I first became aware of Urs Buhlman at a photography seminar in Sydney a few decades ago. He was making a presentation on car photography. In addition to using large-format film, using filters was a key element of his technique, specifically lots of graduated neutral density filters. Into the digital era, I became aware of his moody and partly-desaturated (at least to my eyes) coastal landscapes. I interviewed Urs at his home near Merimbula on the NSW south coast late in 2025…
It was all quiet and Urs asked, “Aren’t you going to say something?” The agency team were stunned! His new rep turned and said. “Urs, why didn’t you tell me that you shoot cars?” And he replied. “How do I know I can shoot cars, this is just lighting… why are you differentiating?” Thirty seconds before, he had just placed his stunning 4x5-inch transparencies on the agency’s lightbox. Six days prior to this, Urs had just started with an agent who had connections to the advertising agency handling the Subaru account. Cars ad campaigns are big accounts, and the agency was a bit uncertain about using him. He said, “Give me an Outback and I will see you in four or five days”. So he took the car up to the Seal Rocks area on the NSW mid-north coast and created the photographs which subsequently took everybody by surprise.
Visual Learning
But photographing cars for advertising didn’t start happening for Urs until 1992. So let’s go further back, and to Switzerland where his dad, Paul, was a designer and worked with photographers in Switzerland. These included Rene Groebli who devised the process of colour solarisation. The family moved to Australia and the ten-year-old Urs arrived with little, if any, English.
Article continues belowHe says, “I’m a visual learner and dad had a big library of photography books”. Urs studied art in 5th and 6th form, and often talked with his dad about Le Corbusier – the French/Swiss architect designer – and the Swiss/German artist Paul Klee.
“Dad actually knew Le Corbusier – and possibly also Klee – and I would tell the art teacher many of my father’s stories. But the teacher would say, ‘This is all wrong! What are you talking about?’ So, in the end, I was kicked out of art class.”
However, he was allowed to do his own thing and, along with another student, built a darkroom at his high school in Killarney Heights, Sydney. This is where his photography started, using a Canon AE-1 35mm SLR and shooting black and white film. He confesses that he didn’t really enjoy it and, from what he can recall, wasn’t any good at it either.
So, upon leaving school, Urs enrolled at the Australian Maritime College at Launceston. The first year comprised four months studying then eight months of practical learning working on boats around Australia.
“I worked on a scallop and shark boat at Merimbula, but I soon realised it wasn’t for me. I came back to Sydney disillusioned and feeling a bit of a failure. But then I saw I had all these great photography books in front of me at home, and this got me thinking about how I could get a job as a photographer.”
On The Job Experience
His first assisting job was with Joe Spiteri, a photographer based in the north Sydney suburb of Willoughby and who essentially did everything, including portraits and some still life work, but all for local clients.
“People loved him,” Urs recalls. “I think they came more for him than the photography.”
Joe asked Urs to photograph the ocean and he came back with one-second time exposures that emphasised the movement. “Wow, Urs, I’ve never seen anything like it!” Joe enthused. He showed Urs how to print and, he says, was generally very supportive.
Now with some experience under his belt, Urs went to work for Konrad – who has always be known to everybody simply as Konrad – who was an all-round advertising photographer based in North Sydney, and also happened to have been born in Switzerland. “I’ll give you a go,” he said to Urs. However, Konrad famously loved a long lunch and was often out of the studio, but it was here that Urs first experienced 4x5-inch and 8x10-inch large format film cameras. He confessed that, at first, he didn’t even know what end to look in.
“I was just 20 and he gave me a lot of rope… which I hung myself on. But I learned an incredible amount there and built up my portfolio.”
Next stop as an assistant was with Mark Anthony at his advertising photography studio in an old bank building in nearby Crows Nest. The inside of Mark’s studio was entirely painted black and known locally as ‘The Black Hole of Calcutta’. Urs says he found it quite difficult to work in the black studio for period of up to 12 hours at a time. The bank’s old vault had been turned into the film loading room and darkroom.
