Being a band photographer is one of the most rewarding aspects of being a professional photographer. Not only do I get to meet great people and discover new music, but I also get the chance to do things I don’t normally get to do with my photography. I am also pretty fortunate in that I am very well located for a band photographer. In between Cambridge and Norwich means that I can easily cover the local music scenes in both towns, but I am also only a short train ride from London…which means I get to work in a wide variety of settings, and a wide variety of bands.
So, one of the first bands that I shot as a band photographer was Hello Bear. I did a promo shoot for them in Nov(ish) 2010 and have since we have become good friends and have a great working relationship as well. So, when they contacted me about doing another promo shoot while they were recording I was very excited. I find as a band photographer that bands are pretty easy to work with in general, but things always get a bit better when you have worked with someone before. Everyone is more relaxed, and everyone is more willing to share ideas and get a little crazy. We arranged for this shoot to take place while they were recording at Sickroom Studios outside of Kings Lynn. They were staying at the studio for a week and this was really the most ideal time to do the shoot.
The setup of Sickroom studios is any photographers dream, especially a band photographer. The walls were absolutely covered in old photos and magazine clippings and just had an amazing feel to it. The only downside to it was the size of the room were rather small, making it a little bit harder to get my lighting how I wanted and sometimes making it hard to get shots from the angles that I wanted as well. But, I ran with it and we had an amazing and fun evening. So, here are some of my personal favourites from the shoot.
As you can see from the images, we did a lot of different things while doing this shoot. We set aside around 2 hours for the shoot, and went about 3…so not too bad really. The studio had a really old Super Nintendo and we all wanted to get something using that! One of my favourite shots is that one of them playing the SNES. The only thing is that the walls are just maybe a bit TOO busy….but, I think we captured a really good moment.
Since the band were staying there, they had some food stuff lying around, and we had a little fun with that as well. That shot (the one with the oranges and the baguettes) amazingly only took about 3 shots before we got the image we wanted. Had to use a rather slow shutter here, but thankfully Nikon cameras don’t have a problem with rear curtain flash when using off camera flash (sorry for the techno speak).
What are your favourite images from this shoot?
About: I am a professional band photographer based outside of Cambridge and cover all of the UK, but work mostly in the East Anglia and South East including Cambridge, Norwich, London, Kings Lynn, Colchester, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex. Feel free to contact me to talk about your music promotion photography needs.
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