The people who have known me for a while know that I started out as a music photographer. The first wedding I ever shot was for the bassist in a band that I had photographed who just so happened to like my very primitive style at the time. Moving to Brisbane from Wollongong nearly 3 years ago was a huge step backwards professionally on this front, I was reasonably well known in Sydney circles but I didn’t have contacts up here and would have had to start all over again in Brisbane, which I never did due to a range of factors.

Brother and sister band bugGiRL are two people I’ve had a lot of history with; Clinton (perhaps the nicest man in the world) is the drummer and he was the drummer in my old band. The singer/guitarist Amber’s old band supported us at our EP launch and I’ve known them for ages. bugGiRL have been based out of the USA for a few years and have returned to Australia to record and release a number of EPs. Amber is currently playing with the all-girl Hell’s Belles, described by Angus Young as the world’s best AC/DC tribute band.

This shot is one I took for them about two years ago that has been sitting in my archives waiting to see the light of day. So here it is!

I still love doing this kind of work but I’m a bit fresh in Melbourne so if you can hook me up, go on ahead! There’s some interesting times ahead for me and doing some work like this every now and then would make sure that I won’t go to sleep dreaming of weddings.

The last few months have been a pretty tough time for me creatively. I’m in what’s known as a bit of a funk and photography isn’t something where my heart is at the moment. I know it’s just a matter of time for me to get my interest back. But in saying that, I’ve still been doing plenty of work for other people covering weddings, band promos and portraits. I’ve also been involved in the production, filming and editing of a TV comedy series a friend and I created as well as some video clip work. I’ll get to those in a few days…

This is a promo photo I took for BugGiRL a few months ago down in Wollongong. The band were flying out for the USA as part of a massive tour a few days after this shoot and are still there at the moment. Check them out if you get a chance and you’re in any of these places in the next month or so.

I also took some photos for a young Brisbane band called Wheeler. These guys, with an average age of 13, just won a local competition against much older competition and are working hard towards developing a bigger fanbase and getting their music out. I have to say, the conversation with the two younger members Flaxton and Xane about nerf machine guns was probably one of the best I’ve ever had with a band during a photoshoot!

The Mercy Beat are an “electrifying” rock band from the inner suburbs of Brisbane (ha! I’m really funny). They play an uncompromising genre blending mix of fast rocky punk. They’ve been described as something similar to The Bronx, but they (and I) kinda disagree with that. Check them out for yourself and decide, I think it’s just downright awesome music, who cares about labels and descriptions?

For the first time, I went into a photoshoot planning only 2 photos. Normally I try and get as many good ones as I can, but this different approach let me really think about what I needed to do well before the actual event. I knew it was going to be a bunch of composites which generally require the greatest amount of planning. The next photo here was something the band had thought of and told me on the evening, thankfully there was enough room in my brain to be able to work that one out as well.

Lighting was simple in my two planned set ups, but for the previous shot we had to do a bit of thinking as it’s a 4 image composite.

left guy: 430EX @ 1/4 through shoot through umbrella very close to head, 580EX with blue gel about 1.5m back and to the right of him @ 1/1
lightning guy: 580EX @ 1/4 + 0.3 into shoot through umbrella directly above with blue gel, 430EX @ 1/2 into reflective umbrella directly below camera
surprised guy: 580EX @ 1/4 with blue gel through shoot through umbrella
right guy: same as left guy but on opposite sides.

The final image is what happens after a lightning strike. Lighting for this shot was again quite simple, just a 580EX into reflective umbrella @ 1/2 directly above and between myself and subjects with a
430EX @ 1/4 directly behind.