“At that time, Mark had more photography equipment than any other photographer in Australia. There were two 8x10-inch cameras, two 4x5s, three Hasselblad kits and three Nikon systems. There was 40,000 joules of Strobe studio flash. When we used all the Strobe lights together, it would trip
the power at the surrounding shops so Mark asked me to fix the circuit breaker. I bought the biggest nail I could get and stuck it in the circuit breaker, anything else would have been burnt. It was a really dumb thing and could have started a fire, but then the fire station was just across the road so we thought we’d be OK.
Whenever there were two or three set-ups going on in the studio, they called it the Killing Floor after a song that was performed by Jimi Hendrix. “Because when there were sets on the studio floor, Mark Anthony made a killing,” Urs laughs.
Urs ended up shooting a lot of the work.
“That was how you learnt. I remember countless times still being there at 4am and I’d started at 7am the previous day. I didn’t make much money, but I learned a huge amount. I also remember there was lots of work for Avon [cosmetics] which was perfect. These were great jobs to learn on because we had to copy what had already been printed in USA. I learnt how to follow layouts and light objects such as lip sticks.
“You don’t learn this being a self-taught photographer. I worked five or six days a week for Mark, but on the seventh day I was able to shoot for myself in Mark’s studio with his equipment as he was also always very supportive.”
Urs’s father had always told him, “Don’t go for the money, enjoy what you do and be bloody good at it and hopefully the money will follow. “Eventually, though, I fired myself from Mark.”
Conveniently, Carsten Burmeister – who was an accomplished still life photographer and shot mostly on a 5x7-inch large format camera – had just lost his assistant. Urs learned on the grapevine that Carsten was interested in taking him on.
“Carsten was magical with his lighting set-ups. He injected emotion into his lighting,” Urs states. “He really taught me how to light creatively. At times, I felt like I was looking at a Rembrandt.”
“Mark Anthony had so much lighting you felt you had to use it all, whereas Carsten was very frugal. He only had two power packs and six heads, but did more with it than I could have done with four times that amount of lighting.”
Carsten taught Urs about minimalism. He put candles and lamps in his sets, mixing flash with time exposures to create more ambience. These shots had to be taken at night as Carsten didn’t have a black studio. On one occasion, the brief was for a Stirling cigarettes campaign and required a picture of two people who looked like they were sitting in a helicopter enjoying a smoke. The helicopter’s cockpit was built out of an old VW as everything was curved. Urs remembers that Carsten loved to build things, and this was actually a big part of advertising photography before digital imaging… a reason why many photographers had big studios.
In addition to the still life work, Urs also started shooting panoramas and seascapes in 6x17cm format.
“Carsten really couldn’t relate to those images,” he recalls. “I think he thought that if it wasn’t a commercial image, it really didn’t count. He didn’t look at photography in any way other than for pride and for money which was different to me. I lasted a year-and-a-half there.”
In 1987, Urs assisted the famous fashion photographer Albert Watson in a Surry Hills studio. He was setting the lighting and recalls, “Albert knew what he wanted and went for it”. On another occasion, also in Surry Hills, he assisted the fashion photographer, Walter Rambaldini. Both experiences taught him that he didn’t want to become a fashion photographer.
Mark Lang was one of the last photographers that Urs worked with as an assistant. With Mark he went on location shoots in mines and factories as well as working on corporate assignments. Mark had him loading film in his 6x17cm Linhof Technorama panorama cameras – which needed frequent reloading as only four panoramic frames were exposed on 120-length rollfilm – and also his Mamiya RB67s.
“In the beginning, Mark’s wide landscapes certainly influenced me, but they didn’t really speak to me. Well, some did, some didn’t. Again, it was all about finding out what I wanted to be as a professional photographer.”
Jumping Into The Market
Having worked as an assistant for a number of Sydney’s leading photographers between 1980 and ’87, and in a variety of genres, Urs had gained plenty of technical knowledge, creative inspiration, some ideas about how to run (or not run) a photography business, and a clearer vision of what he wanted to do in photography.
