I love music and going to gigs, so the chance to get that little bit closer to those on stage and take their photograph was enough motivation for me to really have a go at becoming a music photographer.
It was something that seemed to develop (no photographic pun intended) by accident; while at university I was writing for a national music magazine, regularly reviewing gigs, so I started to take my digital compact with me and snap away. I soon wanted more control and better quality, which eventually saw me getting my first DSLR for my 21st birthday (thank you Mum and Dad!).
I’ve always covered live music with one simple idea in mind – to come away with shots that my teenage self would have cut out of a magazine and stuck on my bedroom wall.
Since shooting my first gig in the Summer of 2006, I have been lucky enough to snap a variety of bands like KISS, ZZ Top, Judas Priest, Lamb of God, The Saturdays, Ellie Goulding, Bloc Party, Heaven and Hell, Simple Minds, Fall Out Boy, Velvet Revolver, Papa Roach, Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys…this list is getting quite long now!
As mentioned above, I try to keep things simple with my music photography. I’ve never been bogged down in theory, instead I learned some basic settings, tried them out and adapted my own method from that. Making the move to shoot in RAW was also a key turning point.
I don’t just cover music now; last year saw me shoot my first three weddings, which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. They are obviously very different to covering a rock show, but I’d like to think that cutting my teeth in an environment with just three songs to nail the shot has served me well when I have the whole day to get them! I also really enjoy portraiture and have even dabbled in a bit of food photography too.
I have plenty of photographic ambitions to keep me focussed (ouch, another bad pun)…I’m desperate to cover a festival and some big stadium gigs, I really want to do more promotional photography with unsigned bands, I want one of my pictures to be made into a poster in Metal Hammer or Kerrang and I’d give anything to shoot Metallica!
I also really want to get into album design, something that has been reinforced by recently meeting Storm Thorgerson and Roger Dean, the masters of the album cover and I would love to have enough portrait and wedding work to upgrade to a 5D mark ii and say that my job was a professional photographer – how great would that be?
But for now I’ll keep requesting photo passes (and keep getting ignored by a lot of press officers), keep giving business cards to any of my friends who announce their engagement and keep on snapping away.
Links:
Website: www.davemussonphotography.com
Blog: http://davemussonphotography.wordpress.com
365 Days of Photos project: http://davemussonphotography2.wordpress.com
Twitter: @davemusson
You’ve got some top drawer stuff here. LOVE the ZZ Top pic 🙂
Thanks Chris, they were great to shoot – bright lights, cool guitars and brilliant beards!
Have you accomplished any of your ambitions yet?
It’s always nice to know that there are photographers out there willing to shoot music for free just to get “close to the band”. And it’s even better when the hack claims he doesn’t care about theory.
Congrats buddy.Who needs to know about photography when you can just chimp?
By the way, Part of theory involves composition. Why don’t you study that a little bit?