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 »

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.

Last Friday night Busby Marou played a sold out show at the Old Museum for their Biding My Time tour. Quickly becoming a favoured venue for musicians, the beautiful Old Museum was transformed even further with a lighting treatment of bare globes and rich colour washes. A pleasure to shoot and even more of a pleasure to watch. One thing that I found peculiar though was the quite eclectic crowd that had come along tonight. I could not help make comparisons with some of the female adoring fans and the type that would frequent some of those city pubs that most music goers would tend to avoid. I am not too sure what this says about the band, but everyone seemed to enjoy their night, so I am hoping it is nothing but positives.

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A week ago I worked with talented local musician Bec Plath on her EP Cover and press shots. I am still making the final touches on her cover but for now her press shots have been released to the world. Check them out.

Bec was an ABSOLUTE pleasure to work with. A musician who trusted my concept, using locations that had been on my ‘wishlist’ to shoot at for a while, and a truly easy and beautiful subject to shoot.

I am really excited by the EP Cover too. I will put it up here when it is all released.

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Earlier this month I was asked to shoot press shots for Fatty Gets A Stylist, a new music project between Kate Miller Heidke and her husband Kier Nuttall.

This shoot was kind of difficult as the brief and reference shots for their concept meant that I needed to use available light during nightfall. Not only was this difficult for me as it was quite different to how I usually worked with bands shots, but also I had to shoot most of these at high apertures and low ISOs (to even out the shadows and highlights in the available light) thus resulting in quite slow shutter speeds.To get shots in focus we shot each frame multiple times with count downs to hold the poses.

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In April I was invited along to Band Camp Fast Track, a four day music workshop for emerging musicians put on by the Moreton Bay Region Council.

I was asked to run 45 minute press sessions with the bands and musicians in attendance and show them the ropes of having their photos taken.  With each band I attempted a few different looks with the aim to deliver 2 – 3 photos each.

With an hour before hand to location scout this shoot had the challenge of being shot at QUT Carseldine campus, a location that proved to be not very inspiring.

Armed with 400W strobes and a bit of creativity we were able to pull 5 different looks from the grounds.

Julz de Maria

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On Friday I was asked to help Sydney based photographer Dan Boud in covering the Brisbane leg of the St Jerome’s Laneway festival. My job was to second shoot, basically trying to catch many of the same artists that Dan was shooting but from a different angle. And also to cover bands that clashed in the timetable.

The day started off incredibly hot, which left most photographers quite drained. Highlights from the day photograhically were !!! (pictured above), Les Savy Fav (who’s reputation for his dynamic and crazy live performances has quickly spread around the country) and personal favourites Holy F*@k and the Jezabels (who I made a point of staying and watching the whole set of).

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Just after Splendour I photographed up and coming band Calais in a promo session. We tackled a couple of safe shots plus one idea I wanted to try using fluoros that the band now want to use for branding. All the boys are still in high-school and are currently regularly gigging. Check them out.

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Day four of Bluesfest saw me shoot Gogol Bordello with a dying camera.

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