After going freelance, Urs spent the next few years shooting annual reports. While the work was good, he says he didn’t enjoy the “liberation” after being in a studio for so long.
His first annual report shoots were for Westpac bank, the Sydney Opera House and Coal & Allied. He rates one of his best annual report jobs was photographing the Ranger uranium mine near Jabiru in the Northern Territory for Energy Resources Of Australia. It was shot entirely on 4x5-inch black and white film, and Urs was also commissioned to do it again the next year.
“I don’t really know why I didn’t enjoy annual report assignments. I saw some great country,” he muses and then, after a short silence, adds, “Actually, I do I know why I stopped… portrait shoots! I remember I was just about to do a Polaroid test of the Westpac board for a design company and the chairman told me I had one minute!”
Urs concedes he was really just looking for a good excuse to get back in the studio, but he’s also had a life-long distaste for arrogance.
“But I knew I wanted to be an advertising photographer,” Urs states. Subsequently,
he worked out of a share studio in North Sydney before moving into his own at nearby Willoughby (previously occupied by the portrait photographer Robert Billington).
He was well aware he was stepping into a highly competitive market at the time.
“If you put it in music terms, there was Crowded House, INXS, Barry Manilow and Englebert Humperdinck… and I was the Black Sabbath. Most of my images are generally heavy in moody tonality and that’s how I sold myself. It hasn’t changed.” During this time he produced a lot of still life work, and dabbled with light painting and Polaroid dye transfers. He says he particularly loved the quality of the – then newly released – Agfachrome ISO 1000 transparency film. “It was a really beautiful film,” he recalls.
Bulletproof technique
Urs says there have been a few key influences on his work over the decades, including the British advertising photographer and director Jonathon Knowles whom he rates as the best still life photographer in the world at the moment.
“He shoots his own stock images that are cleverly aimed at a tiny niche market, but he must make a fortune out of it.”
Urs says he also gained a better understood of minimalism in still life lighting through the work of Phil Marco, the New York-based photographer who, during the 1970s and 80s, mostly shot on 8x10-inch sheet film to deliver exceptional clarity. He also mentions the American advertising photographer Craig Cutler whose strong black-and-white still life work, he comments, exhibits “a bulletproof technique”. Nadav Kander – who was born in Israel and grew up in South Africa, but has been based in London since the mid-1980s – is rated very highly by Urs for his advertising photography… “Then I bought his book of personal work and thought you can’t be the same guy”.
Also important is Harry de Zitter – a Belgian-born South African – about whom Urs comments, “He’s an awesome advertising location photographer who influenced me with his use of early and late natural light.”
Taking The Time
Urs long and successful career in automotive advertising photography began with the Subaru Outback mentioned at the start of this profile. Even back then, a distinctive and carefully curated technique was emerging. Shot on 4x5-inch film, the exposure times were around 30 minutes because there was 15 stops of neutral density filters on the front of the lens.
Urs said to the art director, “You know we won’t be able to shoot a Polaroid for this, but don’t be scared. I’m five-times scared for both of us because of reciprocity failure.” Reciprocity failure becomes an issue with very long exposures on film as the emulsion starts to lose sensitivity over time, requiring an even longer exposure time to avoid underexposure. Additionally, significant color shifts can occur.
Sometimes Urs would have two 4x5-inch cameras set up, one fitted with a Polaroid film holder and one with a darkslide containing transparency film.
“Often the light was only good for a few minutes,” he explains. “Transparency film was made in the USA, Germany or Japan where the light is much less contrasty and softer. In Australia where we have very contrasty light, there was only a small window to expose film and keep all the highlight and shadow detail in everything from the black tyres to the shiny windows and body panels. Transparency film only had a latitude of around four stops while digital capture can have up to 14 or 15 stops. So, when digital backs came along, you’d shoot very differently depending on your workflow, style and how you’d post-produce after the shoot was finished.”
