Essence and Style.

Whatever the event; from corporate seminars to red carpet arrivals even live music concerts, the aim of the photographer must be to capture the essence of the event itself, the attendees and all the presenters or performers. This is an important aspect to look at when booking your photographer, take a look at their work, do you get a feeling for the people, the venue and the event itself.

The next thing to consider is style? A consistent professional photographer will have a style, a style that is identifiable throughout their work. This style should not be “forced”, often I see a “style” in a newer photographer that is forced, maybe a particular process applied to every shoot. Style does will mean all the shoots look the same taken in the same way, its usually deeper. Once a photographer becomes comfortable with what they are doing, the style will come automatically.

Over the past couple of weeks I have shot a number of music events. Hopefully you will feel a consistency though these shots.

Frontman Adam Levine of Maroon 5 at Brixton Academy

The key to capturing a frontman like Adam is not to follow them from end to end of the stage, it is having the confidence to watch them pick the spot you know they will arrive at and watch the way they move to get the right composition as well as their expression. the lights and the venue for this shoot enabled me to produce a really nice set of images.

The Barbarellas

The Barbarellas

With the Bararellas it was easy to read, they would separate strike a few poses but always return together. These made capturing both the duet and the individuals easy.

Wonderland play Wembley Arena

As the size of the group increases, capturing them all becomes harder. Wonderland only came close together twice, the rest of the time they spread out across 2/3 of the wide Wembley stage. A shot of them spread out would be so long and thin that it would be very difficult to use sensibly on the page.

Shane Lynch / Boyzone

Boyzone took this to the extreme; being spread out right across the stage. If this case there was no chance of a group shot. Here the only reasonable thing to do is to concentrate on each of the performers.

Tinie Tempah

It goes without saying then that individual performers are easier to cover. Even though Tinie bounced around the stage there were certain poses and stances that occurred over and over. “Reading” the performer takes time and experience, photographers that are able to do it will consistently produce images that reflect the performer.

The rules and ideas I suggest above not only apply to music shoots, but any “live” event, from loading charity lorries to corporate presentations, consistency is the key to my work.

PR Images should tell part of the story.

I really wanted to write this post just starting with the images but to as copyright laws are so dear to my heart I will link to the relevant newspaper pages. The pages in question are:

  • James Bond composer David Arnold will be 2012 musical director
  • Bond star to work on 2012 Olympics

    • If you follow my work you will know I have worked with David (and hope I will be doing so again). I found his musical knowledge and comment astonishing and think that he along with the rest of the team will do a fantastic job.

    This post though is not about David or the team, it is about the images that go along with the article. Try and put the subject out of your head and study the group shot on the first link (The Telegraph). Without the words what would you think the image was about? 3 teachers at a particular school?  (it could be a school in the background)? It could be about so many things but one image that does not spring to mind are The Olympics!

    The biggest single event this country is to host in many of our lifetimes and they could not even organise the shoot at the stadium, arena or anything else that jumped out as related to the story. I am not saying that money should have been spent on the shoot, with the financial state of the UK that would have been the very worst thing to do. No I am saying that location is everything in shoots like this. It must reflect the story, it must drag the reader in in case the words do not.

    I don’t think it is the fault of the photographer – the group shot is quite nicely arranged and the single portraits are nice too. No this is a PR organisation failure (although you could argue it’s not as it is in the major media). Normally the most difficult thing about this type of shoot is organising the diary to get everyone together at the same time. They managed that but PR’s should be thinking about more than diaries. 6/10 I think – could try harder!


    Brit Winners 2011

    Last night we had the Brit awards. I have been lucky enough to shoot a number of them;

    Mumford & Sons

    I shot “The Mumfords” at Brighton Corn Exchange back in March 2010. It was a great gig although the lighting was very poor.  It was one of those rare gigs where I got the chance to sit at the rear of the venue and listen for a short while. I really liked what I heard and purchased the album (which I play regularly) the next day.

    Tinie Tempah

    Tinie I photographed in a small club on Brighton seafront as part of “The Great Escape” festival (a great place to spot new talent). We were almost sitting on the stage and as a number of photographers rushed off to other gigs early, he really played to my camera before I left. It was a great gig.

    Plan B aka Ben Drew

    Finally Plan-B in the biggest venue of the 3: The Royal Albert Hall. This was taken in September during The Orange Rockcorps thank you concert. Each set was very short but again, he is another great performer.

    All in all, I can see why each of the winners won. All deserving. (IMHO).

    Why

    Following my interview with Stephen and watching this wonderfully inspiring talk by Simon Sinek I reviewed my website. It is clear to me instantly that all this site shows is what I produce (Photographs), there are absolutely no pointers to what makes me different to the thousands of other photographers, nothing as to why I’m a photographer, nothing that says why you should hire me. (except for the style of my images).

    It’s clear, I need to rewrite my “About” and “Commissioning” pages. This will take time as it needs to be clear and concise. In the meantime I am going to try and explain here. This is not a tightly edited piece, it’s just a flow of thoughts, just like the interview. There will be no “how” only “why”. Hopefully it will give you an insight into “Who is Julie Edwards”;


    The world around us is important, the things happening around us influence us, people are important. You are important.

