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. 

Local band Last Dinosaurs supported on the night.

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.

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.

Dead Letter Circus were supported by Closure in Moscow.

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.

A full gallery of the set can be found below.

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.

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.

Props to Bec who even posed for this last shot amongst the rotten, overgrown stairs, even with her fear of spiders. Bec was either going to love this shot or never work with me again for making her face her fears. I hope its the former

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.

I spent three nights location scouting trying to find locations that suited the brief but also at the same time trying to find locations that had the right mix of available light (in my scouting I was looking for the right temperature as the main light and any other available light that would add to the mood of the concept). These shots were shot at a mixture of shutter speeds ranging from 1/6th sec – 1.3 seconds (and note NO HDR was used in the post processing of these shots).

Another difficulty from this shoot was that both Kate and Kier couldn’t actually see through those masks, so instructing them which way to move and pose was a little difficult.

Anyway here are the results. Let me know what you think.

The Fatty Gets a Stylist album is dropping in Australia in June.

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

We started shooting with Julz de Maria. Being a solo musician the long grass we were able to transform in to the look above. Without underexposing the ambient you would be able to see the fence for the boundary of the campus in this shot.

The back of one of the buildings had these discarded sheets of board uner some stairs. I arranged them against a wall to give a more textured look.

The Verge

The Verge were shot second. This was a shot at the end of their session were the boys wanted to play with a more dynamic look.

The first shot I got with these guys was from a shallow puddle that was in the carpark.

The Mental Charms

The Mental Charms were the last band I shot for the day. Nailing some great poses in between these water tanks, we only managed one ‘location’ for them but managed to pull off some greats shots that the boys were happy with.