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.

It is that time of the year again, the Queensland Poetry Festival. I think this year is my 5th year photographing the festival and as my longest standing clients I always enjoy this time of the year. Not only do the words of the poets inspire me but I also see it as a benchmark to measure how far I have come and what I still want to achieve in the next coming year. The poets and friends of the Queensland Poetry Festival have become more then just familiar faces as the years have gone on. Shooting the Queensland Poetry Festival each year has led to some amazing opportunities, namely photographing the weddings of some of the board members.

The lighting at the Judith Wright Centre helped in making these photos of poets look even more interesting. Sometimes it is hard to get shots that look different because in reality what I am shooting are people mostly just reading/ talking at a microphone. How do you make these shots different? A lot of the time I am looking for different ways to compose my shots, or different expressions to try and capture.

I walked away from the festival with hundreds of favourite photos. A selection of these have been shown above and a few more can be seen 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.

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

No Sleep Til, what can I say. The first shoot of my summer festivals and it definitely left me and my cameras a little battered and bruised. Even though this shoot was the first of the SUMMER festival season with the weather it definitely felt like a festival not dissimilar to the weather produced by the mid-year Splendour festival. A lot raining and a little bit cold, considering to throw on a scarf to shoot this festival was definitely not something that felt at home in December.

I was sitting at home while doors opened to the festival, all packed and ready to go, but thought for my and my cameras safety I should wait until the rained cleared up a bit. Alas it didn’t happen so at 2:00 I headed in the festival just in time to catch Suicidal Silence

At this time in the afternoon the crowd were definitely soaked through yet still in high spirits.

Next I headed over to the Red stage to photograph Katatonia, followed by aussie act Frenzal Rhomb. Everytime I see and hear Lyndsey I just want to smack him in the head, wholy due to his terrible, condiscending interview skills that he performs on air in his JJJ ‘day job’ gig. But photographed them I did and the crowd loved it.

Battling the rain and thoroughly soaked through at this stage I use the time after I exit the pit for Frenzal as a chance to get some shelter in the only undercover section of the festival, under the grand stands used for the Ekka. Most of the crowd had a similar idea, so all I managed to do was stand in the aisle, snap off a few pics, and reaarrange my gear in a hope to save it from getting damaged.

Back down in the pits I managed to catch August Burns Red before camera failure started occuring on my gear.

At this point my multidirectional button on my camera started to go on the fritz. The rain hadn’t let up the whole time I was there, and going from just covering my cameras with ponchos I had bought with me in between sets but shooting uncovered, was no longer working for my cameras. So at this point I made a call and went home to glad wrap, freezer bag then shopping bag my cameras. On my way out of the festival I overheard a lot of people mutter about the rain and decided after Frenzal Rhomb that they had gotten their money worth so decided to call it quits.

Back to the festival with fresh clothes, protecting layers of plastic for my cameras and a few hours left of the festival I made it just in time to catch NoFX

Next on to one of the dual headliners Megadeth and the rain still was set in. Megadeth were set to hit the Black Stage at 8:50 just as NoFX were due to finish over at the Red Stage, but I am not sure if it was due to the rain or wanting to irritate the NoFX fans over at the Red Stage (after NoFX were slandering MegaDeth and their fans just half an hour earlier) but they took to the stage ten minutes early with a very devoted but quite small fanbase taking in their set. Crowds over at the Red Stage were definitely a lot thicker, but that didn’t stop Megadeth putting on an enormous show of lights, guitar riffs and signature rock moves.

Back over at the Red Stage I shoot the final act for the night, the Decsendants, before heading home nursing a broken SLR (my main body started outputting an Err 20 during the first three songs).