Starting February off on the right foot, I spent a day in studio photographing Gord Alexander. He is one of Edmonton’s elite drummers in the heavy metal community, an active member in the local music scene, and my significant other. So naturally, my mission for this shoot was to make him look extra good. Shooting portraits of musicians in this way is always exciting for me. It’s one thing to work with a whole band, and it’s another to work with an individual. You get to peel away that “collective band-brain” exterior, where everyone needs to be cohesive with details in unison, and instead, focus on the one, single human in front of your lens. It’s an opportunity to really make that one person shine, and I’m always glad to take that opportunity. We spent the day shooting Gord and his drum kit in Edmonton’s gorgeous Studio A on their super cool cyclorama wall. This shoot was intended to be really simple, and was done with an easy 3 light set up, with soft boxes on the strobes.
Following my shoot with Gord, I was invited to hang out and shoot some behind the scenes photos with my pals in Striker. After recently being nominated for a Juno Award, the guys were busy filming some studio footage in the gorgeous Audio Department, running through their set of select songs, and getting key footage for new releases and announcements to come over the course of 2020. Working with the guys in this setting is a favorite for me, because their personalities really shine through when in this type of setting and it always makes for great candid shots. It’s always a pleasure working with the kats of Striker, not only are they an elite band coming out of Edmonton, but they’re some of the hardest working people I’ve been blessed with working with, and I always leave shoots with them feeling energized and motivated to kick ass and get shit done.
Fellow Canadians in Bedouin Soundclash visited The Starlite Room early on in the month, bringing their ska-funkiness to a reasonably full room, despite there being a total blizzard happening outside earlier that day. With their hip-hop opener Odario of Grand Analog getting things warmed up, the night was set off on the right foot for good tunes and good memories. I love shooting in the Starlite Room. This place not only has TONS of music history, but it’s considered a historic building in the city of Edmonton as well, and it has some of the nicest venue staff that I’ve had the privilege of working with. It’s a very special thing to play the Starlite stage, reasonably so. For this show, the audience was pretty relaxed and laid-back, so I didn’t have to work too hard making my way through the crowd, so I opted to shoot a little wider than usual, with intentions of catching the full scope of the show while getting those key ‘tight’ shots.
I spent Valentine’s Day back at the Starlite Room, this time totally in my element, photographing a PACKED metal show. The iconic group, Soulfly was in town with thrashers in Toxic Holocaust as support. Throwing a bone to the local metal community, the likes of local heavy weights in Tessitura and Ravage Red we’re invited onto the bill to open up the night and get the ball rolling for what ended up being a wicked sold out show. This being a sold out event came with its fair share of challenges; minimal space to move around and compose shots, and the crowd was damn rowdy, so I remedied these expected and unavoidable issues by using a long lens in a few notably “safe” spots in the venue, and having my head on a swivel. The lighting gods smiled upon me this night, because the stage was lit up exceptionally well, making my life and job so much easier. Needless to say, I walked away from this one feeling good and excited to work on the photos.
Later on in the month, I got together with my pals Karli and Colton to photograph their pop punk project called Mutual Friends, as well as some branding photos for Karli’s vocal coaching business called The Inner Voice. We cracked out both shoots in one evening, and I think we managed to get some pretty cool stuff that embodied the vibe that Mutual Friend’s is all about, as well as capturing portraits of Karli in a way that best represents the vision she had with this shoot. I used a couple different methods for both shoots that I did that evening.
For Mutual Friends, we did a few photos out on the street of Whyte Ave. Anybody who’s shot portraits on any street after the sun has gone down knows how atrocious street lamp light can be, so to remedy this, I slapped a speedlite on my camera, adjusted the power output, and went to town with shooting. After a few shots on the street, we went inside and shot off a few more snaps in the audio studio space we borrowed for the evening. I had Karli and Colton sitting centered on the couch in the room, and I placed an LED ring light in front of them as my key light, with 2 Philips Hue Play lights on either side, both set to red. I was able to make the red’s in that shot SCREAM without over powering skin tones, while adding a little depth with some grainy textures to the shot.
With Karli’s portrait session, we had the same lighting set up with the couch, we just changed the color of the side lights to magenta and blue, and added a painted sound treatment canvas that was already in the studio behind the couch for some extra depth and color. We then went into the vocal booth in the studio, being a singer, we both agreed that having some shots in the booth with a fancy microphone was necessary, and for this portion, I used the ring light as my key light once again, the ceiling lights as extra fill and a boomed hue lamp over head, in purple for that added pop of color.
Bringing the month to a close with the likes of my Calgary pals in Traveler and Riot City was the cherry on top of a reasonably busy month. Both Traveler and Riot City crushed their sets at Shakers Roadhouse before teaming up to hop across the pond for their European Tour. Thankfully, Edmonton gave them both a warm send off. Both of these bands were a total pleasure to shoot for a couple reasons… One: They absolutely SHRED the stage-presence department. Two: Hair, hair and more hair! And as for an added bonus: Shakers is an awesome place to shoot.;The stage is a nice height to really get those intimate shots, and despite the minimal lighting set up, it’s well lit. It was quite easy to make all of these kats look like rock stars, and it’s all thanks to them knowing what’s up when being photographed on stage. In post, I wanted to really make the colors from this gig shine, both Riot City and Traveler are such musically vibrant bands, so I purposely neglected to dampen the majority of the primary colors that were present in these shots. I find that doing this properly can really make the scene in the photos pop, as well as directing the viewer’s (that’s you!) eye to the key details in the finished shot.
Thank YOU for taking a hot minute (or two) to read my February recap blog! Got questions regarding what I shot throughout the month of Feburary? Send me an email HERE with your concert photo questions, let’s nerd-out! But until then, stick around to get the scoop on March’s recap!
