Horizons Customer Magazine 2025
Patrick Loertscher Captures the Striking Beauty of Switzerland
For decades, photographer Patrick Loertscher has wandered mountain trails, seashores, and isolated roads across the world to pursue breathtaking views. His landscape photos from Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa, and America sell handsomely to individuals and corporations, including through his custom calendars, and his private gallery celebrates the wilderness of these continents in unique ways.
And yet, Loertscher, 59, has perhaps made his greatest impact capturing the beauty of his own backyard â his native Switzerland. Among his achievements is a hefty photo book called âSwiss Vision,â which is distributed to dignitaries worldwide in different languages as a diplomatic gift from the Swiss government. Loertscher calls the book a âlove declarationâ to his home country.
When photographing the beautiful Swiss mountains, Loertscher takes extra effort to avoid fog and mist, which is stereotypical in landscape photos of Switzerland. This photo is meaningful to Loertscher in capturing the still waterâand because it is the cover for âSwiss Vision,â his cherished photo book.
He is best known in Europe, where he holds the title âMaster of Photographyâ from the Federal of European Professional Photographers. For Americans, itâs easiest to think of Loertscher as Switzerlandâs Ansel Adams (1902-1984). Adamsâs sharp-focused, black and white images of the American West in the 20th century captured the imagination and fostered romantic perceptions of the United States, just as Loertscherâs photographs do for Switzerland and other countries. While the two photographers are from different eras, they both have captured moments of beauty and used technical processes to dramatize, but not change, the essence of the photographs. Avoiding todayâs deceptive Photoshop practices, Loertscher insists on creating photos the old-fashioned way: By earning it.
For many years, Loertscher has produced photo calendars for Feintool. In fact, the companyâs global headquarters in Lyss, Switzerland, is just 222 kilometers from Loertscherâs gallery in the picturesque village of Heiden. The photographer and customer have much in common: Feintool and Loertscher both create products of extraordinary accuracy using sophisticated technology. Feintool factories produce components not only for auto combustion engines, but also for the growing electric and hydrogen mobility sectors as well as renewable energies, such as wind power and industrial electric drives. Still, Feintool products demand old-fashioned craftsmanship. As the company designs and produces high-volume parts, the output is also of striking visual beautyâmuch like a Loertscher photograph.
There are other similarities. While Loertscher is an artist, heâs also in the business to support customers with high expectations. Both Loertscher and Feintool operate in wildly competitive environments, and they deliver products of consistent excellence. Loertscher prepares for days, and sometimes weeks and months, to preserve a moment in time through just the right exposure. Like Feintool, he vigilantly works to create products that reflect the strong reputation he has earned over decades.
If you think Loertscher happily strolls the hillsides taking pretty pictures, think again. When he entered the profession, photographers warned him of the tough road ahead. âAll of these professional photographers told me, âOh no, youâll make a big mistake because itâs a job where you are always starving,â â Loertscher said. âItâs not really wrong.â
Sometimes a great photograph needs the right prop. âFor many years, I did dream of a red canoe,â said Loertscher. He found a used one in Germany, strapped it onto his truck, and dragged it into a calm lake in the Swiss countryside. The photo makes him smile because the location appears to be in Canada or the Rocky Mountains.
However, photography was all he ever wanted to do. âEven as a little boy, I told everybody in my family and my friends that I would like to become a photographer and travel the world,â he said. An obvious inspiration was his grandfather, a graphic artist and painter. The young boy joined his grandfather in wandering the Swiss countryside and staying with him in a small tent, all in the pursuit of subjects for painting. âHe (grandfather) did watercolor painting, and I was just hanging around,â he recalled. âI was watching him choose the right perspective and things like that. So he didnât teach me that, but it influenced me a lot.â His grandfather also influenced the boyâs later photography. âHe was a very colorful painter with intense color. So my way of photography is also very saturated colors,â he said.
As a teenager, Loertscher interned at a Swiss publishing house, and assisted photographers who shot portraits of celebrities. While the experience left him desiring to produce his own photos, he was advised to be more practical and master the technical side of the business.
Through internships, four years of art school, and his initial full-time jobs, he spent many years focused mostly on darkroom reproduction techniques, color separation, lithography, and drum scanning, a process that increases the sharpness and tonality of analog film. During those years, Loertscher was never formally trained in taking photographs; he learned that on his own.
