emiLeon

Today I start telling the story about my Sierra Leone experience.

2010-10-17T12:43:00.002+02:00

I will start from the beginning and work my way through to the end day by day and always complimenting with images.

The tickets were booked and I started to prepare for one of the most challenging adventures of my life.

2010-10-17T12:30:00.002+02:00

@Sierra Leone | Kenema | Busstation on my way to Kono |2010

@ Sierra Leone | School kids on bush road between Tiwai and Bo | 2010 | By: Emil Leonardi

@ Sierra Leone | Fishing village of Tombo | 2010 | By: Emil Leonardi

@ Sierra Leone | Fishermen at Aberdeen Beach, Freetown | 2010 | By: Emil Leonardi

@ Sierra Leone | Rawdon street, Freetown | 2010 | By: Emil Leonardi

The Inception

2010-10-17T11:43:00.004+02:00

It all started about a year or two back when i first heard about a small country in West Africa called Sierra Leone, listed as the number one poorest country in the world 2005 which gets 70-80% of the government funds/budget funded by foreign aid, lowest HDI “Human Development Index” in the world, one out of five children under five years of age died and an average expected living age of 36 years.

Read more: HERE And: HERE

Pretty much what you read and hear about Sierra Le

one is what movies like Blood Diamond, Lord of War or Amistad tells you.

Slavery, poverty, diamonds, rebels and atrocities committed in the civil war that Sierra Leone was suffering under, A Decade long (1991-2

2) civil war that was so filled with atrocities and torture that its rater not be spoken about, corruption and miss managed governments.

People experience and witnessing first hand things that were so horrible that they would not even fit in the worst horror movie.

The people that were living this was not only soldiers and generals, it struck the normal civilians the most. People like you and me that had no particular political point of view or even communities that never even heard the word “Political”, people living in peace with nature in the bush, tribes totally outside of the “modern civilization”.

And in all of this darkness I saw light. I kept getting amazed by some stories that I read but there was one particular story that caught my attention and sparked my real interest in Sierra Leone:

The story of a fisherman which village got attacked by the rebels on morning and his daughter and wife was killed and he got his both hands chopped off by an RUF soldier.

Imagine the anger and devastation this man suffered, he will never see his wife or daughter again and never be able to work.

One day as he was walking the streets of Freetown to go to rehabilitation for his disability a moment of fear struck him as he stood face to face with the person who had chopped his hands a couple of years earlier right there on the street in a now peaceful Freetown he started to scream and tears was cascading from his eyes as all his feelings came back and as the crowd understood what was going on they all jumped the ex-RUF soldier and started to rip his clothes of and just as they where about to stomp the ex soldier to death for what he had done to the fisherman, the fisherman shouted “STOP” and walked up to the bleeding ex soldier and reached out his chopped limb to help him up as they were standing face to face again he looked in to his eyes and said:

“I have been thinking about this moment since we last met, that day you took my life away from me but today I’ll give yours back, I forgive you but I will never forget” and saved the ex soldier from the angry crowd and he let him go free.

As I read this I was so touched by this. I read, hear and see what´s going on in this “modern” Western world and I could never imagine that a situation of parlay could take place in our world.

From that moment on I knew I had to experience Sierra Leone myself and learn from those people. I saw greatness that no other human being in this world ever would practice.

As I started to read and learn more about this country, I was captivated by the story and unfortunate history of this country.

A country blessed with one of the most intensive and diverse mineral resources compared to its size and population. In Sierra Leonean soil you find Iron Ore, Gold, Rutile, Titanium Ore, Bauxite and one of the ten biggest Diamond deposits in the world.

Vegetation unlike any other country, high mountains, plain steps, rain forests and long unbroken beaches. Anything will grow here Rice, Coffee Beans, Cacao, Bananas and Coconuts.

A nature so beautiful you could not imagine.

