a man with a leica

I'm freelance photographer, I have explored the transition from a DSLR camera to a Leica viewfinder and made the switch. I now work with a Leica Monochrom and a Leica M (240). I like the way the cameras challenged me to master photography, without zoom, auto focus, program modes etc etc. Back to basic with only a 35 mm sumicron f2.0 and a 50 mm summicron f2.0 lens I rediscovered my craftsmanship. For a peek at my portfolio you can take a look at my site or at my Facebookpage

[amanwithaleica]

Meeting Abraham from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

Kilis motorbike from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

Sanliurfa-Ibrahim-cave from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

Motherfucker from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

720p from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

Untitled from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

[amanwithaleica]

Out of the comfort zone

Going to Ukraine, Nepal, South Korea... creating human interest stories for organisations, foundations or as autonomous work, it's what I do, what I like and what I feel comfortable with.

But I also love to get out of that comfort zone. I'm not necessarily looking for those opportunities, but when they present themselves,I like the idea and I feel that little unease in my tummy, I often say yes.

This week I had two assignments that I knew I could deliver, but I didn't expect. I just don't look for these opportunities because... well I'm out of the country to often.

One of them was a commercial gig, including a different camera (tethered shooting with a Leica M is a bitch and besides, I needed a full 200 mm zoom) and studio lighting. So I rented the whole lot and had a blast for two days. Models, set dressing, the works. Can't show you any end results (yet), but I can show you some behind the scenes.

The other shoot was a festival shoot. Something that comes by a bit more often, but still isn't my core business. And this time it was at the beach... A place called Ajuma. It was great and I love the results. Easy enough as the music, food and atmosphere were all great and even the weather (except for the wind) didn't let us down. With the VSCO analog Kodak 400 filter it even got a bit more summer vibes if you ask me.

Next "out of the comfort zone" challenge will be in September when I do a wedding. Last time I did that is already a year ago. I'm looking very much forward to that one as well.

[amanwithaleica]

Leica store exhibition

The rest of July and all of August, over 120 photos are exhibited at the Leica store in Amsterdam. 12 stories, the oldest dating back to 2012 give an impression of what I have been doing the last couple of years. The exhibition is divided over six large flatscreens and photos pass by in a nice flow. One TV even has sound, so I decided to exhibit two of the stories that I create in pageflow as well, as they have a certain flow, text ánd sound.

July 18th was opening night and I was honoured that so many friends came to check it out. Even coming all the way from Rotterdam. As always on such nights, you totally forget to document a thing. Luckily Karin Kooijwas there with her new Leica M10, grabbing some nice moments. Thanks a lot Karin.

[amanwithaleica]

KIOCH

A new assignment, again in Nepal. One of my favourite countries. Even the series that made it through to the finals of the SIPA has been made in this country. This trip I stayed in Kathmandu though.

The past week I have been working on creating a story for KIOCH: The Kathmandu Institute of Child Health. This initiative is the vision - the dream - of one of the most famous heart surgeons in the country; Prof Dr Bhagawan Koirala. Together with Executive director of the Karuna Foundation and general connector of beautiful initiatives; Deepak Raj Sapkota, he envisioned a new innovative way of paediatric health care.  By now they have formed a board with people who believe in their vision, got support from several places in the world, are helped by many volunteers and are working hard to make this dream a reality. A private paediatric hospital, where no child will be refused and where care and technology will set new bars to health care all over Nepal.

As it is still a dream and now reality, it was a challenge to create a story that would capture that vision and of course I'm still working hard to finish it, in order to make it an actual story. I visited many hospitals in Kathmandu, met with the minister of health and I even witnessed an open heart surgery. This blog was ment to keep you up to date and to give you a little teaser of what is to come. If you'd like more regular updates while I'm on these kind of assignments, make sure you follow me on instagram as I use their story option quite a lot while I'm away.

[amanwithaleica]

General Data Protection Regulation

From the 25th of May, bureaucracy has found a new high. We now have to state and document that we are actually nice people who are doing the best they can to use the data they gather - which comes automatically when working with other people - will be used with care and respect. I can totally see this when it concerns large insurance companies, or data wholesale-dealers like Facebook. But with small one-person businesses, I just don't get it. As these regulations and laws have many grey areas and lots is open for interpretation, I went looking for some sort of template I could use.... or at least people who understood more about it. Which unfortunately doesn't come easily. Most photography related sites and institutions have a minimum of 5 different articles on it, every time explaining another piece of the puzzle. And it's not only about e-mail, invoices and address data, it's also about photographs. Because images - specially the ones of people - are considered as (personal) data as well, things can get even more complicated.

I decided to give it my best shot and at the same time keep it short and simple like I did with the example contract that I borrowed of Segura. As I truly believe in the good of people and I sincerely hope nobody purposely tries to be a d*ck, I figured I would just state the obvious and give people an easy opportunity to opt out by means of an e-mail. So here I present to you, my privacy statement.

