Elleni Toumpas

At the moment I am playing catch up with some of the gigs and jobs I shot towards the end of last year. In probably one of only a handful of Brisbane Entertainment Centre shows for 2011, in October I shot Def Leppard for Everguide.
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Last night I shot the 2012 Big Day Out sideshow of Foster the People at The Tivoli in Brisbane for both Rave magazine and Everguide.  Read the rest of this entry »

Things have been quiet on the gig front for the past few months as the end of my 2011 saw me shooting a tonne of band portraits, corporate events and weddings. This hasn’t left much time for shooting live music. However my 2012 kicked off a little differently with my first shoot back for the work year covering Alpine at The Zoo. Alpine are a band I had heard small snippets from during the year, but had fallen heavily for during the summer break. Their live show was going to make or break my appreciation for the band as their sound on record works but on stage could easily fall apart with bad mixes or a lackluster ’shoe gazing’ performance.  Luckily, the show was anything but lackluster with both Lou and Phoebe combining an amazing, sultry and energetic energy with almost perfect renditions of their loved and lesser known tracks.

Of course I am not a writer, so just take a look at some of the photos from the night. More photos after the jump…

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 On Sunday I covered the Brisbane Finders Keepers markets. After visiting these markets a few times, it was great to have the opportunity to be commissioned to cover them on an official capacity. Spending almost three hours visiting all the stores across the three rooms to photograph all the details, it is fair to say there is something for everyone at these markets. Proudly I walked out with spending less money then I earnt on the day!!! Much to my partner’s disappointment.
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Throwing Halloween parties are a bit of a tradition of mine. Since moving out of home I have thrown five parties, and each year I am impressed with the level people go to in dressing up. I’ve never really celebrated Halloween before moving out of home (not that many people in Australia do) but for me it is always fun to get crafty with my housemates, decorating the house and then getting a little boozey. A tradition I started a few years ago also was also setting up a mini-studio at home. This year I wanted to play with a ring-flash look, and after buying a few coloured paper rolls earlier in the year I thought it was time to crack out the red.

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This week one of my photos is on the cover of Rave magazine. This was a pretty crazy shoot with the band urgently needing a press session and potential cover shot done during a very hectic time for me. Our only option where the whole band and I were available was a night shoot midweek. To keep the costs down, the band also decided on not hirign a studio but chose to shoot with my paper roll at home instead. Usually I can shoot these types of shots in my living room/ home studio, but as we wanted to play with flicking paint the Mrs and the housemates banished me to the backyard. This shoot happened during winter. Needless to say the band were troopers standing in the backyard at 10pm with wet, cold paint and no jumpers. I think it was worth it.

Before the paint set up we shot some other options and this appears along with their interview inside.

On Friday I shot The Jezabels in the first of their two shows at Brisbane’s The Tivoli for Everguide and Rave magazine. For the first song the band performed behind a black semi-opaque curtain with each band member back-lit projecting shadows for the duration of the song. Once the curtain dropped photographing lead singer Hayley Mary was an easy task as she strutted around the stage hitting her notes by holding interesting angular poses.

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So last week I was asked by Stephen Booth (along with fellow photographer Kristen Ashton) to help cover the BigSound conference for Q Music. It was an long, gruelling three days shooting the conferences, delegate lunches, VIP parties and then the all important live music showcases across 8 venues. Not only was I covering the event for BigSound, I was also asked to cover bands and supply photos for Mess and Noise, Everguide and Rave magazine.

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On Thursday The Living End kicked off their “The Ending is just the Beginning Repeating” tour in Brisbane. Even though close to everyone has seen these guys play at nearly every festival in the past, their first headline tour in 2 years was met with much excitement with many cities adding two shows to meet demand.

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In July local band Inland Sea and I hung out for half a day to shoot some new press shots for them. A shoot 6 months in the making (trying to find a common availability for 10 people in a band is a nightmare) we managed to shoot them before they headed out to play at the Red Deer fest. The first shot is probably my most favourite portrait all year so far. A concept that I came up with from the initial chat we had in December, there was a lot of pressure to pull it off. After a few frames a big juicy spider crawled up Steele’s shirt but even with those few frames we managed to nail the above pic. Read the rest of this entry »