Chris Leschinsky
"After I graduated from high school a few buddies of mine decided to go surfing in Hawaii for a few months. While I was there, I discovered photography for the first time, and have been in love with it ever since."
“It was about year later that I went to Cal Poly SLO State College where I graduated with a B.S. in Art + Design. Shortly after getting my degree, my first big break came when I moved to San Francisco. I got really lucky and hooked up photographer David Martinez, who took me on as his first assistant. David is this really amazing guy and I pretty much learnt everything I know from him.”
“I assisted for David for about four years traveling to all sorts of places, from Brazil to Florida, and shooting any thing you can think of. We pretty much did all advertising work, so there were some pretty interesting projects.”
"About the same time, one of my friends married Hollywood director and actor, Jon Favreau. He was hosting 'Dinner For Five' and he managed to get me the gig as the set photographer on that series. It’s about this time that I learnt the art of films still photography using the studio’s blimped cameras".
"That was a pretty crazy gig, because you had five people around this table, with five cameras rolling and tracking the whole time. And of course, I had to stay out of view of all these cameras going around the table. So you can imagine how tough that was to stay out of sight of the cameras and out of sight of the actors, while still doing my job."
"After I left David Martinez's Studio, I decided to open my own studio. So not only did I quit a steady job, but I started my own studio in a much smaller town. It was tough to begin with, that was for sure. When I started out on my own, all the gear I was buying was still film cameras, as I didn’t have any knowledge of digital cameras back then. In fact, I had never even worked on a computer before, so getting into digital was like starting all over again. It was a really tough transition, for sure."
“About two years after going out on my own, I landed an agent in San Francisco and then I started to get some really great jobs. Being a lifestyle photographer means I travel all over California and the States doing jobs here and there. Even though I have a studio here, 99% of my stuff these days is location work. Which is great, because the locations around me here are spectacular. This whole place is full of great locations, whether it's the ocean or the mountains. We pretty much have the lot here.”
"I get contacted by magazines frequently for travel related photographs that they can use in upcoming stories they are running. In any month, I can be working for magazines like Forbes, Sunset, Wine Spectator or Surfers Journal, to shooting people on the local beach. So the kind of work I love to do can be really varied."
"Summertime for me, means camping, and camping means shooting back-lit photographs of the family trips with my Mamiya RZ. I keep it loaded with color neg in the back of my truck thru all seasons, but I seem to run way more film thru it in the summer. The highlight roll off of film cannot be beat. Yes, there is pain involved ( waiting for film and paying for film) but there’s just as much pain derived from shooting digital (dead batteries, downloading, processing, and all those cables and chargers)."
"Whenever I pick up a film camera, photography for me, still feels like a craft where you have to think about lighting and all of the math involved. I suppose that’s why I am so interested in moving into DP work as well. The filmcraft is such an important part of the process with motion. Now I am blending my stills work with motion for my clients, which means everything they do has been captured using the same eye - which gives their projects a real sense of visual continuity."