Johannes Leistner

Every new wedding season I try to do something different, try to learn new techniques and experiment with stuff I read in blogs or saw on the Internet. As one can imagine, the possibilities are endless. There are millions of photographers out there, billions of ideas and an unmanageable number of books and good advices… Often it is exciting and sometimes only frustrating, because it takes a huge amount of effort to separate the good from the bad – digging deeper into the material only to find out that it doesn’t work. For me time is the limiting factor since I only work part time as a photographer…

This spring I got inspired by a book called “The Hot Shoe Diaries – Big Light From Small Flashes” (by Joe McNally). A lot of books about photography techniques are written like a manual, boring and “dry” to read, whereas Joe uses a very funny and lively way of writing which makes you stick to his stories. But most important, he only uses normal Nikon Speedlights for his set ups and of course does a great job with it! The message is: you don’t need big studio equipment to generate interesting lighting scenarios – use the small flashes which you already carry around!

I also attended a workshop earlier this year, it was about fashion and glamor in wedding photography and took place in an industrial area, a school campus, car park and a Chinese restaurant. You might wonder what kind of shots you can do there, especially fashion and glamor style? The answer was easy, because all the instructor looked for was to find interesting backgrounds or surfaces. This way you won’t have disturbing objects ruining your photos.
We arranged all poses and set-ups very carefully and did things you normally cannot do during a wedding day and the average 60 minutes you have for the “official” wedding photos. It only works when the bridal couple is willing to do a shooting separately – fully dressed of course, including hair and makeup…

Would you sit down with your dress on the ground?

Would you even lay down on the streets?

Or trying something completely different and non-wedding-like, such as holding guns?

Most of my clients always ask for non-posed photography, of course they also should be non-cliché but somehow different, interesting and special. Often they say it should come out of “normal situations” and most of them won’t want to feel photographed. Of course it is not possible to do everything completely without posing, so I often manage to find the best way in the middle. It always helps if you arrange a bit here and there, but also photograph the non posed, often funny party in between two settings.
So was it an useless workshop? Not, not at all of course! It inspired me a lot and I will try to arrange a different pose every now and then, to making small changes here and there BUT I am already looking forward to the first couple asking for a after-wedding-shooting in fashion and glamor style!

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