Last weekend I had the pleasure of photographing my friends Christoph and Manuel Mitasch, aka Jonglissimo, a world-class club passing duo, holders of four club-passing world records and two-time IJA stage competition gold medal winners.
We did the first shooting session at the Stephansplatz at around three in the morning. It was seriously cold but – our reason for shooting at such an uncommon hour – there were almost no people there:
After a few hours of sleep we had another session in a studio, where I learnt a few things: Motion-freezing juggling photos tend to suck. Even if you shoot from an uncommon angle they’re barely more than tolerable:
Shooting with glowing props is much more interesting:
Five club double backcrosses – I should have shot this from a ladder and with a longer exposure:
Club swinging sucks, but it looks kinda cool:
Shooting people while they’re jumping is fun:
Even more so if you throw stuff at them while they’re in the air:
Obligatory back-lit portrait:
Manuel:
Those pictures are amazing! I experimented with some open-lens photography a long time ago with my old Minolta 35mm SLR.
It looks like you had a lot of fun with this. I really like the color element to the juggling photos.
Hi, I’m a photo student in Minnesota, US and I’m also a juggler/diabolist. I’m focusing my semester’s project on juggling and manipulation arts. I love your photographs and am wondering what techniques you use to capture such great images of movement. Please feel free to email me if you have the time. Thank you!
-SMJ
I really like the jumping shots. Lots of cool color in the others.
Nice work. Now… the freeze motion of the juggling doesn’t suck. Are they as cool as the motion blur ones? No but it emphasizes the skills of the jugglers in a cool way.