In April 2009, photographer Ulrich Grill had the opportunity to shoot at a totally unique location. His friend, and former Red Bull athlete, Kurt Bock had handed over his house to Austrian architect Peter Kaschnig, who then fulfilled a fantasy and painted the entire house ultramarine. Everything blue, inside and out, from the chimney to the pot plants.
“My intention for this project was to work on the concept of spatial perception and resulting modifications“, says Peter Kaschnig. “We’re mainly talking about the play on light and color. If the usual color contrasts are removed, human perception changes and is forced to focus on certain details.“
The extraordinary art project attracted numerous visitors and was covered by worldwide media, including Britain’s The Sun, The New York Post, Vietnamese Sky News and Dutch De Telegraaf.
For Grill, the all-blue house was the perfect location for his athlete shoot with Red Bull trial bike athlete Thomas Öhler. “Of course you have to seize an opportunity like this if you can do a photo shoot at such a wild location!“ says Grill. “The special challenge in this shoot was to create contrasts in the images. A monochrome environment forces you to start from scratch and think very carefully about things like the color of the athlete’s clothes, the positioning of your subject, the usage of light, flash and so on.“
The equipment used was a Nikon D3x with a 17-35mm wideangle zoom lens, 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro flashcards and multiple Broncolor studio flashes.
Öhler says the unusual playground not only made for a nice diversion from his daily training, but also constituted a quite demanding experience. “Even if the photos don’t show it, it was really exhausting!“ He says. “The low ceilings were a real challenge. I felt more than once that I was going to hit my head.“
He revealed to Austrian newspaper Kleine Zeitung that his personal highlight of the day was, “a blue Barbie doll on site, behaving very well.“
The pictures speak for themselves and both artist and athlete were more than satisfied with their hard work.
Unfortunately Kasching’s hard work was rather shortlived. The house was demolished the next day to make way for a new development but at least the blue house will live on in the images.
Red Bull Illume Making of Series: The all-blue house
The all-blue house
© ulrichgrill.com/Red Bull Photofiles