Johannes van Kan Seminars

Monday September 21st – Hilton National Hotel, Coventry
Wednesday September 23rd – Hilton Croydon
Friday September 25th – Grange Manor Hotel, Falkirk

Cost £50+VAT (£57.50) including am/pm refreshments
and buffet lunch

Book Online Here

Meet Ian Baugh, Queensberry Albums director

Reception & Registration 9.30-10.00am

To book by credit card, call MPA HQ on 01325 356555

Johannes van Kan and Jo Grams are Moda Studios in Christchurch, New Zealand. In September, Johannes visits the UK for an MPA three-date seminar tour supported by Queensberry Albums.

Johannes speaks to David Kilpatrick about his business.

I live on an island at the end of the earth (technically several islands). In my life I have had many experiences. Not the extraordinary world changing kind, but the normal things that happen to everyday people – births, deaths and marriages; illness, success and failure; love and love lost. In fact the sorts of things that musicians write songs about.

I haven’t been to war. I’ve never been shot at, although as an 11 year old I once found a dying man in a forest. I strongly believe that I would be a good musician… if only I could play an instrument. I say this because my passion (I use this word cautiously because I know it suffers from overuse), my burning
urge, is to express myself. The weird thing is that I have nothing to say that will change the world, but if I get to say something to a single person – maybe the one in the photograph – then I am happy. This makes me a better photographer than businessman.

What makes me special, or different, is the way I feel and see things. That is a difficult thing to approach in a seminar. At best I can talk about the influences on my photographic seeing and
thinking, not just photographers I have known, but stories people have told, things I have seen, and emotions I have felt. And I can teach you some of the skills I have collected. But if I tell you, ‘This is me’, it is not until you answer my question, ‘Who are you?’ that any of it will make any sense.

To say my life was ordinary is only partially the truth, because I am incredibly lucky. But it is luck that was self made. This luck came from taking opportunities. Some people say that I have obsessive tendencies, I would say I just want to do my best.

So here is a story, the butterfly effect, that starts with a photograph. Or you could say that it started from my being a poor fledgling photographer who couldn’t afford a big fancy tripod.

Or you could argue that maybe I didn’t fully understand the importance of having equipment that worked on more than a wing and a prayer. My tripod was flimsy and what I lacked in experience I made up for in enthusiasm.

I was photographing my first real wedding in a small country town in Western Australia. Many things happened at this wedding including the fan-belt breaking on my lilac Renault 12 with its paisley vinyl roof. I digress! It was the middle of the service and I was photographing near the altar. I set my tripod up to photograph the bridesmaids, who were seated during a reading. My flimsy tripod buckled under
the weight of my Canon F1. The camera ended up pointing at the bridesmaids’ feet. I looked through the lens and thought it looked interesting enough to warrant recomposing and shooting (this was in the days of film, when every shot mattered). I took the shot and carried on with my day.

When I returned to New Zealand I entered the image into the 1993 NZIPP awards. It got people’s attention and scored a gold. It’s still on the wall at Moda Fotografica, the studio I share with my wife Jo Grams. Suddenly I had people telling me I needed to charge more for my weddings. I wish I’d listened. I was charging a nominal fee, a fee that I myself would have felt comfortable to pay.

Queensberry Rules
But my comfort level, as a struggling new photographer, was different to that of my clients – a difficult thing for me to understand. It took me a long time to gain the confidence to make the numbers bigger. This one success brought out of me the urge to do better. More importantly, the image caught the eye of Ian and Heather Baugh from Queensberry Albums. The most significant thing about this initial connection with Queensberry was that they had something that I wanted. I just didn’t realise that I actually wanted it.

What was great about that first meeting was their amazing enthusiasm. It was the beginning of a dialogue, a glimpse into a new way of doing business. It involved a wonderful combination of personal and professional. There was a constant battle with them. They kept saying to me, “Let us do the work for you.”

The creative soul in me struggled to let go. I still have them saying this to me, but now I understand better the benefit of letting go. They were trying to give me freedom. And now that I have been in business for almost twenty years the craving for freedom has overtaken the urge to have a creative monopoly. I still have as much creative influence as I need, but I have the choice of trusting somebody else to do the work for me.

I had a notion that I wanted to produce works of art, and often would ask Heather for things that would present my images in a way that was simple and personal. I wouldn’t have said that I was a big client for them, but that was my lack of sales skills more than anything. Anyway they listened. I would plan my albums on bits of messy paper. Somehow they made sense of them to create my albums for me. Now we have album planning software and tools to help us sell. Through Photojunction we are better able to visually communicate our intentions to our clients.

It’s so much easier to demonstrate the possibilities without having to ask our clients to use their imagination. And not just to show them, but to work with them. The Baugh family earned my loyalty by being reliable, helpful, and appreciative. They invited me to speak at conferences on their behalf. I felt honoured to be asked, but probably most challenging of all was the request for a family portrait.

I was VERY worried. These people had access to the best photographers in the world. How could I meet their expectations? My wife Jo and I did the shoot one afternoon. I created a slideshow of the work and sent it through. The most wonderful thing to me was the number of times I was able to make Sonya cry whenever she watched it. For me this was the moment where we had done the right thing. It wasn’t about being amazingly creative, it was about touching somebody with emotion – the business we’re in. I feel privileged to be part of Queensberry.

