Download 2019

Download 2019: My first time at Download ever and very cool to be there with Vega. As they hadn’t played there either the brief was simple, see what happens and get the shot!

It was a long day, lots of travelling and some trepidation when we got there because of the previous days rain and well publicised mud baths. But the sun shines on the righteous and the shine it did. None of us knew what to expect when we arrived, it was likely that we would be kept away from the main acts, perhaps even not in the same postcode as them as it’s such a vast place with very tight security zones. How wrong we were - full access, all day, meals included! It was surreal to share a backstage cafe with Matt Sorum of Guns & Roses/Deadland Ritual/The Cult and great to say hi again to Steve Stevens who was in the same queue for coffee as I was! Hell, we even got on the same shuttle bus as Geezer Butler…

Skynd

I made a conscious decision not to run around everywhere with my camera that day. For one, it just wasn’t cool pointing a DSLR at the artists backstage. They didn’t know me and trust has to be built. Secondly, I wanted to be present. To be backstage at Download was a huge privilege and I wanted to savour every moment and I’m so glad I did just that.

The band on immediately before Vega were an industrial/alternative band called SKYND. I shot these to get warmed up and in the zone prior to Vega and I’m so glad I did, what a visual feast they were! I admit that a band using triggered samples to songs solely about the escapades of serial killers probably wouldn’t have attracted me to a gig anytime soon but you live and learn, they were great! Scary, enigmatic, smart and exciting - band members named only Mother and Father and both masked and seriously creepy - and this was a daytime show!

This looked interesting and the best was yet to come…

How can you follow that? Vega did and did it superbly. The Dogtooth Stage clearly proved to be a melting pot of styles with each act. While capturing the behind-the-scenes shots of them setting up it was clear that there was some uncertainty about modern rock following industrial metal but Download and its crowd are more than diverse, they are positively welcoming. Vega, it would turn out, had nothing to fear.

Getting back to the brief, I asked if the band wanted a crowd shot at the end of their set. “ I dunno” said Nick, “depends how we go down.” Well, after just one song it was clear to me that a crowd shot from the drum riser was definitely going to happen and I clearly didn’t need to wait for any signal from the singer to take my mark.

Epic and triumphant…

This final shot says it all. Vega played against some of the best bands in the world that day and packed out their stage. The sun was shining, Whitesnake were playing on the Main Stage, Opeth just next door yet Vega pulled in a packed audience to their indoor stage with no room to spare.

Look out for their new album coming in 2020, the photoshoot for it is booked and I’m ready to tour again when they are (perhaps this time I won’t break my knee…but that’s another story)!

Vega with a few thousand of their closest friends.

Studio Shoot with Singer/Songwriter Issa

Recently I was contacted by Singer/Songwriter Issa to quickly come up with a set of images to support her album “Run with the Pack” which was being released in just six weeks time.  Apparently a photoshoot in Italy a few weeks before hadn’t yielded the results required so a quick turnaround was needed back in the UK!

Issa’s studio of choice was York Photography Studio and all manner of technical wizardry was on hand as part of the hire.  I normally shoot on location with only the equipment I can carry (and usually with just a few minutes to set up and shoot for most bands on a tour schedule) so it was a major bonus to have a full array of grip gear, backgrounds and even costume changes all on hand (for Issa, not for me).   With Elara Christie as my assistant for the shoot too I knew that this was going to be a load of fun.

Having been very impressed by the wonderful work of Jake Hicks I wanted to use the opportunity of a full studio shoot to utilise coloured gelled portrait lighting.  I’m well used to using coloured flash lighting in many of my band shoots (as can be seen in my portfolio) but much less so for portraiture.  Jake is an excellent educator as well as photographer which inspired me to use this approach.

For most of the shoot I used a four light set up.  Two gelled strip diffusers as side lights (one red, the other yellow), one blue gelled softbox at ground level to the front and a gridded key light beauty dish 45 degrees above Issa.  The blue softbox to the front was used not to remove shadows but to turn them subtly blue.  This, combined with the other colours combined to give an unusual and interesting colour pallet for a portrait - totally in keeping with the rock-star persona!

