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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

This year my Splendour in the Grass festival saw me mainly backstage assisting Dan Boud in the FasterLouder studio. As I knew I wouldn’t have much time to actually shoot much myself I decided to head to the festival grounds a day early so that I could have a full day shooting my own photos. I decided to undertake two projects at Splendour this year, the first being a timelapse of my whole festival experience (video to come soon) plus portraits of the punters at the festival. I spent the afternoon of the Thursday walking through the festival and campsite taking photos of interesting people I saw.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

On Sunday Mr Maps performed a free set on a tennis court in New Farm park. In collaboration with Small Lakes and Guerilla Gigs, the gig was held to launch their new single Tennis Party. With weather threatening to call off/ postpone the gig a small crowd hovered around the tennis courts during soundcheck. But almost like clockwork 2PM hit with blue skies and a crowd of 200 people packed on the courts to watch Mr Maps play.

Read the rest of this entry »

So Rave magazine is turning 1000. Their next issue is their 1000th issue in 20 years. On Friday 15th July they are having a mega birthday party and ONE of the headliner acts is a Brisbane megaband that has been appropriately named the BrisBand Experience. The band consists of a melting pot of members from current and past local bands including Katie Noonan (george), Steve Pope (drummer with Kate Miller-Heidke, transport), Thomas Murphy (Bloodpoets), Dan James (Drawn from Bees), Caleb James (Rhubarb), Tony Garret (The Boat People) and Ben Dalton (Hungry Kids of Hungary).

As Rave wanted to feature this band on the cover of their 999th issue, and as this band being a one off effort did not have any press shots, I was given the task to shoot the cover and inlay shots for the issue. This was one of those sessions that I had to bring the studio to the band. With all the band members currently doing other projects we had only ONE 2 hour period where the whole band could be in the once place at the one time….in the rehearsal studio TWO days before the issue hit the newstands.

So with a portable studio in tow and armed with concepts, plans and back up plans I was able to shoot the cover shot and inlay shots PLUS back up shots in the rehearsal room next door to the space the band were rehearsing in.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Things have been a bit hectic over here. In the past two months I have only shot one live gig, and I am finally getting around here to blog the pictures here. Katy Perry at Brisbane Entertainment Centre on the 5th May. As it was a sound desk shoot, and being the short photographer I am, this shoot was a little difficult in timing to get shots through the hands of fans.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »