“It’s Easier Than Ever to Make Something Mediocre”: Sandro Baebler on Fighting for Quality

A ‘moment’ of realisation is rarely just a moment. Yes, that fleeting sense of epiphany rushes through our neurons like lightning, but it’s a sensation that’s likely to be built upon months or even years of groundwork. Past assumptions and ideas tumble away under the weight of new knowledge that’s been accumulated over time - so much so that it only takes a moment to push a new idea over the edge. 

So it was for Sandro Baebler, the award-winning photographer and director who can recall with nostalgia the instant he realised his passion for the visual world. 

On a surfing trip as a teenager, something wasn’t feeling quite right. “I was there, in the water, along with all my friends”, he recalls. “But I couldn’t stop thinking about the camera in my bag, back on the beach behind me. I just had this itchy feeling that there were some amazing pictures happening right in front of me, and they were getting missed”. 

Desperate to capture these moments, Sandro paddled back to shore and retrieved his camera. Before long, he was scratching that itch - capturing the moments that might otherwise have been lost to memory. “There were a few of us that wanted to take photos, but once we started comparing, a lot of my friends gave up”, he recalls, “they simply decided they didn’t want to compete with me!”. 

This was a habit that would stay with Sandro for a number of years - an itch that kept demanding attention. “I’ll be out having dinner or some drinks with friends, and suddenly I’ll be taken out of the moment, knowing that there’s a great opportunity to take a picture!”, he says ruefully. 

Looking back, that decision to surf back to shore and pick up a camera makes all the sense in the world. Growing up in the enviously beautiful environs of Switzerland, Sandro was consistently encouraged to experiment and follow his passions. That started by self-taught lessons in piano, followed by the drums - but it was ultimately the beauty of nature, and of people finding their place in it, that have come to define Sandro’s creativity. 

In the years since that day at the beach, Sandro has taken that raw talent and transformed it into a remarkable career. Publications like Vogue, Rolling Stone, GQ and countless others have carried his imagery for brands such as Dior and high-profile celebrities including Cristiano Ronaldo. 

Above: An introduction to Sandro’s world, narrated by the photographer and director himself. 

And it’s those people - the subjects of his portrait photography - who provide so much fascination and inspiration to Sandro. The photographer has become adept at getting the best out of people on a shoot, a skill that doesn’t come lightly and which can’t be faked. “There’s no single secret in how to do it, since every shoot has a different energy”, he explains. “All of my communication is about making the people on set feel comfortable as soon as possible. Once this is achieved, nothing stands in the way of natural acting and fruitful collaboration”. 

Fittingly, Sandro cites the portrait photographers of the 60s and 70s as sources of inspiration for his work today. In a sense, he’s envious of the conditions in which they were allowed to work with and get close to their subjects. “Portrait photographers who worked in the '60s and '70s could spend lots of time with their subjects for a story and get close to them”, he says. “I love to look back at those photo series. It’s a shame those kinds of editorial shoots rarely exist today”. 

Above: A gallery of images taken from across Sandro's portfolio of work. 

Indeed, today creatives need to content with a never-ending cascade of content that floods our screen and jostles competitively for our attention. Far from being too negative about this situation, however, Sandro often relishes the challenge of standing out amidst the noise. 

“It is easy to add to the mountain of what’s already there, and I think some brands can’t resist the temptation to put out more content than is really necessary at times”, he says. “Standing out in this flood of imagery and info is challenging - but it’s not impossible”. 

Quality, for Sandro, is still a differentiator. In fact, it might be a more important factor in communications than ever before. “With developments in the world of artificial intelligence, it’s about to become easier than ever before to produce mediocre imagery”, he says. 

Delving into the topic of AI, Sandro offers a fascinating take. He doesn’t pretend that the tech is anything other than what it is - a potential revolution in the creative world and beyond. “But you can’t turn a blind eye to it, you have to face it”, he says. 

“We’ve moving towards a potentially scary situation where tools like Midjourney can create, say, a picture of Barack Obama doing something awful followed by an article produced by Chat GPT within seconds. The internet is going to get flooded by this kind of content very soon, I think”, he continues. “But there is a role here for photographers and writers which is potentially quite positive. Our names will be what verifies the organic authenticity of a piece of work”. 

As Sandro goes on to explain, the rise of AI is likely to be followed by some kind of movement championing authentically human work. “I think there will be a backlash, for sure, and maybe even for some brands it will be smart to be part of a backlash which is about promoting human creativity and not technology”, he says. “The internet might go on to eat itself by overdosing on AI content. So far image and text generators are fed by images and words made by humans, but soon, they will mostly be fed by AI creations as they make up the majority of sources that exist on the internet. The whole thing could fall in on itself. 

“But really, is the collapse of the internet such a bad thing? And would it be so terrible to put a higher value on human creativity again?”. 

It’s a beguilingly positive vision towards what is often seen as a dystopian topic. 

But it’s essentially Sandro - finding the humanity in complex pictures is, after all, his speciality.