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.

Shooting 10 band members in a creative way was a bit of a challenge. As an experiment I also played with splicing the bands faces into a little black and white piece below.

This is just a snippet of the hundreds of photos I shot over 4 sessions (split into two days) from the festival It still has a couple of days to go so check out the program and what is left to see here.

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.

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.

With the cover Aaron Sammut did the post production. The concept also came from Aaron (Rave magazine graphic designer and layout guy). Thanks also to Tony Vollmerhause (Rave magazine advertising guy) who has been organising the Rave party and playing negotiator with the band members.

Rave’s  “Thousand in Twenty” party is on this Friday at The Zoo with tickets available online ($20.00) or on the door ($25.00). The gig faetures a special mystery headliner band (a mid 90′s Brisbane band), the BrisBand Experience, Dave McCormack and the Polaroids, Velociraptor and Inland Sea with Sarah Howells (TRIPLE J) djing between sets.

Also, go over to Rave’s facebook page and LIKE them. They are aiming for 1000 likes before their 1000th issue (next week)

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.

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.