Johannes Leistner

On the 7th of November the NCL foundation held their 6th charity dinner “Cooking For Kids” in the extraordinary venue “REE Location im Heizwerk”, in Hamburg.

The concept of this happening really is unique: for every dinner, NCL invites a well know star chef (in this case Steffen Henssler) who sets up a cooking contest with guest. Two groups of three guests each have to prepare a three course dinner (one portion) within 20 minutes. To watch them perform under the time pressure and the funny comments of the star chef is great fun for all guests.
Besides this there are other highlights such as speeches or a magician act and of course a delicious three course dinner (cooked by a real chef).

NCL is the abbreviation of “Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis”, a metabolic disorder that causes an increasing decease of nerve cells. Besides many other objectives, the NCL foundation’s aim is to increase the public awareness of NCL in order to promote the early diagnosis of the disease.
My contribution to this charity event was taking the photos which will be used for the foundation’s press work and can be also purchased by the guests. The amount of the sales will be donated as well.

I was happy to help and also happy to receive a nice feedback for my work:

Moin Herr Leistner,

vielen Dank für Ihren unermüdlichen Einsatz. Die Fotos sind wirklich super geworden. Ich bin gespannt, wieviele Gäste sich welche runterladen werden bzw. bestellen werden.

Schönen Gruß
Dr. Frank Stehr
NCL Research

Last Saturday I had an assignment to do a documentary about the annual BabyWelt fair in Hamburg, organized by the publishing house Gruner+Jahr. The exhibition is all about children and their needs – of course it is also been thought of parents’ interests.

For me it has been a good change in the recently started wedding photography season. In contrary to a wedding documentary I not only photographed what happened there,

but also had to execute a whole list of moods and settings the client wanted to have. A good challenge which kept me busy for almost eight hours. After all, the client was very happy and satisfied with the outcome!

For concert photography the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens is probably one of the best choices! The ultra-large aperture provides a bright viewfinder and used on a full format camera such as the Nikon D3, 85mm is a perfect length for working in front of the stage to take close ups of the musicians.

The low-light capability of f/1.4 combined with the awesome high ISO resolution of Nikon’s D3 is a superb match for shooting in bad light situations which are normal at concerts. I bet the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 would also do a good job here, but there’s no substitution for a large aperture but a larger one…

From left to right: Boris Simons, band “Simons Lorence” (Hamburg, June 2008); Mikkel Nordsø, band “Mikkel Nordsø Group” (Copenhagen, July 2008); Krister Jonsson, band “Marilyn Mazur Group” (Copenhagen, July 2008); Julia zur Lippe, band “Simons Lorence” (Hamburg, June 2008)