By feathering (moving the light slightly, varying the amount of light hitting Issa) the coloured side diffusers were used to emphasise more or less of the two colours involved.  I think that these two images showing predominantly red were favourites of mine from the shoot.  I love the sci-fi-esque  look of these too.

Re-touching was used post-production for all images but I wanted to add a little more to one or two just to give Issa and the record company, Frontiers, more options when making their selections.

We, as a team, were very happy with the results from that evening and Frontiers went on to use the images as both the album cover and for the booklet shots.  It’s always very, very exciting to go into a record store and pick up a record with my photographs featured, not least the cover shot!

Finally, Issa has used other images from the shoot as publicity photographs and these have been selected by various national music magazines in their interviews, features and reviews of her excellent album which you can buy here. 

Jake Hicks runs some amazing photography courses and forthcoming events are listed here.

9 out of 10!

Steve Stevens. London.

The question always comes up in forums, talking to enthusiasts and in countless "How To" posts on YouTube etc - How do you get access?  The usual answer is to shoot for a magazine/website and try that way.  My answer has always been different: Networking and contacts, if your work is good then you just need to get it seen by the people you want to work with.  Find the path that leads to them and you're in.

In an earlier blog post I wrote about photographing the Billy Idol band.  I had no direct links to the band or organisation and I wasn't shooting for a publication.  However, I was known by Californian photographer Alan Hess (who was an Adobe and Kelby Photoshop instructor and music photographer - he posted one of my photos as "the perfect example of a gig photograph").  Alan had shot the artwork for the rhythm guitarists Gibson Guitar endorsements.  This was my way in.  I contacted the guitarist, Billy Morrison, and showed him Alan's comment with a small selection of my work.  Billy loved it and got me on board for the Glasgow leg of the tour.

The Ray Gun - Steve Stevens trademark guitar effect

Almost two years later and the lead guitarist from Billy Idol's band, Steve Stevens announced a small European tour.  The first time he would be performing his most celebrated songs in the UK.  You know, Dirty Diana by Michael Jackson and the Top Gun main Theme - yes, that's Grammy Award winner Steve Stevens on guitar.  He was also performing tracks from his short lived but monumental album "Atomic Playboys" from the 80's.  A rare treat.

Enter Mr Morrison again - a quick note to Billy to ask if he a) remembered me and b) could put me in touch with Steve's management to request access.  The next day I received a wonderful email from Steve Stevens lovely wife to invite me to shoot the show and to photograph the Meet & Greets in London.  Very cool Mr Morrison. Very cool.

So there's the lesson on "contacts"  Where there's a link in don't be afraid to use it.  Now on to Networking.  During my stint as tour photographer for Vega the month before we hit a small venue in London called the 100 Club.  A great little place which had hosted Metallica, Foo Fighters, various Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  I spent a great afternoon quite drunk (it was my birthday) and in the brilliant company of Phil the sound engineer.  Phil had a great story to tell.  In fact, Phil had a hundred great stories to tell from his time with some of the biggest bands of the 80's and 90's and even had a fantastic little anecdote about astronaut Neil Armstrong which ended in the line "am I driving too fast for you Neil?" but I digress...

Steve and Franky Perez on vocals.

On to the day of the Stevens show.  I hit London very early, checked in to the hotel and had a few hours to spare until after sound-check.  Walking past the venue on my way for an early lunch I spotted Phil!  He was sound engineer for this tour! He called me in, gave me a tour of the place and invited me to watch sound check and went on to tell me even more out of this world stories.  

Not only was it a huge pleasure to shoot Steve and his band but, through luck, goodwill and meeting genuinely good people I was able to see a run-through of Steve's greatest hits in an audience of only four people.  I took no photos for this upon Steve's request and simply relished the music.

Seen this pose somewhere before: The Rebel Yell solo.

Thank you to Steve, Josie, Billy and Phil.