Would this have happened without the flimsy tripod? The “butterfly effect” is the major impact of the smallest incident on a future event or occurrence. But I would like to suggest that it was going to happen regardless. This is me. Who are you? That is the question I need to ask.

There are a million things that influence who we become. Originally I was set to become a Food Technologist. I was great at science and pretty good at maths. One day everything changed. It started with a fateful misunderstanding, where a girlfriend, studying fine arts, said to me, ‘do you want to come and see what happens in the darkroom?’ I got it so incredibly wrong. I was having boyish thoughts on the fun I could have, but instead the amazement in processing my first photographic print took me by surprise.

As a young kid I was always interested in magic but I inevitably felt let down by the ‘trickery of it all’. In photography I was convinced of the magic of the process in spite of the scientist in me being able to explain away the facts of what was happening. This fascination with the magic of photography drove me to do well.

After quitting my job as a scientist (ironically in a gelatine factory) I set out to become a real photographer. Early learning I studied, but felt misunderstood by my tutors. I assisted for a guy called Ric Syme, a highly respected wedding photographer based in Perth, Australia. I learned many things from Ric. Importantly he taught me to have fun at weddings. He taught me a lot about getting it right in camera. He inspired me with his calm creativity. I also worked for a small newspaper. The most important thing I learnt was how to deal with people who didn’t want to get their photograph taken, without the luxuries of time (there was only ever 15 minutes), familiarity (they were always strangers - but with a story to tell), and seldom under ideal photographic circumstances (you could never reschedule for better light.)

In 2005 I met Jo Grams, a photographer from Brisbane, Australia. It was complicated. She was working with Marcus Bell in Brisbane and I was living in Christchurch, New Zealand. Within three months we were married. A few weeks ago we had a child – well, Jo did all the ‘having’’! I got to hold her hand and be supportive. I knew that only another photographer would truly understand me. Together we set up a company called Flax Studios which matured to become Moda Fotografica when
we shifted into our current space in the old Council Chambers and courtroom in a port town called Lyttelton, 12km from Christchurch.

We shoot portraits and weddings.

Fatal attraction
Having staff and a wife in the business is causing me to be a better businessperson, and having a mortgage helps too. Our wedding market is at the upper end but not limited to that. Some of our best clients are those who cannot afford us. We enjoy working with people who love what we do rather than those who want us to photograph their wedding because of what we have achieved. So although our successes attract clients, by the time they book us we want them to have fallen in love with our work.

The essential elements of a wedding shoot for us are the relationships, beauty and emotion – and a full-length pic of the bride. Getting clients to relax is a blend of distraction, entertainment, and trust. We give our clients permission to be themselves. Sometimes we grant them superhuman powers. I’ve seen a bride stand in the middle of a busy road and stop traffic with a flick of her frock!

We discuss the meaning of ‘photogenic’. Being photogenic is a state of mind, as much a reflection of peoples’ inner beauty as of their physical appearance. And often it is people’s awareness of being photographed that makes an image unattractive. How many people admit that the photographs they like the most of themselves are the ones that were taken when they weren’t aware of being photographed?

A bride will ask me if I can make her look thinner and more beautiful. I say that I can, but that we need to work on it together. We discuss the importance of the right dressmaker, attitude, commitment, hair and makeup. We talk about the use of good light and photographic technique to get the right result.

Many people speak of Photoshop to fix anything they perceive to be wrong with an image (or themselves). This expectation needs to be addressed before the images are created. Its another part to getting it right in the camera. In the blog posts I write for Queensberry I once referred to the Stranger in the Viewfinder. That is an interesting concept really. These people who pay us money to share in this intimate celebration of their public declaration of undying love – who are they? How close do we get?’ Are they ‘clients’, the people who ultimately pay your rent? Or our new best friends, for a day? There are many things that we never really think about because it’s what we do. It’s our job. These strangers are very important to the ongoing success of our business and their needs are worth understanding.

I love being a photographer and cherish the opportunity it gives me to express myself and then to affect people in some way. This is the privilege I have earned from the skills I have collected in the life I have led.

A Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers, Johannes van Kan was NZIPP Wedding Photographer of the Year 2004 and 2005, missing out to his wife Jo Grams in 2006. For the last two years he’s won NZIPP’s Wedding Album of the Year Award, reflecting his love for and skill in the art of album design.

He’s photographed weddings and portraits in Colorado, Miami, Wanaka, Christchurch, Perth, London, Barcelona, Queenstown, Auckland, Malaysia, Vanuatu, Fiji, Martinborough and Wellington. Together with Jo, Johannes owns and operates Moda Fotografica in Christchurch, New Zealand.

He’s a master, not just of his camera, but Photoshop, Photojunction and the arts of story telling and album design, and he’ll have plenty to offer on all of them. The seminars are an opportunity to absorb very practical camera, design and workflow insights from one of the very best. But Johannes believes that to enjoy and succeed in business you need to play to your own strengths and passions. Key themes to challenge your thinking include connecting with those strangers in the viewfinder, the six secrets of winning album design, and some of Johannes’ favourite paradoxes: freedom versuscontrol, faddishness versus timelessness, camera versus computer skills, truth-telling versus fairytales. Johannes is touring with support from Queensberry.