Johannes Leistner

this is my first attempt with such kind of shots (long "bridal veil"). In the beginning it has not been easy to convince the bridal couple to do a "fancy photo". they were the kind of people who wanted no unusual photos, in terms of no jumping, running, tossing and not even kissing (just joking) - they only wanted a few classical settings. what ever a couple likes is perfectly fine with me, though it surprised me a bit as you don’t hear this very often.

so they were not really in a "play-mood" and I had to “teach” them exactly what to do. once again I found out how difficult it is do direct people with "spoken instructions" - as I was standing on a balcony to photograph from above. additionally to that, they were distracted by their guests and friends.

After all the result is not too bad, but I definitely have to work on this idea much more to develop it further (i.e. I dislike that you don’t see much of her hands). A general problem with this kind of shots also is, that there aren’t many locations with a balcony I could use…

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!

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!

follow me through the wedding season 2009 on Twitter

It is a “must see” place for a L.A. visit: Griffith park with the famous observatory! Go there late afternoon just before dawn, to enjoy the jaw-dropping panoramas while the sun is setting. The view is stunning, as you can see the extensiveness of the city area, including the beach towns with Santa Monica’s “skyline” and the ocean in the background. You are also very close to the oh-so-well-known Hollywood sign.

I had fun running around the observatory, up and down the stairs to find out what the best angles would be to catch a nice party of the building and the city view.
During this session I used a borrowed lightweight Velbon carbon fibre tripod. It is bulky but due to its low weight it was easy to carry around, though you really have to travel by car with that thing. I am still looking for a swiss army-knife with a tripod functionality, which would come handy for traveling…

this is about a typical day in sunny California
(dedicated to my friend Mike and his family)

• 5:30 am: time to get up - are you kidding me?? thank god I have no hangover and my circadian rhythm still runs on European time, so getting up is quite easy!
• 5:40 am: I need coffee but lost myself in the big ass refrigerator, it is even bigger than my closet at home! What is "Coffee Maid"?
• 5:55 am: Mike starts his truck, it is time for the daily exercise
• 06:10 am: apparently we are not alone at this early hour in the "24h gym" - I am surprised!
• 8:00 am: time for breakfast: eggs, bacon, pancakes, peanut butter (just a light breakfast) - and a protein shake for Mike
• 9:00 am: Mike has work to do in his office, I have to work on my flickr stream
• 12:00 pm: lunch at IN-N-OUT Burger (a premiere for me) - probably the best fast food I ever had!
• 2:00 pm: it is time to take out the Toyota FJ Cruiser were it belongs, to the rugged back country roads of California
• 4:00 pm: we are cruising up the Silverado Canyon, climbing higher and higher, the view over Orange County is magnificent!
• 6:00 pm: man, after this tour we deserve a big drink!
• 7:30 pm: at the local sushi bar (how do they know Mike and his wife by name? ahh they come here three times a week…)
• 8:12 pm: the Sake is going to kill me……
• 9:00 pm: sitting in Mike’s garden by the open gas fire place, a smuggled Cuban cigar in my left hand and a glass of Californian red wine in the other, overlooking the lights of Orange county right from my chair. asking myself why do I still live in Germany - what would the American Dream has to offer for me?
• 10:00 pm: the jet lag kicks in again
• 12:00 am: lying in bed and dreaming of a perfect day in sunny California…

Since all travel photos from my last trip (Thailand) are post processed now, I browsed through older photos which I have taken in April/May this year in Indonesia. It is fun watching them again with a distant view and playing around with post processing styles I have learned during the time in between.

So I came across photos I took in a Muslim orphanage in Palembang. Palembang is the capital of the province of South Sumatra and the second largest city on that island behind Medan. My brother and the couple who runs that place are good friends due to the fact that my brother and his family had lived in the neighborhood and often invited the kids (not all of them at once of course) to come over to their house for English lessons or gaming afternoons.

I have never been in an orphanage before so this visit was a special experience for me, which has deeply moved me. What are your thoughts when thinking about children in an orphanage? For me I figured out that my spontaneous associativity would be very much cliché like: Kids in a place like this have to be poor and would look at you with unhappy and empty eyes since they are apart from their parents or don’t even have relatives anymore! Every day they would wait for someone rich (maybe Angelina Jolie or Madonna?) to pick them up and bring them to a different country with all the toys in the world they could possibly imagine…

Well it wasn’t exactly that case. After we had arrived, the hosting couple asked all kids to get together in the living room, to give us, the guest, a respectful welcome. 50 children live constantly in that house, during that time of the day around 30 of them were joining us downstairs. I didn’t expect them to be so disciplined and shy. Also I had to deal with their way of “saying hello”. I felt a bit awkward when one after another took my hand, brought it to its mouth, indicated a kiss and then took it further up to its forehead. This procedure was meant as a sign of high respect and they all did it with a serious expression on their faces. Coming from Europe I simply would have loved to hug them and give those cuties a big kiss - but of course I didn’t do it and behaved as they would expect it from an adult.

So the children sat on the ground in rows like in school and the hosts with their guests sat on the only couch in the room, also a sign of respect. I felt a bit uncomfortable there, like in a fish bowl, so soon I mingled with them on the floor, tried communicating with them by using hands and feet and of course taking photos - they warmed up very quickly then and lost their shyness.

Later they showed me around their dwelling. Compared to western standards their living conditions were of course very poor. The floors were dirty, the kitchen just an open fire place outside and most of the rooms were a big mess - depending on the kid’s age and gender. But what can I say all about it am I allowed to judge? When looking into the children’s faces, I only saw curiosity and happiness in their eyes. They all behaved as they would be caring brothers and sister within a big family. And the hosting couple? The may not be the perfectly gifted managers in terms of keeping the place tidy and organized (again, this is my European look at this subject) - but I felt that they were people with a great mission (they live on donations only) and more than that, they were loving parents for 50 adorable children. This has moved me the most and changed my mindset about orphanages.

Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation (and also called “whole-sky lenses”), fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. So what can you do with such a lens you might ask?
These four photos show quite well how much fun one can have with a fisheye! Not only that you can toss a camera with it into the air for taking crazy tossing photos, its extreme wide angle it is also useful for catching unique and “unseen” perspectives.

Lately I have been using my Nikon D3 with the 16mm f/2.8 fisheye whenever I am inside a vehicle. This could be a car, boat or even an airplane. I then place the camera right in front of me (i.e. by the windscreen) and use the self timer in combination with the non-auto-focus mode (I set the metering before the shot). The results are amazing and rather funny, as you normally couldn’t take photos from that positions, respectively only from outside…

The other day I took a walk through the neighborhood of Banglamphu, strayed around narrow alleys and along backyards of small two-storey houses. Banglamphu is an old quarter of Bangkok and easily the most charming one. Walking around there makes it easy catching a good glimpse into daily Thai life.
All of a sudden I came across a Thai Boxing school. Two boxing rings and a small training area were simply built directly by the road. As most of the Thai life takes place on the streets there were no walls nor gate, just a simple roof covered the facility.
Thai Boxing (Thai: Muay Thai) is a dynamic and exciting sport with a long history. Matches can be violent as not only hands but also shins, elbows and knees are all used extensively in this art. That’s why it is also referred to as “The Art of the Eight Limbs”.
But this time no blood was seen in the ring nor I heard shouts of encouragement from a manic crowd. Only a little boy was sitting there, accompanied by his trainer and his father. The boy’s serious look I found amazing, he already had the right kind of dignity in his appearance like all professional martial arts fighter have it.