Geting back on track

2010-08-20T22:36:00.001+02:00

First of all I wanna start with apologizing for the VERY long absence. Not that I have any fans or followers who missed me, but it feels like the right thing to do.

I have been wanting to start sharing stories and pictures with you for a couple of month now but never found the time and ease to do so but hopefully I will start dropping some pics regularly from now on!

Have done a lot the past couple of months and have a lot of pictures to share with you and foremost A LOT of stories.

So let’s get going….

Beauty

2010-04-27T21:22:00.003+02:00

@ Summer 2009 | Mauterndorf | Photo/Retouch: Emil Leonardi

This is Isabel a friend from Vienna, who was visiting our shop last year and we shot a couple of pix, that i dug out again last week to try some new Beauty/Glamour retouching techniques. Must say i love it, it´s a lot of fun! It´s definitely something that I’ll be doing more of from now on.

If there´s anybody that would like to model just for fun, please let me know.

Drop a comment on what you think of the result.

Thai Two

2010-04-22T11:28:00.004+02:00

@ Thailand | 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi ®

Thai

2010-04-14T21:27:00.002+02:00

A couple of random pic from Thailand. More to come....

ND Graduated BKK

2010-03-31T21:59:00.003+02:00

@ Bangkok, Thailand, June 2009 | Photo by: Emil Leonardi ®

This picture was taken with my ND Graduated Filter, which gives you the possibility to darken the sky so that you can balance the two major different light from the bright sky and the dark street. It gives you a perfectly metered sky and a exposure low enough to give clear detailed street and buildings and even drop so low that the cars are blurry creating a great effect

High on Elements 8

2010-03-27T21:50:00.004+01:00

THIS PICTURE IS STAGED

I have just started to play around a bit with my new ELEMENTS 8 and i love it.

Stay tuned for more.

Hamburg #2

2010-03-27T10:29:00.003+01:00

@ Hamburg | Spring 2009 | Photo by: Emil Leonardi ®

I came along with my father who was invited there by a customer/friend who hired him to photograph the whole company and Hamburg to make theire new image concept everything from office interior to flyers, brouchures, business cards and logo.

So we where shooting singel employees, the office and then where escorted around Hamburg to shoot different keypoint locations of the city. Stayed at a great Möwenpick hotel, where invited to dine at the most exclusive restaurants in town. It was a great experiance ande here are som åpictures that i took privat and wherent added to the Business Image Concept.

Hope you like it and please as always felle free to leave a comment always happy to hear what you guys think.

Back on Track

2010-03-21T10:15:00.002+01:00

@ Mauterndorf, Austria, Winter 2009 | Photo by: Emil Leonardi

Sorry for my long absens but here i am again with some pictures, enjoy.

Portrait

2010-03-06T11:40:00.004+01:00

I’m totally inexperienced with portraits and so on, but I would like to do a lot more than i am now and i really like photographing people so there´s still a whole world of photography to discover.

This is a girl (Antonia) who works in our shop; we took a couple of close-ups out on the street with all natural light.

In the future i would like to work/learn more about lighting and people post editing.
So if anybody have any suggestions of important "know-how’s" that are essential to know please let me know.

Next Sunday a girl is coming by and we´re going to try out a couple of techniques and scenes. So again, if you have any suggestions or good ideas of what to do, nice effects, scenes and so on please let me know. I will post the result here so you can see how it went.

Aussie

2010-03-01T22:14:00.004+01:00

@ Kiwi plantage in Mountain area at the Gold Coast, Australia, 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi ®

@ Snapper Rocks, Australia, 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi ®

@ Rainbow Bay, Australia, 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi ®

@ Coolangatta, Australia, 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi ®

In 2007 i went on a "Study Abroad Semester" at the SCU (Southern Cross University) Tweed Heads Campus at the Southern end of the Gold Coast of Australia right at the border of NSW and QLD. I was studying Financial accounting, Entrepreneurship and Events management.