While in his 20s, Loertscher and his future wife Monika saved their money and took a two-year backpack trip through Asia and Australia. He took photos using Kodak film during the long adventure, and upon returning to Switzerland, he began to sell his images. In fact, in the first six months upon his return, his earnings equaled the 100,000 Swiss francs spent on their two-year excursion. Customer enthusiasm for his photographs led he and his wife in 1995 to create a publishing company and to pursue corporate and individual clients. âI did realize that if you want to succeed, you canât just rely on the decision of publishers,â he said. âYou have to do your own thing. Otherwise, you are always begging (with publishers) to get two or three photos selected.â His first year as a business owner was tough, and money was tight. But gradually, he grew his customer base, especially with photos for picturesque calendars.
A great photographer possesses many skills, including one as the cow whisperer. âI spoke to the cows to get closer to them,â Loertscher said, who hung out with the two cows while tourists watched with fascination. He is fond of this photo because there first appears to be just one cow.
Looking back on those early days as a young entrepreneur in the late 1990s, Loertscher marvels at how hard he worked, dragging his equipment to remote spots all over the world. âI had a lot of luck to meet the right people at the right time,â he said, adding that 15-hour days and seven-day workweeks continued for years. âMany times I did work from the early morning until late in the evening because it is very time consuming if you like to do it properly,â he said. âMy aim is a high level, including printing and reproduction.â By the 21st century, he transitioned to digital photography. However, he continues to produce large analog images sold in his Heiden gallery, which he opened 16 years ago.
Digital advances have led to a growing use of computer-aided photography and image manipulation, which Loertscher abhors. âSoon, you canât believe anything, right?â he said. âOn Instagram, already half of all the images are a bit cheated. But I can stand behind my images. My intention is to do it (create photos) as positively as I actually saw it.â This doesnât mean he wonât enhance the imageâs lighting or further saturate colors. However, he refuses to change the image. âLike take away a tree, or put it here,â he said. âNever ever. I would never do it.â Capturing beauty with a true, un-doctored photo is âlike winning the lottery,â he said. âItâs a great feeling as a photographer.
The famous and high-elevation Maloja Pass in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border is tough enough to driveâlet alone photograph in winter. Standing in deep snow on the edge of a cliff, Loertscher shivered through the long-exposure shot to capture car movement through the winding pass. Normally, Loertscher avoids cars in his landscapes. This time, in the bitter cold, âI was begging,â he said.
And therein lies the joy â and the toil. Loertscher believes there is no substitute for putting in the time, including the physical demands of travel and the long hours, often in discomfort, to find that âperfect moment.â He said that 30 percent of the time, weather or lighting doesnât cooperate, and he can end up empty handed. In producing photographs for his calendars, Loertscher prefers to focus on well-known landscapes, but then present the view âin a different light,â which often requires visiting the same spot several times. âSometimes it works the first try; sometimes you have to go (to a location) for years,â he said.
However, when the moment is right, a certain instinct takes over. In other words, thereâs no hesitation or overthinking what comes next because the window of opportunity seen through the camera lens is limited. âAfter doing this for 30 years, you just know, you just feel it,â he said. âYou canât learn it at the university or in a crash course. I never did any education about photography. Itâs all learning by doing.â Still, technology has made his life as a landscape photographer a little easier. âYou have weather apps (on the cell phone) these days,â he said. âIn the early days it was nothing, you just read the newspaper and then you looked out of the window. But experience will tell you⊠that this time of the year, the sun will be this low.â
âEven as a little boy, I told everybody in my family and my friends that I would like to become a photographer and travel the
world.â
Patrick Loertscher
The Man Behind the Feintool Calendar
Loertscherâs international reputation has grown over time. His large landscape photographs appear on walls of extraordinary homes and prominent corporations. But nothing brings him more joy than his large coffee table book, âSwiss Vision.â The book provided a business windfall when it became an official gift of the Swiss government to embassies and dignitaries worldwide. âI even had a meeting with our president to organize everything with all 150 embassies in Switzerland,â Loertscher said. More than 10 tons of picture books have been published just for the Swiss government. âI never thought in my wildest dreams that I could produce 20,000 of these books already,â he said. Book recipients, courtesy of the Swiss government, include Pope Francis and the Dalia Lama of Tibet.
While heâs not getting any younger, the veteranphotographer shows little sign of slowing down.After all, he beat the odds and realized hisboyhood dream in one of the most challenging professions. âFor the last 30 years, I could actually live my dream and even make a good living as well,â he said. âI still run to every mountain.â