Urs began doing a lot of car photography for Mercedes Benz who, he says, was a very challenging client. “They’d say, ‘If you get it wrong, we’re going to fry you’. I said, ‘I won’t get it wrong’… and I didn’t. The pressure with advertising photography is humongous because it would be a new Mercedes model – and Audi and Lexus have already brought out their rival models – so they’d want to launch as soon as possible.” VW internationally always did their TVCs (TV ads) and stills together, but for the likes of Mercedes Benz and Toyota, Urs would shoot on the back of a TVC. “They fought for me and so I used to get a pretty good amount of time and my own car to photograph.”
On one occasion while in the Flinders Ranges shooting a vehicle for Mitsubishi, an emu with five little yellow-and-black chicks walks between the camera and the Pajero 4WD. “Boom, one 4x5. Boom, another 4x5. The agency people were mesmerized.”
He was later hired to do all the Lexus pre-release photography in Japan. “These cars were still top secret so there were security guards everywhere, we were frisked and no Australian assistants were allowed”.
Never Mind The Weather
In 2004, Urs was commissioned to photograph the 2005 edition of the Nissan World calendar. He had done a few test shots in Australia (which they actually used), but all the other images were photographed in Japan. He was given a good budget and could take his producer plus had the use of an interpreter. But he had little control over the locations, and the brief was to bring the sun into each of the images.
Shooting days were lost due to multiple typhoons that hit during the month-long assignment. Due to the dramatic light and a looming deadline, Urs had decided to start shooting during a typhoon. This meant he had to shoot 4x5-inch film on the go, so he started using Fujifilm’s then-new QuickLoad system which eliminated the need for darkslides as the film sheet was prepackaged in a light-tight envelope. It was certainly easier to use in deteriorating weather conditions.
At the cliff-top location the day before the shoot, the producer noted that the wind speed was already 120 km/h. Overnight, Urs had his assistants build a sturdy windbreak with two small holes in it to accommodate the lenses of his two Sinar large-format cameras. As they put the Wingroad station wagon – a prototype model – in place, the wind was now hitting 160 km/h. All the non-essential crew were sent back to the hotel.
“You could see the typhoon whirling towards us and, when it hit, we all had a 15 or 20 kilo bag strapped to our backs, and several of the crew had pads strapped to their knees so they could crawl. “Using film it was quite difficult as the brightness range was off the Richter scale. But I got it thanks to the graduated neutral density filters.”
However, a panel did fly off the car while they were shooting. The following day was thankfully cloudy and they photographed the missing panel on another car. They cut it out and dropped it into the previous day’s typhoon image. This was just at the start of digital retouching.
Diesels And Dust
Urs’s first big assignment using digital capture was an ad campaign for Mack trucks. The locations included the Bolte Bridge in Melbourne (which they had closed off ), the Tanami Desert and the Mundi Plains near Broken Hill. The Mundi plains is where iconic scenes in Mad Max 2 movie were shot.
Just after the crew was were ready to shoot, a dust storm arrived and lasted about an hour or so. Everybody had to wear bandanas to help them breathe, but the conditions enabled a dramatic back-lit image with the truck big in the foreground and a single house sitting in the background. Later, Urs made the same shot in calmer conditions.
Due to the required output, a total of 15 vertical images were stitched together which Urs says he found daunting because it was a process he’d never done before. The original files were captured with the 21MB Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III DSLR with a 35mm prime lens.
“The lens was sand blasted and irreparable and the body… well, don’t even go there. But the files were perfect. The client ended up picking one of the images without the dust storm. ‘We can’t have that, it’s too dangerous Urs’. But, I said, ‘It’s a Mack truck!’” However, the dust storm image later won an award in the USA.
Between 1992 and 2010, Urs photographed cars ads for Toyota, Lexus, Mercedes, VW, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Honda, Renault, Peugeot, Aston Martin, Mack trucks, Hino trucks, UD trucks, Burgman Road bikes and scooters. CGI (computer generated imagery) arrived in 2008 – essentially replacing shooting on location – and that prompted Urs to decide that he wasn’t going to do many more advertising campaigns.
The global financial crisis happened a few months later and effectively wiped out 80 percent of his business. In response he started a photo library which he has built up to 10,000 images, mostly backgrounds for car shoots.