Though my motivation failed me from time to time i made my way through and loved it (with some help from my at the time girlfriend).

Its a beautiful place on earth sadly conquered by testosterone filled alpha male surfer dudes with inflated egos! But if you forget about all the crapy buildings and all that human beings have caused it’s a stunning area ocean and beach everywhere you look.

And it was a experience to live and work in different time zones! The border between QLD and NSW was only 50 meters from our apartment and QLD didn’t have "Day light saving time" but NSW had so i was studying in one time zone and then i walked to the hotel "Twin Towns" where i worked and started working in one time zone! Ha-ha! It was sooo confusing.

Hope you like the shots i will add some more late. Please feel free to drop a comment anytime.

The Burmese Experience

2010-02-26T09:33:00.012+01:00

@ The road between Chiang Mai and Mai Sai, Thailand, June 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

For many years i have wanted to go to Burma and in June last year as i was in Chiang Mai i was sure that i was ready for it. I packed my bag with camera and raincoat and hoped on my moped to make the 8 hour trip to Mai Sai at that time the only border open between Thailand and Burma at the northern peak of Thailand.

Everybody who ever ridden a "Moped" before knows that they are made to be used in towns or cities NOT the Northern Thai terrain consisting of Rocky mountains and rundown roads/mud tracks and that if you sit on a moped to long your ass will fall off. But i felt confident that i would make it without any problems.

So the journey began in Chiang Mai....

....and ended 8 hour later in Mai Sai (which is a horrible place it’s like a Pirate port only one street like a Village in the Wild Wild West)

and getting there had consequences:

Since I was only wearing short shorts and tank top to improve my tan while driving, I had almost burned off my legs, arms and face on the way from the sun, i had the best imaginable weather but as the wind was breezing and cooling me off when i was driving fast so i didn’t noticed that the sun was ramming me on the same spot for 8 hours.

My ass was hurting like hell, for two reasons, first of all at the end of the trip i had to stop and walk around and punch my ass every 10th minute, the seat was so hard and uncomfortable, you know when your arm is falling asleep!?! I had the same feeling in my ass and second i had caught a nasty bad ass diarrhea on the way!! The terrain there is only bush, mountains and forest so i had no option but to hold it back. So once i got there i rushed in to a random hotel and borrowed their toilet for over an hour. I totally demolished it!

And once my stomach had calmed down i found out by the border patrollers that i wouldn’t be able to cross the border with my Moped and i wasn’t allowed to go further than a couple of 100 meter across and had to be back on Thai ground within 24 hours. So that sucked pretty much because the border city on the Burmese side was 10 times worse than Mai Sai on the Thai side! People where throwing Viagra, Homemade porn and Burmese cigarettes on me and since i wasn’t really interested in any of that i had a quick walk around and then I turned back again and started the same trip back to Chiang Mai with a sore ass, Lobster red skin and disappointed look on my face.

But any experience is good experience I always say. The road there is really beautiful and I had fun so I didn’t regret it at all. Here are some pictures from the road.

News

2010-02-25T16:51:00.006+01:00

These are some newsletters that i made (some of the ideas and pictures for the newsletters are from my father) for our family business LEONARDIarte. We send out one every month and its to promote our webshop: http://www.leonardiarte.com/shop/

Texture

2010-02-19T08:29:00.002+01:00

@ Chiang Mai, Thailand, June 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Here i added two different textures to overlap the original picture and give it this vintage sepia look. I took this picture of a man who was trying to repair his fence of bamboo sticks. He was quite happy to pose for a pic.

Flower Power

2010-02-15T22:42:00.008+01:00

@ Chiang Mai, Thailand, October 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Random flowers @ the Chiang Mai Zoo i went there because i hoped to get some good shots of crazy animals but all they had was a hippo and some monkeys so i found a really nice garden and like Ferdinand i stayed there for a couple of hours just shooting flowers and it turned out quite well i think.