The Winter in Eden shoot at Belsay Hall

This photograph was used for the second Winter in Eden album "Echoes of Betrayal".  It was shot on a beautiful  autumn morning in the Northumberland countryside at Belsay Hall, owned and run by English Heritage.

This is the main hallway of the Georgian main building.  It leads to some wonderfully large and open family rooms, a library and bedrooms.  All of which are empty but in the condition that the family left them in upon bequeathing the property to English Heritage - a photographers dream and more of those rooms later...

The hallway is lit by a huge skylight three stories above the entrance but more light was needed.  The album cover had a blue theme throughout the artwork and I wanted to run that through into the photographs.  I gelled a couple of portable flash units and placed them on the floor behind the pillars that you can see in the picture.  I lit the band using a 42" softbox  just in front of the band.  It's always great fun when setting up these shots not to tell anyone about the coloured flashes placed behind them - when I show them the photos on the back of the camera they are always amazed to see brightly lit backgrounds completely out of thin air.  Of course, the secret to this is to arrive early and well before the band to get a relaxed setup.  Here's a photograph to test out the lighting and various colours before the band arrived:

You can see the flashes on the floor behind the pillars.

I then utilised the rest of the hallway from various angles to give the band more options for what to include on the album package.  Blue gelled backlighting was the common theme, the walls looked great and the colour suited the band brilliantly.

The band also brought multiple outfit changes, well prepared and very professional.

Time to change rooms (and outfits) and the library was next.  No books but terrific wood panelling and hardwood floors.  I'd like to say it was planned but the truth is that I got very lucky with the sunlight streaming through the south facade.  The early morning sun was truly spectacular and no extra lighting was needed.  Just the shadows to control.

Does my shadow look big in this?

Moving on to the rooms upstairs the light was good and only small fill-light or reflector was needed.  Again, the rooms were from a forgotten era but not derelict, English Heritage have done a great job keeping the building in the condition it's in.  If dereliction is your thing, there's also a castle ruins in the gardens of the main hall!  Here is the master bedroom again taken before the band arrived as a lighting test.

And here is the resulting photo with the band:

Outfit No. 3....

The light and images we were capturing really fired us up and we spent quite some time in the various rooms doing single shots and close-ups.

This was my first time meeting the band face-to-face and it was very productive.  Everyone was very professional and a pleasure to work with.  The band were so happy with the photos (and there were many more) that they invited me to their forthcoming Town Hall gig to do some behind-the-scenes shots and to cover their live show.  I remember being in the rafters above the audience at one point but I'll save that one for later...

Prior to the shoot I obtained permission from English Heritage.  Although they have a policy of no commercial photography they were very pragmatic when they learned that this was a low-budget shoot.  In fact, they waived our entrance fees on the day and treat us like a Hollywood production.  They were very cool and my thanks goes out to them once again.  I love this place, take a look for yourself:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/belsay-hall-castle-and-gardens

My first composite photoshoot...

Vega's new album (so far simply referred to as "Vega 4") will be released in early summer.  With the songs recorded and delivered to Frontiers I got the call from the band to do the photography for the CD and associated promos.

As we knew that we were going to drop in a background later I decided to shoot against a plain "Infinity Curve" to minimise Photoshop work afterwards.

"Infinity Curve" more like "Creased Curtains"

After dialling in the lighting with long-time collaborator and friend of the band, Lee "Fez" Foster, we got this shot that, surprisingly, all five band members agreed upon:

Now for the post-production back home in front of the iMac.  The band wanted a cool, almost abstract background (yes, that's all the direction I got) and, naturally, my mind turned to the Co-Op in Newcastle Upon Tyne, as you do.  Actually, they have a rather nice art-deco clock tower:

To my eyes, with a bit of manipulation and cropping, it could easily be turned into a sci-fi arena:

And now, the final image of the band composited against the unlikely backdrop of the Co-Op in Newcastle:

I love a nice lens flare (C) JJ Abrams

Finally, with the logo and other details added, here is Vega's first promo for the forthcoming tour, courtesy of Darklight Device and the Co-Op.  See you on the road - say "Hi" if you see me!