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in Above: Katy Perry,
Odyssey Arena,
Belfast, 2014.
The management came back and said, “We have
this young artist we’ve just signed; we need pictures
of him, there’s no budget” – which is often the
case – “Are you willing to do that?”
Back then what I always found important is to see
what kind of artist it was, so they sent us a couple of
clips and I said, “Yeah, let’s try that.” We went along,
and I shot the show. It could have been a very short
show, because the power broke down after his first
song. I’d shot maybe 10 or 15 frames, and it was
pitch-dark, but he just took his guitar, pushed the
microphone away and continued the show like that.
That told me what kind of person he was, and how
determined he was to entertain this crowd.
At that time he said, “We don’t have the money to
pay now, but if I ever make it big, I’ll take you along with
me,” and he did it. A couple of years later, he started
becoming successful, and he kept working with me.You must have spent a lot of time with him...
The good thing was that his parents were there the
first night I met him. We started talking and we’ve
remained friends. I’m not friends with Ed Sheeran.
To me he’s a client: we respect each other and,
of course, we’re friendly when we meet. But
I have more of a relationship with his parents.What equipment do you currently shoot with?
I have two Canon 5D Mark IV bodies, and I have one
70-200mm lens and one 24-70mm lens, so I work with
those. I also have a fisheye lens, which I rarely use. It’s
only like for, for instance, when they’re shooting a DVD
and it’s the whole band in the shot, so I will take the
fisheye out. But I like to keep it simple.What is your post-production modus operandi?
No-one else is allowed to touch my pictures. I do a very
fast selection. It scares a lot of people when they see
me doing that, but basically I put it in a sequence and
I click very fast, and I delete, delete, delete, delete.
It’s only when a picture stops me in an instant that
I will keep that picture – the rest I delete. So it’s
a very harsh selection.
I put that selection in Lightroom and make some
initial tweaks. Usually it’s like straightening, cropping,
maybe taking out a bit of contrast or adding a little bit
of light. I never use Photoshop just because I think you
have to tell the true story, so I don’t alter anything like
that in music photography. And that’s it.That’s quite a light workflow... Is that important?
Yeah. Maybe I’m a bit old-school in that way, in that
I used to develop my own pictures. You did a bit ofhttp://www.digitalcameraworld.com DECEMBER 2019 DIGITAL CAMERA^139