Rainer W. Schlegelmilch goes to school in Frankfurt and graduates in 1960. His first car race is the 1000km Nürburgring 1962, where he portrays the racers for the final exam at the Bavarian State School of Photography in Munich. 18 months later, he opened his studio for photo design in Frankfurt - but the "Autobazillus" has already packed him and in addition to his advertising photography, he visited the Grand Prix of Formula 1, Le Mans, Targa Florio and many others - from the beginning photographed "RWS" for well-known publications such as auto motor und sport, Powerslide, ADAC Motorwelt, Sports Car Graphic, Car & Driver as well as Road & Track, Auto Revue and AutoBild, until around 1970 exclusively in black and white.
From 1970 he devoted himself to color photography, and his pictures are appearing more and more frequently in calendars and books. Big companies such as Philip Morris, Mobil, Shell, Champion, Mercedes and BMW use his shots and the typical "zoom shots" as a visual purchase incentive for their products. More and more Schlegelmilch concentrates on the World Championship races of Formula 1 and owns with about 350,000 color photographs and 15,000 black and white images one of the largest archives in the Grand Prix scene.
In 1997, RWS received support from his son Boris, who has since accompanied Rainer to the European Grand Prix with the camera and takes care of the digital and administrative matters as well as the website. Rainer W. Schlegelmilch is editor of many illustrated books about Formula 1 ("Grand Prix - Fascination Formula 1", "Portraits of the 60s", "Grand Prix de Monaco", "McLaren Formula 1", "Ferrari Formula 1", "The entire world of Formula 1 - 1950 to today ") and about car brands (" Mercedes "," BMW ", Aston Martin", "Ferrari", "English sports car", "Porsche").
A comprehensive online archive of all models of these makes is under construction. Highest quality standards set his limited edition "The Great Challenge", which includes his work for over 40 years. It is divided into five volumes of the great driver-era: Clark, Stewart, Lauda, Senna and Schumacher. Its regular customers include glossy magazines, book publishers and advertising agencies as well as the marketing departments of the industry, such as BMW and Red Bull.
