Good day fellow photographers!
After some great feedback on our new PhotoFeed interview format "10 Quick Questions With-" we proudly present you Episode 2 today. This format will release a new Episode every Sunday of the week.
Our guest for Episode 2 is @johannpiber , a great photographer from Austria who mainly shares Landscape and Macro photography. I'm super happy to share this interview with Johann who is for me one of the most positive souls around this blockchain.
Let's start with a short introduction
Hi,
my name is Johann Piber and I live in Carinthia, the southernmost state of Austria. In one of my latest Blog posts on Hive you can see the little village where I have grown up and where I still love to be whenever I can. Since the eighties I am living in Klagenfurt, the capital of Carinthia, and I am working a little bit outside in a village at the lake Wörthersee.
I am no professional Photographer, although I would love to be one. I know the following sounds a bit controverse, but I am a busy civil servant, love to hike on mountains, ride my little Harley Sportster and I take my mirrorless camera with one or more lenses almost everywhere with me.
1.) What does photography mean to you?
JP: If I don’t have my EOS R with me I will certainly have my small Canon G9x in a pocket, just in case there’s something to „shoot“ in my way, but usually the EOS R accompanies me almost everywhere. So, my answer here can only be „photography means everything to me“.
2.) What is your favourite subject to photograph?
JP: I would say almost everything interesting from macro to the big vista is my favourite subject, but my big love are waterfalls and subtle misty sunrises. I love to get up before everybody awakes and often I come back home when my family is still in bed 😉
I don’t like to shoot people and street photography though, and I am bad in wildlife photography as well as in woodland photography because Lady Patience doesn’t like me a lot, but we are working hard on our friendship to become better 😉
3.) How would you describe your photography style?
JP: I have no „style“, at least I don’t think so. I see something, a motive so to say, and decide if it’s worth to take a photo or not. I don’t search for hours for better compositions – maybe this will change when Lady Patience and I have come closer to each other 😉
Also, my editing differs with each photo. I edit the images first in Adobe Lightroom and then I finalize it in Adobe Photoshop where each image gets its own style. Simply said the final image depends on what I have seen and how I felt on a location, or even how I feel at the time when I edit the image.
But overall, I think my style is to avoid producing these over saturated and over dramatic Instagram images. I enhance the colours, but I try to not overdo an image and stay as natural as possible – to transfer what I have seen with my own eyes into the final image, if that makes any sense.
4.) What inspires you?
JP: Anything can inspire me … Hiking for hours up a mountain and sleeping in a summer sleeping bag on still frozen ground but knowing when I open the tent at 4 in the morning, I can watch the horizon turning orange, while I am drinking a fresh hot coffee, inspires me for example.
Hiking on a mountain peak in the middle of the night knowing I will have the summit and the sunrise view up there for me alone in the morning inspires me. The beauty of Mother Nature inspires me, because her beauty is everywhere, and you just have to open your eyes … or sometimes close them 😉
5.) What is the most difficult part of being a photographer for you?
JP: Finding the time to get out to photograph is my biggest problem. I have a busy job (yes, I work for the government, and I am busy LOL) and I have my family. I like to be alone when I hike, ride my motorbike and photograph and for me that is not an easy task.
So, as mentioned above, I take advantage of the fact that my family likes to sleep as long as possible, and I love to get up early on the weekends and when I am off work.
6.) How do you educate yourself to get better photos?
JP: There are some very good photographers on YouTube which I love to see and who have taught me a lot of things which I have tried later. I often look and analyse photos online and think how I would have taken or edited the photo, but the best education is to get out and practice, practice, and practice again.
7.) What kind of gear do you use?
I have a mirrorless Canon EOS R with several lenses (Canon RF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L IS II USM, Canon EF 16-35mm 1:4 L IS USM, Canon EF 50mm 1:1.8 L STM, SIGMA 105mm 1:2,8 DG MACRO HSM, Sigma 100-400mm F5-6,3 DG OS HSM C).
I use a Manfrotto Befree tripod with Manfrotto XPRO Ballhead and mostly a Circular Polarizer filter, but also ND filters (Haida M10 filter system).
And I have a small Canon G9x which I take with me when I can’t take the big camera with me.
8.) What is your favourite lens and why?
JP: I like the telephoto lenses 70-200mm (Canon EF) and 100-400mm (Sigma) most, also for landscape photography. It makes fun getting a close-up shot from a tree in the distance for example and they are great to shoot intimate landscape photos. And if I want to take a wider landscape image, I make a panorama.
9.) What is your suggestion for beginner photographers?
JP: Don’t spend too much money on the best camera before you know if you really like the photography. Take a point and shoot camera or a used DSLR, even a smartphone would do in the beginning, just go out and take photos.
Don’t ask your family and friends if your photos are good, because they will say yes anyway. Join online groups or forums and get photo critiques there. They will be honest, sometimes too honest, but you will certainly learn from them.
I’m not a big book reader anymore since I have to wear glasses when I read, but books about photography are still interesting and you can learn a lot. As examples I would like to name my two latest purchased books: 52 Assignments: Experimental Photography by Chris Gatcum, and 52 Assignments: Landscape Photography by Ross Hoddinott. Both books are filled with a year’s worth of weekly commissions and concepts for photographic experiments and for composing and capturing eye-catching landscape photography in all its forms.
You can learn from some YouTube photographers, but don’t take everything they say too serious, and there's no "you have to do this or that".
There are many rules in photography, but the one I follow most is the one that says „there’s no rule in photography“.
10.) Do you think Hive is a good platform for photographers?
JP: I love it here on the Hive, how could I say no?
At the Moment: If you want to earn money from your photos then Hive is probably not the right place because the audience here which is interested in serious photography is too small at the moment, but if you want to have a Blog to show your photography, in addition to other social networks, and earn some money by blogging, then Hive is great.
The people here are great and the overall community is amazing. To be honest, I am by no means a very social person, but the Hive and the good friends I have met here made me to one and that way I’m getting more social in real life too 😊
In Future: One hopefully soon day the Hive will be recognized and accepted by the masses and then I will be more than happy to have hopped on that train before most of the others.
I think the above also applies to other professions.
PF: It was super interesting getting some insides of your work @johannpiber - Thank you so much for taking the time!
Beneficaries for this post:
50% - Johannpiber
40% - PhotoFeed
5% - PeakD
5% - Photofeedcuration
©Johann Piber (@johannpiber) holds all rights on the images used in this post
