Leah’s screenplay for her upcoming short film, ‘Some Things Won’t Sleep’, was chosen as the annual awards sponsor by The Brian Linehan Foundation. Every year, four filmmaking teams from across Canada are selected into the National Screen Institute Drama Prize Program, and of those teams, one is selected for sponsorship […]
Tag Archives: leah johnston
Another film acceptance for Another Man! The short will be screening in a segment featuring films from the Atlantic Provinces at the 2013 Atlantic Film Festival, happening in Halifax at Park Lane Cinema, September 16 @ 4:30pm & September 18 @ 10:15pm. For more information or to buy tickets, visit […]
Another Man (teaser) from Leah Johnston on Vimeo. Fantastic news! My short film, Another Man, which I wrote, directed, produced, edited and starred in (yikes, that was a lot of work!) has been accepted into Montreal World Film Festival and will makes it’s World Premiere there in August of this […]
Took this photo of my little sister, Katherine in El Mirage when she came to visit me in February. It was a brutally cold day in the desert; The lake bed was pretty much abandoned and we could barely get out of the car due to the high winds […]
Took this photo of my little sister, Katherine, in El Mirage when she came to visit me in February. It was a brutally cold day in the desert; The lake bed was pretty much abandoned and we could barely get out of the car due to the high winds slamming […]
Very excited to announce that my upcoming short film ‘Some Things Won’t Sleep’ has been nominated for the National Screen Institute Drama Prize. Recipients of the award receive […]
Synopsis: Anika and her husband have the perfect marriage. Or so it seems. But flashes from a gruesome future scene seem to hint that something is about to go terribly awry. When a secret is revealed and the marriage begins to fall apart, Anika attempts to do the most horrific thing possible to salvage her relationship. Unfortunately, some secrets won’t stay buried for very long.
Producer: Andre Pettigrew
Do you ever try to substitute the fake thing for the real thing? Every now and then in my life, when I’ve grown tired of the struggle, I try and see what it would feel like to settle for a little while […]
So happy to be back! I have been so busy lately producing my friend Blake’s first film, that I’ve barely had time to turn around, let alone do personal shoots. It’s been a very exciting […]
NOW PUBLIC: “The Desert Encounter” the short film I acted in that screened at the THE 3rd ANNUAL NO BUDGET FILM FESTIVAL , presented by Cartel: Collaborative Arts La. If you figure out what’s going on in it, let me know […]
I am proud and excited to announce that the short film I performed in, ‘The Desert Encounter’, will be premiering August 26, 2012 at the No Budget Film Festival in downtown LA. The film was directed by Blake Hodges and will be screened at the Independent alongside […]
This is a continuation on my last birdcage concept. Unfortunately the last cage wasn’t able to open on the bottom, so I had to wait until I got my hands on one that did. Driving to this shoot, I was thinking of possible titles for this photo and my mind kept going over this idea of the cage and how many things it could represent. In a way, I think the cage can represent the all of the constructs which […]
Took this photo in Death Valley at the same time as my last photo. I had always wanted to see the dunes so it was a real thrill to shoot them! When we arrived it was so late, I despaired that I wouldn’t be able to get the photo […]
Took this in Badwater Basin in Death Valley last week. I had such an incredible experience being in the desert. I’ve wanted to go for almost 2 years now, so this trip was long overdue. I shot this at dawn with the help of my friend Dan holding the […]
Just got a copy of a recent spread One Frame Magazine did on my photography. The magazine looks beautiful and they did a great job of selecting the photographers and their work for the issue […]
Recently, I was asked to do an interview with the blog Lights n’ Colours about my photography. We talked about how I got into conceptual photography and how I go about executing my pictures […]
This image is very personal to me. The idea here is that in spite of the beauty of the world, many of us will never truly be free to enjoy it because we are trapped- trapped by dogma, trapped by routine, trapped by our inability to escape their own emotions. I often feel that way myself […]
It’s times like these, when I don’t have a lot of new photography ideas coming in, that I’m thankful I have a backlog of images written down in my notebooks. This is one of the first photo ideas I ever had. I had actually started believing that this photo would only ever exist as an ugly stick figure in a notebook […]
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the idea of relationship in photography and how creating interesting relationships in our images helps us not only tell better stories, but create better images. In acting class, the teacher will often ask the actor, “What is your relationship to the […]
This was shot around the same time as this image and was intended to be a kind of sister image. I wanted to imply a story of a woman whose body is washed ashore after some kind of shipwreck, whose soul then arises and returns to the sea […]
PAST WORKS AMERICAN DOLLHOUSE American Dollhouse, directed by Leah Johnston and Chris Barnett, was a theatrical exhibit that transformed an art gallery in Los Angeles into a lifesized dollhouse. What began as merely a photoseries evolved into a full-scale theatrical experience which allowed audience to explore the various rooms of […]
Took this video at my cottage this weekend with the help of my dad and my neighbors, including their daughter Erin who agreed to play the lonely drifter for me. This is sort of an expansion on the idea I had previously created in this photo, but in video version. I’ve been trying to transition into video these past few months, and I’ve been reading a lot and learning a bunch of new programs […]
For those who were unable to make it to American Dollhouse here is a short trailer for the show taken from the DVD which was released exclusively to donors of the project. Blake Hodges shot the footage and Chris and I edited it together in Final Cut. Hope you enjoy!
This will most definitely go down in history as my most dangerous shoot ever. I was so scared to crawl across the melting ice caps at my cottage to get this, I almost didn’t do it! But I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t, and I was right. So thankful not to have fallen through to that ice water below!
The American Dollhouse is a series of photographs and poems centered around a masked family co-inhabiting a miniature dollhouse. The concept of shooting in a dollhouse originally arose as an alternative to creating expensive large-scale sets. I came to the realization that by shooting in miniature, I could capture the […]
I was inspired to create this image when I was driving through Pictou, Nova Scotia and I came upon this 1940’s fighter jet mounted in the middle of an intersection. I wanted to create something noir-ish and I think it turned out somewhat in the vein of Sky Captan and the World of Tomorrow, which is cool. It was surprisingly simple to create- thank you to my new green screen!
One of my biggest inspirations and certainly one of the most interesting artists I’ve come upon on flickr, is photomontage artist Mattijn. If you’ve ever seen his work, you will undoubtedly remember it. He is well known for his extensive surrealist montages. I was absolutely thrilled when he agreed to do a Q&A for my little old blog! I had so many questions, I barely knew where to begin. Read on…
Jacob’s Ladder (on top of being a biblical reference) is a real staircase in the park in my hometown. I composited the photo I took of the ladder and the clouds on vacation, with a photo of myself on my apartment building staircase in NY. Then just toyed with hue/sat, curves, filters afterwards. For extra drama, I added a spotlight to the right hand side of the clouds.
Hopefully most of you already know the name. Even if you don’t recognize his name, chances are you’ve probably already heard his music/poetry from famous remakes such as Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah and Judy Collins’ Suzanne.