[amanwithaleica]

Mastery of friendship

Two young Korean men were students of the same master in Sibpalki, a Korean martial art, when they became friends. Thirty years later, each having their own different life, they are still best friends. Bok Kyu Choi now lives in the Netherlands, with a wife and three children. Mumoon became a monk in a temple up in the mountains of North-Eastern South Korea. Both have created a life, where they can still spend their time and energy on their love for the martial art. Each in their own way.

Bok Kyu Choi is a father of three and a husband. His life work consists of studying the history of eastern martial arts. He has a small library with everything that is remotely affiliated with eastern martial arts. Books on Western and Eastern health care, books on the art of war, military and defence and of course many books on the martial arts. Every day he practices Sibpalki and he even wrote a book about it.

Mumoon decided to become a monk in a temple. By now he is the second monk next to the chief monk in the Sinheungsa Temple near Sokcho. Besides early morning prayer and meditation, he manages the many people working at the temple and  some nearby sanctuaries.

The two maybe meet once a year. They walk, catch up on each others lives, drink tea, but most important... they practice the one thing that connected them in the first place: Sibpalki.

If I have learned one thing being with these two men it's this:

Mastery is not about being the best at something, reaching a certain goal or even about being a teacher. Mastery is about the road traveled to get where you are now and about knowing the road that still needs to be traveled. It's about being completely aware of the proces that got you where you are and continuously working to understand, upkeep, teach and improve that proces.

[amanwithaleica]

Jacqueline Govaert

This month I'm joining Jacqueline Govaert on her brief tour of 7 sold out gigs all over the country. Something totally different from what I'm used to, though it's not the regular stage photography for which I've joined the tour. I especially like the 'behind the scene photos; soundchecks, dressingroom, that kind of stuff. I loved working closely with the light engineer and decided to create an analog feel by editing with individually  customised VSCO filters.

You can find more photos on the blog of my website.

[amanwithaleica]

Ukraine

Breath care 4 kids is a foundation that builds family houses in the Ukraine, Georgia and Romania. They provide (street) children with a more secure and hopeful future.

For this foundation, I will be traveling to the Ukraine several times in 2018, visiting some of the families that are benefiting of the work this foundation does. It is my aim, to capture their lives, their struggles, their hope and their pleasure. I believe, in order for the Breath foundation to do their work properly and gain the help from as many people possible, it's essential to show why this foundation does what is does.

This December was my first visit, and already I've seen what moves the people working for this cause. I've seen the strength of these families, the will to build a better future and I to have been stunned by the resilience these children have to overcome their worries and live like a normal kid should.

You can check out the story - with sound and everything - right here.

[amanwithaleica]

Soenita

During this week I'm following 3 families up close and personal. Today moved me deeply. I had the privilege to follow Soenita and her father for the day. Soenita is a five year old girl who is raised solely by her sixty-one year old father, as her mother left the house to get remarried, since she was one and a half years old . 

The amount of love these two have for each other was overwhelming and made me tear up a bit every now and again. At six in the morning I arrived to witness their morning rituals after which I followed Soenita to the school for which Reach Out Too (through CPN) provides the tuition. In the afternoon we briefly returned to the house to see how her father - while she is at school - tries to make a living for them both as a potter, creating and selling beautiful pottery for as little as $0,50 a piece, as the competition in the village is fierce.

Edit

This story has made it to the finals of the Sienna International Photography Awards. You can see the story with music of Erik Schoonderwoerd right here.

[amanwithaleica]

The Leica-XU at Holi festival

Without a doubt, Holi must be one of the most colourful festivals on earth. Depending on where you are in India, it can take anywhere from two days to two full weeks. The streets fill themselves with a melting pot of fire, water and copious amounts of coloured powder. I decided - while being in India anyway - to celebrate Holi in Radjastan. More specifically in Jodhpur, also called the blue city. That nickname was the argument that did it; the combination of colourful decorated people walking between these blue houses sounded as a picture waiting to be taken.

Even though ecstatically you can’t really go wrong, shooting this festival, it’s a drama waiting to happen when it comes down to your camera. The coloured dust is so fine that it will penetrate your camera instantly. Besides that, every Indian child is waiting with water balloons and filled bottles with coloured water. A tourist is a trophy price and they really don’t care wether you carry a camera around or not.

The solution for me was obvious. About a year ago Leica lounged the Leica XU. A shock proof, water- and dust resistant camera with an f1.7 35mm lens. A lot of reviews said it was a sport- and/or heavy duty travel camera. All in all the perfect Holi-camera I thought.

The camera reminded me of my very first days with the Leica M. I loved it and I cursed it at the same time. It doesn’t have so much to do with the camera as it has to do with me. I’m a practical learner. I learn by doing… and more so by failing and then trying again. I did so with the M and now - six years later - I proud to say that it has become my default camera and my signature. But like I said, a Leica M (or any other camera) and Holi festival is just not a good match.