Crane

2010-02-14T21:29:00.003+01:00

@ Hamburg, Germany, Spring 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Trinity

2010-02-13T08:59:00.004+01:00

@ Mauterndorf, Austria, Sommer 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Here i took three different pictures and blended them in to each other. Don´t really know what’s it called but I’m sure there´s a name for this technique. You can do a lot of great pictures, it creates quite a surreal feeling. But essential to practice this is a Tripod and it makes it all easier if you have a Remote Trigger. I didn’t have one at the time of the shot but now i have and it really much easier otherwise you have to use the "Self-Timer" function on the camera and with the self timer you can’t control it like you can with a trigger. I have some more pix on stock but you´ll get them later.

Thunder Storm

2010-02-12T22:38:00.005+01:00

@ Mauterndorf, Austria, July 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

On my way home from work one night there was this amazing thunder storm luckily i had my camera with me but unfortunate no Tripod and everybody who ever tried to catch a lightning without a Tripod knows what I’m talking about ITS IMPOSSIBLE!

So i made the best out of the situation and started to shoot! I was fighting with total darkness, you have no idea where and when the lightning is strike and the storm is moving to! You have the best chance of catching one when you’re in the middle of the storm so i was chasing the storm for over 2 hours and i shot over4000 pictures!

As i said before you don’t know where and when it´s going to strike so i was constantly taking empty shots out into the pitch black sky. With a tripod i could have just placed it in one direction and set a 10-30 second exposure and hoping it would strike but now i had to shoot at 1/5 second exposure freehand to avoid the shot to get blurry and i missed 3999 but once i got it, it was totally worth it!

Have to admit when i was driving after the storm to reach the eye of the storm on top a mountain i was pretty scared, lightning struck only a couple 100 meters from me one after another and adrenaline kicked in!

This one caught with 1/5 Sec, f/5.6, 18mm, ISO 100.

This is not the professional way to do it but had to keep the f-stop as low as possible to win shorter exposure and i kept the ISO at 100 not to lose quality. My Eos 400D doesn’t manage high ISO in lowlight scenes very well, gets very noisy quickly.

Selective Coloring

2010-02-11T13:02:00.005+01:00

Thought I’d add some more "Selective Coloring" pix.

I made all of them at the same time, so the pictures weren’t intentionally meant to be edited like this. I just selected a couple of pix that i already had when i first was introduced to this technique. So my skill has developed a little bit but I do this way to rarely to be showcasing them but I thought some their OK. Hope you do to!

@ St.Lucia, Caribbean, Winter 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

@ Pouerto Rico, San Juan, Winter 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

@ Guatamala, Winter 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Poerto Rico, Bacardi Distillery , Winter 2008 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

@ Coolangatta, Australia, November 2007 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

Ultimate Guitar Hero

2010-02-10T22:29:00.009+01:00

This is me kicking Mommas ass at Guitar Hero!! NOOT! I really suck at it but must admit i felt pretty awesome rocking to: Wolfmother - Woman
First time i ever tried out "Selective coloring", i like this effect a lot and you´ll be seeing more of them soon. @ Sweden, Lund, November 2008

LIsten

2010-02-10T00:01:00.001+01:00

A big glas cube with large speaker cones, if you put your ear to the cone you´ll here different music @ Hamburg, Germany, Spring 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

The Fallen

2010-02-07T23:42:00.001+01:00

Looks like a sad soldier walking home from a devastating battle.
But it´s a tired man carrying his Smoke Canon after fumigating the whole alley with anti bug smoke @ Thailand, Chiang Mai, June 2009 | Photo: Emil Leonardi®

It´s official

2010-02-07T23:21:00.000+01:00

Thought I’d officially start my photo blog today.

I hope to upload a couple of photos every week for your to browse, some may be new and some may be from old archives. They are all taken and edited by me. Please feel free to place a comment and don’t forget to add me to your follow list. Ha de fint haaajj