“The car manufacturers love outdoor posters so you know you need something at least 50 to 60 MB in file size. I believed that I could supply that market worldwide… even though it’s a very specific market. It was a gamble, but I don’t think you have a choice. I had to be convinced that I could make enough to give me confidence to continue.”
Sea Change
In 2020. Urs and his wife, Josie, moved to the rugged, brutal and unpolluted NSW Sapphire Coast with its temperate climate. He says he loved Sydney, the harbour and the vibe of the northern beaches, but felt that it was losing the free-and-easy charm that he’d grown up with and worked in for many years. He confesses that he does sometimes feel isolated, but with technology and the nearby regional airport it works well.
BearStock – the stock library – is a business that can be run from anywhere in the world and Urs now has many nearby new locations for his photography as a bonus.
As a Swiss-born Australian struggling to learn the English language during his younger years, he remembers many phrases and metaphors that often had him confused. One metaphor in particular that bewildered him was ’glass half-full’. He wondered why it wasn’t ‘glass half-empty’. It was later explained to him that it’s about your mindset –in other words, optimistic versus pessimistic. Urs created a series of images to visually illustrate this metaphor which was used many times by business magazines, journals and liquor chains. These images won a silver award under the conceptual category in the 2025 World Photography Annual. BearStock gave him a pretty good living until, once again, technology intervened and AI-generated art became a reality impacting the stock photography business. “I might be a bit over shooting stock now,” he states.
All At Sea
However, Urs was even keener just to shoot for himself and an appealing project came about via his local fishing club.
“They were always putting shit on the commercial pro fishers, and I said, ‘If half of what you’re saying is correct, they should be in jail’. It piqued my curiosity so I started looking at the local commercial operations.”
He carried a small camera bag so as not to look professional and used only one camera – his Fuijfilm GFX50S medium format mirrorless body fitted with the GF 32-64mm short zoom (equivalent to 25-50mm).
First he got one interesting shot and then another, then another and when he had around 50 images, he started showing them around to the fishermen. He also gave them some A4 prints. One said, “You got enough here. These are really good mate, and I reckon you should do a book”.
“I’d actually never thought of that,” states Urs, but a seed was sown and the book Unloaded was born.
“They’re a tough bunch, but those pictures – and also that I could speak their fishing lingo – gave me some credibility so they’d let me on the boats.”For 12 months from October 2023, Urs photographed all aspects of the commercial fishing boats at work. He preferred shooting in overcast conditions and says he doesn’t like blue skies. He then wrote the text and used a local printer as he wanted to keep everything within the local area. The print run was 500 copies which had sold out by mid-2025. He had wanted just to break-even, but ended up doing a lot better than that.
“Funnily, until the book came out, I found out that some of the commercial fishers thought I might have been an undercover fishing inspector.”
And, still on fishing, an image titled The Loaded Oyster Punt – which he originally photographed for Sydney rock oysters producers Stirling Oysters – won the advertising category in the 2025 Asia Pacific Photography Awards.
“That image was all created in-camera… very old school indeed.”
Style And Substance
Urs Buhlman started assisting in 1980 and started his own business in 1988, but he’s beginning to think that 2026 might be his last year as a commercial photographer. But, he says, there will always be personal projects. The newest ideas are provisionally titled The Brutal Coast and Port Eden, both of which are already testing his patience. He has done three photography trips recently and come back with nothing he was happy with.
Before I get up to leave, Urs asserts, “It’s essential for any up-and-coming image-maker to develop a distinctive style, otherwise they will always be subject to price… it’s happened to me a couple of times. The technique needs to be ‘bulletproof’ meaning that, inherently, you know how to adjust to any lighting conditions or any situations that are thrown at you.
And he recalls a comment from an art director at a possibly long-gone North Sydney advertising agency watering hole. “If I want an Urs Buhlman, I’m going to get him… not someone trying to be Urs Buhlman.”
“Good art directors will do that,” Urs observes. He adds that he also used to hear, “Urs, you don’t need to quote; whatever it takes I trust you”.
