Interview with Creative and Conceptual Photographer Leah Johnston

Leah Johnston is an artist based in LA. Her creative portraits and conceptual photography have a huge international fan base. Each of her creation is original, story-telling and uniquely beautiful. Leah is a very friendly and helpful person with a creative mind. I am honoured to have her on the website to talk about her art and herself.

I am a Canadian-born photographer and actor/director based in Los Angeles, CA. I guess the most important fact about me is that I am passionate about creating, in whatever medium I can.

I first started in photography in 2009 when I was living in New York. I had been given a Canon Rebel XSi as a gift and I wanted to start using it as a hobby while I was going out on auditions. I scoured the internet for inspiration. At first I felt very disappointed by all the examples of portrait photography that I came across, because they all felt really inauthentic and fake for some reason. I really got excited and inspired when I found flickr though. That was what changed everything. I fell in love with conceptual photography and everything went from there.

Well, first off, thank-you for the compliment. I do not have any formal training. I learned photography from taking online tutorials and the likes. Even from simply reading my camera manual- you will be amazed at how much that thing explains! Before I even attempted my first conceptual photo, I spent several months learning photoshop. I wanted to learn everything I could so I wouldn’t be limited by my knowledge when I actually started shooting. I knew it would give me the freedom to create the images I saw in my mind, and it really did.

My approach to photography definitely comes from a storytelling perspective. I always start with some kind of story or concept I want to portray and then I figure out how to tell it in the most interesting way. I then plan the photo, often thinking on it for a long time before creating it. I always try and tell my story in the most visually arresting way possible. Story/concept are always the most important thing to me in a picture. More important than how pretty it is, for sure.

My photos are inspired by any number of sources. I’m sort of known for my photo-poems which are basically photos inspired by poems that I have written. That is a big source of inspiration for me. Writing poems and drawing imagery from that. This past year, I have had less time to write, so my photos have tended to spring from other sources. I often have a single sentence or a phrase in mind that inspires the photo. Such was the case for my most recent photo, ‘Some of us cannot be free.’ That was a sentence I wrote down in my notebook a few months before and it really stuck with me. It felt like it could be told visually in a photo, so I set to finding some sort of object to really represent that (in this case a birdcage) then finding the right setting. Other times,  a single image will come to mind. Sometimes I’m simply inspired by music. The sources of inspiration are endless and I try to remain open to them.

 

Some of your works seem to be more than one traditional photo. Could you describe your typical post process workflow?

Sure. It’s more about building the photo rather than taking it. So basically, spending more time in planning and post-processing, less time actually shooting. Each photo idea has a different lifespan. Some photos takes years to come to fruition. You have to be patient and wait for the right circumstances to align. Other photos feel different- very urgent and of the moment. In those cases, I often find myself pulling myself out of bed at 5 in the morning to rush and catch the sunrise. I would say that most of my photos take quite a bit of time and thought though. Especially if they come from a poem because first the poem has to be written and perfected before I can come up with the photo. Other times, simply tracking down the right props or finding the time to go to the right location will take a while. I try to plan things out as much as possible so there are less variables that could go wrong on the shoot. I usually shoot alone after driving around in my car a while. If it’s an outdoor location, I shoot at sunrise or sunset, so there is often only a ten minute interval in which to get the shot. I first try to take a master shot of the setting without me in it to work from, then I try out various poses with myself in frame using my remote timer. After I’m done with the pose, I grab snapshots of the sky and landscape surrounding my frame, in case I want to make the photo taller or wider. And that’s about it. Then I get to working on the photo in photoshop- compositing the pieces together and making things look generally cooler. That can take a long time.

There are a ton of places to learn online nowadays, many of them for free. I have found my subscription to lynda.com to be the most helpful tool because they are amazing classes you can take and all in the same place. It taught me everything I know in terms of photoshop.

My first inspirations were Gregory Crewdson and the older work of flickr artist Rosie Hardy. I also loved Allyson Kallie’s 365 project. Her work is really raw.

Take some time and think about the story first. To me,  what separates a photo from being just pretty and truly compelling is it having a narrative. All the other stuff, you can figure out as you go. Play. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to try new things. I recently read a quote that said,  ”Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. “ I think that definitely applies to photography.

You can follow Leah on her website, facebook, twitter, vimeo and youtube.