Last week I went along to The Zoo to photograph Dead Letter Cirucs for Everguide. The day before the Ekka public holiday, the show sold out earlier that day, so getting in early to get prime spot was mandatory.

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So this week I was asked to shoot the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Festival in Brisbane for Everguide. I have been shooting a lot for Everguide lately. It has been great dabbling in other styles of shooting.

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Last week I caught up with Maggie Collins for a quick headshot/ portrait session. Maggie Collins is a weekend host on Triple J and she needed some shots to accompany her online staff profile on the Triple J website.

The shoot was SUCH a blast with Maggie keen to do pretty much anything. After 20 minutes and a costume change we wrapped with a buttload of great shots. Maggie chose these as her favourites.

Much love goes out to Carla Cosgrove for doing Maggie’s hair and make-up. Also to my helpful assistant’s Michael Battensby and Tessa Fox.

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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Just a quick entry to share with you the final result for Bec Plath‘s EP cover that we shot in the same session as these press shots I have previously mentioned in another blog. Working with Bec was so easy. Usually the hardest part is concept developing for a band, but with Bec the concept was nutted out in one 1/2 hour facebook conversation. She showed me reference images of covers she liked, and I had wanted to work with falling glitter for a while so I pitched this idea to her. She loved it, and the shoot seed had been planted.

Things that I began to study after that is WHAT made a good cover image. Looking at lighting and how they are shot, I settled on a mysterious half lit/ half shadow lighting treatment. I also really wanted to have only a sliver of focus and as I don’t have any ND filters for my 50mm I settled on using my recently acquired Tilt Shift lens. Not only was I able to selectively focus on the eyes, but it was also given to me with a polariser filter that acted as a bit of an ND filter making me able to shoot a little more wide open with the lens.

On the light, I shot with a basic reflector and used baking paper to diffuse the light a touch. I had also bought from Reverse Garbage some old theatre lighting gels which included some ‘ND’ style gels (basically dark – neutral coloured gels to stop down the light). As I wanted the light really close to Bec to get this type of fall off on her, I used some of these gels to try and bring down the intensity of my light.

On top of all this, the shoot was held in my rather small living room. So to stop lighting bouncing all over I used a flag close to the right side of her face to bring out the shadows.

Anyway enough on the technical, Bec’s EP is being released on the 6th August at Beetle Bar. At the moment the image above is being used on the tour poster, the actual album artwork to be released later.

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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In March and April I was commissioned for the second year in a row to photograph new marketing and promotion photos for the Southbank Institute of TAFE. Over a few days I was commissioned to photograph across a few different faculties. At the moment some of these images are being used in advertising for the TAFE. Look out for them around the traps.

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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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At the end of March I photographed the Foo Fighters Flood Relief fundraiser gig for the Vine.

Before the gig I received a call from the band’s management in regards to the possibility of licensing photos for a Japan magazine. I was given the assignment to shoot all members of the band WITH their respective instruments. Once in the pit this task was made a little harder as we were escorted out after only two songs due to the crowd getting a little rowdy.

Fortunately though Sony Japan and the band’s management were happy with the shots and a license was struck for the shot to appear in the May issue of Player magazine. I am still waiting for digital proofs of the inside story images, but for now here is the cover with a link back to the shots in the Vine’s Foo Fighters gallery.

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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