    The still image has the ability to capture all of this, not just the surface image (as I think video does) but the depth of feeling, the passion, the belief, the essence of You.

    Businesses, charities, clubs, events, families; all have this essence. Even the world around us has this essence.

    Why do I photograph? To show this essence, to show the world, to show the real person, to show what people can achieve.

    Interview

    A conversation with Stephen Cotterell about my influences, experiences, the business and other interesting points of views continued for much longer than this hour-long podcast.  Listen here.

    These are the images discussed;

    Will Smith: Premiere of Seven Pounds

    Angelina Jolie: UK Premiere of SALT

    Julia Roberts: Duplicity world Premie

    Lilly Cole: World Premiere ..Dr Parnassus

    Varied work, different problems

    One of the great aspects of my job is the sheer variedness of it. Take the start of this week for example.

    Monday afternoon was the World Premiere of “Paul”. Sigourney Weaver, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were attending and given the lack of room in Leicester Square the draw for position was going to be key. Yet again I was out of luck and shooting from the 3rd row over and between other photographers. It was nowhere near as bad as “Brighton Rock” however and I did manage a good mix of portraits and full-length shots. I quite like the way this shot is lit.

    Sigourney Weaver

    After finishing this shoot, I had 30 minutes to edit and file my initial shots before jumping on the tube for the O2 Arena and Roxy Music. The shoot for Roxy was a little unusual in that we were allowed to shoot as much of the show as we wished. Shooting the whole show was not really an option as I not only needed to file the shots from this show, I also had the “Paul” shoot to complete. I stayed long enough to capture some a good images of Bryan Ferry (with his eyes not only open, but not in shadow) and shots of each of the members of the band.

    Bryan Ferry

    The next day the sun was out and between meetings I went on the hunt for Londoners (in “suits”) enjoying the good weather. Unfortunately none were, which left me with the next shoot at 9pm; Professor Green at “Scala” in Kings Cross.

    I have to say Scala is about the worse place in London to photograph. The light is either off or bright red or bright blue. I love black and white photography and it counters the lighting problems here; the problem is it is not really what is wanted by the picture editors and papers so I really have to deliver a good set of colour images. On the end of these, I did tuck 3 black and white shots which my picture editor did like.

    Professor Green

    After that late night at Scala, on the train on the way home I had another job come in for the following morning (this morning – there goes my lie in). It was the total opposite of the weeks work so far. An auction of Reggie Kray letters and paintings taking place only 30 minutes up the road.

    After the difficulties of the previous shoots this week, this one was a joy. The contact at the auction house (Gorringes) was really helpful and the vendor of the letters and paintings had a really interesting story to tell. With a nice white vaulted ceiling in the sale room I could bounce the light from behind me to light these two paintings.

    Reggie Kray paintings

    So, 3 days, 4 totally different shoots. I won’t get that lie in tomorrow either as I am being interviewed for a podcast.

    Usher and Tinchy

    On Wednesday (yesterday) it was off to the O2 to cover Usher and the supporting act Tinchy Stryder.

    The real shock of the evening for me was walking into the area it was laid out as a seated concert! Given the type of music (particularly the dance music of Usher) I would have expected a standing crowd. However, they all seemed happy enough and it was nice that the show run to schedule.

    First up was Tinchy in a nice light.

    Tinchy Stryder

    The issue with photographing rappers is the microphone, for obvious reasons its always covering half their face. I’ve chosen this side view because I like it’s shape but I did manage to get 4 or 5 without the mic.

    Usher on the other hand was a totally different subject. There were props, dancers and lots of light (including backlight which makes it harder to get a nice crisp image).

    Usher - swinging the mic..

    Carrying on the microphone theme, Usher used one in his show as a prop singing up tight to it and then swinging it away.

    Usher

    It’s always nice to get a close up

    Brighton Rock (from a distance)

    There are big problems for premieres in Leicester Square at the moment. Westminster council are re-developing the square ready for the 2012 olympics to provide a more modern public space. The problem is the hoardings they have placed to hide the works leaves only a small public walkway around the edge.

    On Tuesday, this left a large number of photographers (it was a large turnout for Dame Helen Mirren) squashed in to an enclosure about 18ft wide. Usually we expect their to be about 3 rows of photographers, this allows the front to be standing, the second on a small step and the rear on a 3 step ladder. For Brighton Rock we were at 5 rows! Not only that, I was in row 5!!

    A few did leave but I thought I would wait and see what I could get. Magazines and papers really want a mixture of images but particularly full length shots, especially of the women. From my 5th row, shooting between others (and leaning heavily on a good friend who was stuck next to me), full lengths were not really an option, this is the closest I got..

    Dame Helen Mirren attends the European premiere of Brighton Rock

    I concentrated on getting some nice portraits…

    Dame Helen Mirren attends the European premiere of Brighton Rock