Award Winning Band Photographer
As a professional band photographer I try to regularly enter the monthly competitions that the SWPP have.
I usually do pretty good, especially when I enter my band photographer images and I have won a few Golds and a lot of Silver awards. August however, was a whole different matter. Definitely my best month ever with me picking up THREE Golds and 1 Silver. All the images that I won these photography awards for, where for my band photographer images. This is usually for promotional, publicity, pr, editorial, or advertising for the band and musicians. These image might look familiar to everyone as most are a part of the band and musician competition that I am having (you can view and vote for those images here).
So anyways, let’s get down to the images and what they won!!
As a professional band photographer, I get to work with a lot of great bands. The first image to win gold is of Norwich band Solidagoes. This image wasn’t actually a part of the original concept that we had when I worked with them. Originally, Solidagoes came to me with the idea of having them on another planet. So we decided to do everything on a green screen. While we were messing about, we came to this idea. I wanted pretty dramatic lighting for this to really brings out the structure of everyones face, so I went with split lighting here. Putting the image together in PhotoShop I did my usual thing, but cropped it like this as it just felt better (and it would make for a great 2 page spread in a CD book). This image won Gold in the Contemporary Portrait Category and I couldn’t be more pleased with the results. If you are someone in need of creative publicity, PR, promotional, or advertising photography please visit my Commercial Photographer page as well as the Band Photographer page. I am based in Suffolk between Cambridge and Bur St. Edmunds, I easily cover all of East Anglia including Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Essex as well as London and the rest of the UK.
This image, also of Norwich band Solidagoes, won Gold in the open category for the SWPP monthly competitions. This image was shot on the same day as the above image and is in line with the original idea that the band had for their promotional photography shoot. One of the great things about being a band photographer today is that everything is now digital and gives me to opportunity to composite images together. This image is about 5 or 6 different images composited together in Photoshop to give me what I had originally wanted. I shot each band member separately on a green screen. I set up my lights how I knew I wanted them with the finished product in my mind, and just asked them walk across my living room asking them to look in different directions each time. It was hard going through the different shots and deciding on which ones I wanted to use for the final image. I then went out and shot the ground area that you see and started putting this all together. This was the most complex composite image I had ever done in Photoshop, and I am really pleased that it won me a photography award. If you are someone in need of creative publicity, PR, promotional, or advertising photography please visit my Commercial Photographer page as well as the Band Photographer page. I am based in Suffolk between Cambridge and Bur St. Edmunds, I easily cover all of East Anglia including Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Essex as well as London and the rest of the UK.
This image is of Norwich band Keep it Secret. Keep it Secret entered my band photographer competition with the idea to be dressed up as super heros on the beach. We did do that, but we shot this at Horsey beach in Norfolk and they have this great area with these tall grasses and I knew I wanted to do something there as well. Being from Chicago originally, I added an image I had of the skyline as I felt the image was just missing “something”. I then went to work on the skyline in photoshop adding all the fire and smoke giving the image a story…which is why it won gold in the Pictoral category. I really feel them dressed as super heros without masks on, with a burning city behind them, really plays well on the bands name of Keep it Secret. If you are someone in need of creative publicity, PR, promotional, or advertising photography please visit my Commercial Photographer page as well as the Band Photographer page. I am based in Suffolk between Cambridge and Bur St. Edmunds, I easily cover all of East Anglia including Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Essex as well as London and the rest of the UK.
Finally we come to my one Silver award for this month. This image is of Norwich punk band Dying Breeds. This was taken after a couple hours of shooting their other images for their single Bank Job. I wanted to get a couple of more normal, simple posed shots and I think we nailed it with this. This photograph won Silver in the Family and Group Portrait category, and I think if I had entered it into publicity it may have had a different score….who knows. It was a simple shot…I just arranged the guys in a way that I felt worked and set up two off camera flashes to make sure we were all lit properly (we also had a very bright sun to contend with), and voila!! If you are someone in need of creative publicity, PR, promotional, or advertising photography please visit my Commercial Photographer page as well as the Band Photographer page. I am based in Suffolk between Cambridge and Bur St. Edmunds, I easily cover all of East Anglia including Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Essex as well as London and the rest of the UK.
So there you have my 4 band photographer awards for the month of August. Hopefully September will be just as good!! I do still have a couple of images from these bands shoots that I couldn’t enter this month (not enough categories), and I have a couple of other band shoots later this month as well…so keep your eyes peeled!!
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