In Jodhpur, Holi only takes up two days. The first day people are mainly preparing for the ceremonies that night. Everywhere in the city, you see people piling up cow-dong that are elaborately decorated with colours, as it were a different version of the christmas tree. In the middle there is a tree branche that will be decorated and honoured during the ceremony that night. When the pile is lit, the branch will be saved from the fire at the very last moment as a symbol for the courageous and rightful God who saves the innocent child. The XU does pretty well up to ISO 1600 and with the f1.7 it’s perfectly doable to take pictures at night.

So why also the cursing? Well first of all - for me - it’s not an action camera. Maybe it is  when you use it for video, I don’t know, but for photography it’s not. The auto focus is just not that fast as I’m used to with the manual M. As it is a - absolutely superb - point and shoot camera, I was struggling with the auto focus. There is no view finder, which makes it harder for me to manually focus. For me personally the enlargement in the middle of the screen doesn’t make that struggle any easier. The solution for me was to just shoot more. When I uploaded my pictures that night, there were many photos where the focus was just of or at a different point of interest. But as I had shot several pictures of the same point of interest, the story wasn’t compromised.

The second day things already improved. I had fumbled around with the various autofocus options and I got accustomed to the Live View way of showing. I felt more secure and more pictures were instantly ‘spot on’. The fact that I saw people running backwards with camera’s wrapped in plastic and ducktape, while I had the freedom to walk towards the action made me smile from ear to ear. Also the people on the street seemed to enjoy it more. They could cover me - and the camera - with coloured powder, throw water balloons at me and chase me with water guns. The fact that I didn’t run, but participated made people open up even more and let me be part of the celebration instead of the outsider watching it.

I have to admit I was a bit nervous when that night I looked at the camera. Is that going to come off? I just put it in a bucket of clean water a couple of times and it came out as new. It took me 5 days to get the colours of my skin! The reward of seeing the 16,5 MP raw images in my computer later on, editing and finetuning them, was the moment I realised this Leica too, does a job that very few other cameras can.    

If you like to see more of the pictures taken during this festival, check out my website www.danielmaissan.nl 

[amanwithaleica]

Sultan from danielmaissan on Vimeo.

In New Orleans, I spent a couple of hours with Sultan Isham, a violinist, dancer and writer. I had the opportunity to capture him while he was practicing his performance in his home and most of all on the roof of his house in his neighbourhood Treme.

[amanwithaleica]

Games con

Something totally different from preparing my upcoming big trip. Yesterday a friend of mine Ran Hendriks from Drone Addicts, asked me to assist him on a gig he had to do for LG. We were traveling by train to Köln to witness the biggest game conference in Europe: Gamescon. Thousands of people coming together to see, hear and experience the latest and newest when it comes down to games.

Preset L400 H +1, VSCO package FE

The train we took from Amsterdam, wasn’t a normal train. It was filled with the latest wide screens, computers and techies who would play games on them during the four hour train ride. Assisting my friend mainly consisted out of shooting video with my newest gadget; the Zheyun Z1-SmoothC gimbal combined with my iPhone. It worked perfectly, but I’ll get back on that later in a different post.

Kodak Ultramar 800--, VSCO package VSCO 05

Kodak Ultramax 800 Night/Tungsten Alt, package VSCO 05

Agfa Vista 800 Night/Thungsten Alt, package VSCO 05

In this post, I don’t really want to talk video at all. Of course I couldn’t resist bringing a camera as well. As I might not bring the Leica Q on my big trip, I decided to have a good farewell moment with it. One of the reasons I wanted to shoot some photos as well was because I recently bought some VSCO presets for Lightroom, just to see if I could speed up my workflow while on the road later this year. The amount of presets in one package is absolutely insane. This only was my first go and to be honest I have to say that I haven’t found my way through all them yet. I do enjoy the feel that they bring and I’m looking forward to experiment some more.

400H+1 +++ , package VSCO FE

400H+1 - , package VSCO FE

Kodak Tri-X 400 + , package VSCO FE

The convention was a very thankful place to get these images to try out VSCO. An impressively huge convention centre harbouring an astonishing amount of gamers and enthousiasts. Specially the dressed up ones, embodying their heroes or their created second selves, were a lust for the eyes.

Fuji Neopan 1600 + , package VSCO FE

Agfa Vista 800 Night/Thungsten , package VSCO 05

Fuji FP 100-c Cool-- , package VSCO FE

Creating my own postproduction still gives me the most control over the end result, but… I can definitely see advances of working with these presets. It can speed up my workflow, it can create a continuous flow in output (if you’d batch one selected preset in stead of trying out all different kinds like I did here) and I do love the analog feel of the photos very much. I have to admit, I haven’t decided yet if I prefer working this way, as letting go of old customs is always difficult. For example working with Silver Effex has been my preferred way of post producing my black and whites. I never used the ‘film presets’ there, as I didn’t feel they sufficed. But the Ilford 50 and the Fuji Neopan 1600 presets in VSCO are really nice indeed. But I haven’t really found my routine and preferred presets just yet. Playing around with it - specially with the subjects in these photos - already gave me tons of fun though. I’m curious what you think and hope you’ll enjoy the photos I have taken of a world I hardly knew existed.  

Fuji FP 100 c Negative -- , package VSCO FE