Photography for Design
Mischa Haller

The Swiss photographer had an incredible amount of work to show us, he seemed to have been nearly everywhere in the whole wide world and had been working for many different people already.
Mischa Haller started off by saying "If you want to do interesting stuff, you have to do it for yourself". And this is what he did. He made a little book in the size of a postcard with pictures he likes to make, made a dummy and then went to several book shops like Magma to ask whether they would sell it or not. Haven gotten a positive response from all the shops he decided to produce a small amount of copies to sell. Despite the fact that he had to pay for the productions costs, it turned out to be the right decision as he got his next job offer through it.
He is especially interested in social and cultural documentaries. A tip he gave us was not to show the whole part of the object you want to illustrate, but leave a certain part to the imagination that can tell the rest of the story.
When talking about a documentary he did on an island, he explained how he worked and what he was looking for in a good picture. He told us that he sometimes spends one hour in the same place, for example a fish and chips shop, until people kind of get used to him, then he waits for the perfect moment, usually when something interesting happens, to take a shot. Furthermore he said that people give life to the photograph, therefore you shouldn't take a picture of a place without people in it, as this is "boring".