Hope

Right after I wrote my last post I was so ill. Hopefully tomorrow will be better and I'll get at least one reply to about 10 emails sent to different people. Why does photography have to be so complicated?!

Also, we may have a new addition to the camera family in my house, the Nikon D7000! ISO up to 25600, and 16mp! I'm also going to get a Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens for it, which means clearer photos and less noise!! WOO!

Music=Life

Ever since I can remember my life has revolved around music, it's shaped me and made me who I am. I don't think there has ever been a day I haven't listened to a song. I've been to too many gigs to even count and seen over 50 bands live some of them up to 6 times. I've know throughout my life I was going to do something with music, whether it was being on stage in a band or being a manager of a band, that was all I wanted to do. So when I found I was good at photography it was the first thing that popped into my head, but I had no idea how to go about it.

I'm so happy that I've found a job I love to do, and that I won't be stuck in an office all day. Music is my live.

PhotoPlanning

Westbound Sign - Green Day

So, after I get back to Rebellion, if I'm going (the guy hasn't got back to me yet about if I'll get paid or not, that's another thing to get used to) I'm going to try and get back to normal photography. I have some wedding photos I need to edit and some ones from Corfu, I also want to go back to portraiture and experiment a little bit with some props.

I once did a recreation of a Green Day song, my favourite band, and I loved doing it. I might pick 5 songs to start and see if I can recreate it in one picture. It's challenging, and I think I need some more challenges.

Up & Down

So as you can see some great things have happened that I found out about last night, my photos have been used in two online flyers by a band! That's great, only thing is that I don't know how I would go about getting paid for this, do they have the right to do this because they aren't using it from profit of should I still get paid cause they are my pictures. Don't get me wrong I'm happy to see them being used but I don't want to be used myself, I have to live off this one day and letting bands use my photos for free isn't a very good start.

Photos Used by People on Vacation

Up to Now

I've done a few shows since I've started, bigger bands than I thought I could ever do. The biggest one for me so far has been Good Charlotte while they were on the Kerrang tour, so I guess you could say I have worked for Kerrang as well, worked without getting paid. And as I mentioned before I've also photographed Bowling For Soup while they were doing their acoustic show, Toured around with Army of Freshmen for 3 dates (such amazing guys), Twin Atlantic, White Lies and al the other bands that supported them.

I'll go into more detail about how I got the passes and about the shows later on. One thing I will not be giving out is how to find who you are looking for, it's the hardest part ;).

My Band Photography Virginity

So this was the start of my experiments with band photography, a band called Town. I don't expect anyone to know who they are but they are an amazing band from Wales, and some really lovely guys. It's not the greatest of pictures but for my first go at it I think I did alright.

I had managed to get a photopass for Twin Atlantic, Town were supporting, and this was the first show I had ever photographed. I was so nervous. What made it worse was that I wasn't the only photographer there, there were about 20 in the smallest venue I had been in. I think most of the crowd were photographers, all in each others way and just trying to get the perfect shot.

So for anyone that is reading this who wants to start this kind of photography, it's just all about getting in the right spot, it doesn't matter who you are blocking, you'll be out of there way soon enough. Thankfully this show didn't have a barrier and I could stand at the side of the stage, but being in front of a barrier is amazing and shit scary all at the same time.

Upcoming Shows

If you've had a little look around my page you can see on the left there is a little section called 'where to find me', this is basically the shows I have photopasses for. As well as writing it there I will also explain about them in here and tell you a little bit more about them.

So the ones I have coming up now, Rebellion Fest and Bowling For Soup.

Rebellion is a surprise for me, I emailed them back in January and because I heard nothing I suspected they didn't want me, turns out they do and that I've been chosen out of a rare few as they are keeping the guest list short. Great! Except I'll be missing my boyfriends birthday. I guess this time work may have to come first.

And as for Bowling For Soup, if you have taken the time to look at my Flickr (under other sites or something like that) you will have noticed I have photographed Jaret and Eric, two of the guys from the band, on their acoustic show in Leeds. Jaret loved the photos I took and wants me back for October when they tour with the whole band. As of now I'm planning on doing the whole tour.

So Here I Am.

The start of another blog, hopefully I can keep this up with either daily or weekly posts.

I should probably introduce myself and explain why I have started this blog. I'm a photographer, I love it, it's all I want to do and this seems to be the way most people keep everyone up to date with what they are doing. So far I have had a website, it was shit and cost to much per year for what it was offering although I was a .com for a while, which is something I will need to be again in the future. But for now I'm gonna start small, I am only 19, a baby in this industry. Most photographers don't make it big until their 30's so I have a while to go I guess.

The kind of photography I love to do is live music, it's bringing the two things I love together. Music has always been the biggest thing in my life and I surround myself with it, I can't play an instrument good enough to be in a band so I'm using the only thing I'm good at to stay close to that scene with my work. And I must admit so far I have had a lot of luck (I use the word luck lightly because for me it's always been you make you're own luck, my photos are good and I work my but off and it must show for people to want to keep using me as a photographer), I have photographed bands that I used to go watch all the time and bands I've always wanted to see. I've been 'lucky' enough to have met some band members and kept in contact with them, to be honest I'm living my dream.

The only trouble is that I'm only 19, without a paying job trying to make this my carrer. It's hard I must admit but anything worth having is never easy. So this blog is hopefully going to get my name out there even more!

So please stick around and follow me along my journey.

Peace,

RosieMay