameras and her heavy work schedule means they get a lot of use. She normally rotates them every 18 to 24 months. That time is coming soon. “I’m borrowing a 1Ds Mark III from Canon to try out and I expect that when the lease on my cameras is up I’ll move up to the new camera.”
If there is one photographer whose work has inspired Petra more than any other it is her countryman, the late Helmut Newton. “There was never one photographer that I wanted to be like,” Petra explains. “But I have a lot of books by Newton and he has always been my favourite. Once, I had the chance to do a photo shoot with Helmut and his wife June for two hours at a gallery in Berlin where they were preparing an exhibition. It was great; all natural light with all his big pictures on the walls. He asked me if he could have one of my pictures and if I would sign it for him. I printed one in black and white, put it in a nice frame and took it to the gallery the night of the opening. A week later a package arrived at my studio. It was his famous ‘Big Book’, signed and dedicated to me!”
Newton was apparently not just impressed by Petra’s photography. “That day at the gallery Helmut said to me, ‘Petra, you are a beautiful woman. What do you think about posing nude for me?” Petra was flattered, but not tempted. “I said 'no'. Helmut said, ‘I can pay you, how much do you want?’ ‘Nothing’, I said. There isn’t enough money that can make me take off my clothes!’ He accepted that and then we had a conversation about how a lot of women have a problem with the sexuality of his pictures and how he presents women. He wanted to know my opinion and I told him I don’t have a problem, that I feel very good about his pictures, that to me he makes the women look strong, beautiful and always natural. He was surprised by that, but pleased. I just didn’t want to be photographed like that.”
Legendary photographer Helmut Newton photographed by Petra.
When asked if she has a favourite lens, Petra doesn’t hesitate. “It’s the EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM,” she enthuses. “It’s just an absolutely brilliant lens in every respect – colour, sharpness, contrast. I use it for all my portraits. I tested all of the portrait lenses from Canon, and for me this is the best lens. And the Image Stabilization is also important. When I’m on location I often work in light that is not so great. I shoot at 1/125sec, or even a little slower without a tripod. My style is to work spontaneously and without a tripod, so the IS really makes a difference to me.”
Petra considers herself a diverse photographer rather than a specialist, something a glance at her online portfolio instantly confirms. While she continues to do event coverage as part of her long collaboration with 20th Century Fox, and a few other long-term clients like Bogner and Mercedes, her main focus these days is on fashion work. She’s been shooting for some top designers, including the last four catalogues for Baldessarini, a high-end offshoot of the Hugo Boss brand. The Baldessarini catalogues use well-known actors and celebrities - tenor Jose Carreras and German movie star Hardy Kruger for example - rather than models, something for which, given her background, Petra is ideally suited.
Tenor Jose Carreras featured in a shot for the Baldessarini fashion catalogues.
Food photography is a relatively recent addition to Petra Stadler repertoire. Again, there is a celebrity connection. Petra explains: “I don’t want to say that I am a food photographer because they are very, very specialised and it’s a tough job. But for what I’ve been doing - cookbooks with celebrities - I’ve been getting great feedback. It started when I began doing features for Revue magazine on celebrities who liked to cook, shooting them together with a star chef in real time, and just developed from there.”
Food photography is one of the recent directions Petra Stadler’s work has taken.
Looking ahead, Petra wants to put a greater emphasis on portraiture in her work. She explains: “I love to look at faces and to try to capture the soul of the person. I’m a photographer who always needs to have interaction with other people.” Asked if there was a secret to her success Petra responds without hesitation: “You can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you don’t have the ability to get people to feel comfortable and trust you and open up to you quickly then you won’t be successful in this kind of work. I think, maybe, that I have this, and probably it’s just a gift from God.”
- Technical
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Petra Stadler’s equipment:
Cameras:
2x EOS-1Ds Mark II
Lenses:
EF24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
EF85mm f/1.2L II USM
EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM
Accessories:
Profoto 7B portable strobes
