Taking the Show on the Road-Hong Kong

Last year I was awarded a fabulous shoot for a long time client. For the second time in 5 years I had the opportunity to go to China for a three week shoot for my client's international partners.

I always like a challenge, but shooting a large scale food shoot in China proved to be a tough one, fortunately with some good producers, leads and persistence, we managed to line everything up. The first challenge was finding a studio that would accommodate the set ups we needed for this scale shoot. As it turns out, Hong Kong is more of a fashion city so most studios are not equipped with sufficient kitchens for this scale of a food shoot. Also space is expensive there so many studios are pretty small- so finding one that had kitchen space, proper lighting and size appropriate for the shoot was one of the bigger challenges. My local producer was persistant and she and I started thinking of alternative spaces. She ended up finding a live work loft in an industrial part of town which suited our needs. Our props were sourced in San Francisco and shipped.We used a shipping company that was used to all the challenges of sending things to China and through their customs. It was a ton of production, required a great deal of organization, but in the end a fantastic, successful project. I truly believe that obsessing over production details ahead of time leads to a much more enjoyable and therefore creative shoot.

Photo shoots invariably have some sort of curve ball that needs to be worked around (late delivery of products, or a client changes their mind on something.) The more you can take out variables ahead of time, the better you will be suited to accomodate the last minute changes. When shooting in Hong Kong it was even more important to do that. We had shipments of product that was flying in from different countries so on time delivery was not always guaranteed. Luckily we had a very persistent and resourceful client who knew how to get things done. Still we needed flexibility and since we had set ourselves up so well ahead of time we were able to afford that.

One of my other favorite stories the trip was that after all the effort to secure the studio that was so accommodating, after two days into the shoot we started to hear horribly loud drilling sounds coming from two floors below which was also vibrating the building. My producer swiftly went down to check out what was going on.  Construction was just starting on a lower floor and they were jackhammering the concrete walls and floors. We could barely stand the noise so I asked the producer to go and see what she could do. Shortly after she came up and said that they would only do the jackhammering on the weekends!  Wow- thank goodness we had someone who could communicate with them!

Although shooting in Hong Kong posed some challenges, it was a great city to work in.  Coming from San Francisco I felt almost at home in this vibrant international city.

A California State of Mind

There were many reasons I moved out to California from the East Coast. One of them was for a fresh start. Way back when, my now husband and I decided to pull a Jack Kerouac and get rid of all our worldly possessions( I remember my animator husband cutting up his ties with a paper cutter )buy a cheapo car and drive across the country. All the while thinking that if we fancied it-we could put down roots wherever we saw fit. That is an incredibly freeing thought. We experienced a lot of interesting places, but held out until we hit California. And here we have stayed....  Every now and then we have to hit the road- breathe again- and see the sights. A few weeks ago- as a birthday present- my father flew out from the East coast and took care of my daughter for a weekend while Dana and I took a long needed (albeit mini) road trip. Here are some pics from along the way: Santa Cruz had light and poppiness that felt very William Eggleston, Big Sur had a darkness, a history that sank into your bones.

Wayfare Magazine includes my photos from Rome in their first printed edition to be sold at Anthropologie.

I am excited to see some of my photos from my trip to Rome in the first printed issue of Wayfare Magazine. When I mentioned to a friend and colleague Peggy Wong that I was taking a trip to Rome, she told me that she wanted to see my photos when I returned, and that she may want to include them in the first printed edition of Wayfare Magazine (a cool new travel mag that turns that category a bit on it's head.)

What was nice about this request was that it wasn't really an assignment. She wanted to see the photos that I would take for myself, she was especially interested in seeing what I shot for my personal series of work entitled "Bodies of Land" which is comprised of out of focus landscapes, or in this case cityscape's.

I also played a lot with Instagram for this trip since I liked the format, the accessibility to capture things at any time and the tones that were rendered with some of the filters. I am usually not a big "effects" photographer, nor do I like a lot of retouching. I liken the filters to using different types of film or printer paper.

Here is the text that accompanies the images in the magazine:

Photographer Leigh Beisch, along with her husband, father, and ten-year-old

daughter, forgo their annual trip to Cape Cod for something a little more mysterious. Here we get a light-filled glimpse into the beauty of a region teeming with old world intrigue.

We decided to rent a small apartment in Trastevere, located on the outskirts of Rome and just south of Vatican City. We booked the apartment for two weeks so we could spend one week as tourists and the next week as locals. While Rome is where scale and extraordinary monuments are on display at every turn, the color and texture of this neighborhood are what captured our hearts. Here we felt like we could experience art, not just see it. The building of our tiny rented apartment had the most amazing rustic front door that was designed to keep out invaders during the medieval period. There was also a stone staircase that was so worn with age that I could imagine a young slave girl carrying water up them thousands of years ago. Staying here instead of a hotel allowed us to let the language of the place—the people, the light, the smells—to seep in and shape our experience. The family and I enjoyed being part of the neighborhood’s everyday routines, sampling from the well-visited osterias and trattorias; shopping at the local designer clothing boutiques; and enjoying the famous Sunday flea market, Porta Portese. One place we frequented was local trattoria La Scala, where my daughter would order her favorite dish of spaghetti con burro e parmigiano, a simple dish of pasta with butter and parmigiano. One of my favorite dishes here was the tagliolini cacio e pepe con fioridi zucca e pachino, a pasta with a beautiful squash blossom layered on top, then sprinkled with parmesan and ground pepper.

SEE. I spent some time shooting for my personal work

entitled “Bodies of Land,” which is a series of abstract

landscapes that are out of focus with the subject matter

being light and color. This allows me to create a more

timeless landscape that captures the imagination.

EAT. My father and I woke up early a few mornings

to photograph. Before we headed out, we stopped

at the local Bar for morning cappuccinos and jam

filled pastries. I loved the colorful trays here

Our first morning in Rome, we headed to the Piazza di Santa Maria, where we found a beautiful fountain guarding the entrance to the Basilica of Our Lady, or Basilica di Santa Maria, one of the most ancient churches in Rome. So ancient, in fact, that it’s one of the few churches where you can see Christ depicted as a living prophet, rather than on the cross. It was here that I noticed the light streaming in through the clerestory, illuminating select statues and giving the sense of divine light. This light shaped my experience in Rome, becoming my subject matter and focal point of the trip. The photo of the portal looking out onto the wall with a row of dotted trees was at the entrance to Hadrian’s Villa, a Roman Emperor of the 2nd century AD. The wall pictured here was built to be just one mile long, which was the length of the palace and, according to our guide, the distance that the Emperor’s physician had advised him to walk every day. The morning light of this photo gives us a glimpse into what one of the Emperor’s walks might have been like. From the cobblestone streets and terracotta and maize buildings cast in deep wine hues to street windows dotted with laundry lines, Rome was richer than I had ever imagined. I loved the color of the place, and the way the light would fill ancient crevices to reveal some things and hide others. It felt as though this light held the secrets of Rome.