One of the ways we wanted to start branching out at MTA was to not only offer our services to cosplayers but other creatives as well. We know so many artists in various fields that all of the experience we’ve gained over the years could also help them.
The first couple of steps toward that brought me back to what started my photography journey: music.
The Music Was Always There
I’ve talked quite a bit about how covering shows in various ways started to help define my creative style. A good bit of that would be around thinking through composition and framing. For a number of years not only would I be using a 18-55mm lens but also some form of longer zoom like a 75-300mm. Since most venues I went to did not have any sort of “media pit” or the few that did I would not have access to them. I’d have to get creative. Plus I did not want to get in the way of the people enjoying the show.
Using the longer zoom lenses was really the reason why I described my shooting style as “concert portraits” for some time. Getting a pic of one member of the band from mid-thigh or waist up and filling the frame with them. Depending on the group I’d sometimes be able to do this with two or three members in the same way. I’d still try to get full body shots or wider band shots. But the close-ups were something I’d always come back to. Moving around and trying to change my viewing angle helped a lot with that as well. I joke that I move around like I’m in combat when working in a studio setting. Covering shows is probably where it came from. I keep my shoes on during performances though.
One other big piece for me was learning to anticipate how people might move about on stage. Even if I had not seen a particular group before if the music they were performing was adjacent to stuff I knew I’d be able to figure their vibe out and work accordingly. This is super helpful especially with performers who move around a lot. I mean have you seen Descendants of Erdrick, Lex the Lexicon, Bitforce, Shubzilla, EyeQ, or Megaran? Yeah, they certainly don’t stand still.
In my head I started referring to that as “the art of paying attention”. Not so much as to when exactly to click the shutter. But also when I feel like the current moments could lead to some amazing photo possibilities. It’s worked well for not only shooting performances but also in our cosplay/fine art work. There’s been times when a subject will do something completely random, I’ll see it, and say “Hold on, we need to do a photo of that.” And it’s led to some of our best photos.
While I had stepped away from covering music the way I had in the past, all of that experience had a direct influence on the work we’ve done over the past few years. And it would certainly still fit working with musicians in whatever capacity.
The First Step: The Masters of Unlocking
Let’s just say that Texas is really good for having video game music bands spring up at random.
I had known one of the guitarists, Matt Brewer, for a few years through another friend of ours. Not only is he nerdy as shit, he has deep knowledge of music, is a great cook, and certainly knows what the fuck when it comes to beer. So he and I get along great.
He started The Masters of Unlocking with fellow guitarist Bryan Dixon. Not only are they both talented… but they also do some “deep cuts” when it comes to video game music. That’s something I can certainly appreciate.
They asked if they could hire us to get photos to use for social media and electronic press kits. The only photos they had prior to this were ones I had taken of them when they were on the bill for the Descendants of Erdrick 10th anniversary show. Both of them loved those pics. So when they pinged us about it of course we were down.
I knew at first we wanted some evenly lit shots of them on a neutral background. From there we got creative. I knew I wanted to do some neat stuff with colored gels, but wasn’t quite sure what to go with at first. I asked Matt and Bryan, and they mentioned that in the future their band logo would have different accent colors. So we went with matching those colors as a direction. And all of us thought it worked pretty well.
Near the end of our studio session time I wanted to try something really dumb. I put four Yongnuo strobes on a bracket behind them, had Luis spray a whole bunch of Atmosphere Aerosol in front of it, and took shots while they were playing. When people saw that pic some said “I’m getting some Tenacious D vibes from this.” The idea totally came from one scene in the video for “Tribute”. We were all greatly amused by that.
The Second Step: Bone Pilots
Now a good chunk of this band I had a lot of history with. I had known Justin Olejnik (drummer) and Russ Tanner (guitarist/vocalist) for a number of years through some other bands. But it was Jen Borland (keyboardist/vocalist) who’s pretty much been there since the beginning of my creative journey. The two of us have been through a lot together. Not only as artists but also by being a part of each other’s lives in general.
The cellist, Stephen Jones (AKA Professor Steve), announced that he would be leaving the band. But for a very good reason. He had taken a position in Lithuania to lead a team involved with genetic engineering technology research. The fact that he and his group will be working on improving tools that are used in helping cure diseases is pretty awesome. It’s sad to see him go. But at least he’ll be doing his part to help make the world a better place. So they put together one last show to give him a proper send off. And they asked me to come take photos. Which of course I was down for.
The funny thing is that it was at Kick Butt Coffee. Which was the same venue where the Descendants of Erdrick 10th anniversary show took place 19 months ago.
Given that it had been so long since I had covered a show I didn’t know how I would do with getting good pics. But much like the more recent studio projects we’ve done it was like there was no year-plus long gap at all.
The Positive Feedback Loop
Aside from the “art of paying attention” bit I mentioned earlier there’s still more where cosplay, fine art portraits, and music can feed into each other. One is paying attention to lighting. I think some of my love for playing with colored lights and shaping them comes from all of the shows I’ve shot in the past. There is certainly some neat stuff I’ve seen with stage lighting that would be really cool to try outside of that.
The big thing for me with all of these genres is “capturing images of people”. Though the term sounds more simple than I’m implying here.
For instance with cosplay we’re never about “we’re going to show this character as everyone else understands them.” We aim more for “how do YOU understand this character” and “how do you see yourself as them?” And that’s something that I think really brings something to our photos.
I approach musicians in the same way. How people are on stage can have various levels of departure from how they are normally. There’s certainly some fun to be had there with that and great pics to be taken. So if I get these people in front of my camera outside of a performance I want to figure out the space between when they’re on stage versus where they’re not. And in a way a lot of this could be applied to working with artists in other fields as well.
Final Thoughts
I did back away from covering music so I could really explore what was possible with cosplay and fine art portraits.
Now that I’ve had a chance to come back around to music… maybe there’s a lot more possibilities there.
Admittedly for the longest time I was putting energy into the whole “live” aspect and really hadn’t considered a lot outside of that. I did get brought in for a couple of projects during that time that didn’t involve a performance. But at the time I hadn’t thought to possibly do more in that realm.
When I consider what I’ve learned from stepping out of that space it was probably for the better. Now I can take the newer knowledge and do things I wouldn’t have thought of before.
And others can take advantage of that.
