Portraits of Christoph Behling, a product designer and the founder of Christoph Behling Design, a London-based product design studio established in 2004. The studio has achieved international recognition in a range of industries including communication technology, luxury goods, watches, and transport. Merging science with art is at the core of Christoph’s work, with his belief that products should inspire change.
I was asked to photograph Christoph Behling on behalf of a German watch magazine; the studio has won 9 Grand Prix D’Horlogerie De Geneve awards, the most prestigious award in the watch industry. Accompanying the journalist the session was split into time for an interview, conducted with Christoph in German, after which the portraits would be taken by myself. The majority of occasions I have conducted a joint portrait and interview visit, I usually perch on the shoulder of the journalist; this both gives me the opportunity to take candid photographs of the subject speaking and allows me to listen to a subject matter expert talk about their field which, when the person is passionate (they invariably are), I find fascinating. On rare occasions when I find myself on the outside of the conversation, such as this instance due to the language barrier, while I take a few candid frames, as I can not contribute or understand what is going on I tend to recce a location to look for potential portrait spots or finesse lighting while I wait for the interview to finish.
My two favourite portraits from this session are the frames of Christoph sitting on the stairs, which lead to his studio, and the candid image taken during the interview. The orange tape on the stairs, spelling out ‘Hello’, meant I was limited in angles in order to correctly line up the lettering. Among the frames I took, there are several which are straight on however my preference is for this, slightly side, angle in landscape orientation as I like the breathing space afforded by the wide, white, left hand side. As for the candid image; I love the dominant white colour, how crisp and clean it is, which makes the darker elements pop in comparison.
