MusicNSW to hold free seminar on music photography

Non-profit industry association MusicNSW will hold its latest free seminar next Tuesday (November 18), which will see professional photographers like Tim Levy (winner of the Head On Landscape Prize 2013/curator at photodoco) and Daniel Boud (Time Out, boudist.com) discuss how they turned their interest in still photography into a full time career.

Levy told TMN his love affair with photography began in the ’90s after buying his first SLR.

“Back then, photography had to be studied as shooting film was akin to black magic (what are the properties of this thing you call densitometry, sensitometry, reciprocity failure, chemistry, properties of light etc ?),” he said. “You had to remember which settings you took the images with so you could try to learn from them when you got the pictures back from the lab the following day (or week) You couldn’t radically change the photo in post (no photoshop) – there was no autofocus. 3200 ISO film was stupidly expensive and terribly ‘grainy’. You couldn’t share your images easily to a large audience unless it was published (no internet) Every shot you took cost a minimum of $1 (film & processing) – shooting on motor drive was almost prohibitive!”

Levy said that while the growing popularity of the artform is quickly satisfied with the advancement of technology and the increase of publications who use it, live photography is more competitive than ever before.

“Now-a-days, the learning curve is very shallow. Anyone can pick up a very decent camera quite cheaply and see the results straight away. So where there was once 3-5 photographers in The Pitt at a Big Day Out – there are now 30+ photographers blasting away, elbowing each other in the face and then distributing images to 10,000’s of people over 10’s of different websites and medias. So while the amount of media outlets have increased 100 fold – so have the amount of photographers out there.”

Jake Stone, Bluejuice frontman and Education Officer at MusicNSW told TMN: “Ever since going out to Purple Sneakers in the early 2000’s, I’ve noticed how hard and consistently live music and club photographers seem to work. People like Cybele Malinowski and Daniel Boud have been there from the start of my personal experience with live music in Sydney, always shooting and publishing their photos.

“I’ve often wondered, how today’s kids turned their enthusiastic nights out with their iPhones into a professional photography career? MusicNSW has put this photography seminar together on November 18th to ask Dan Boud and our other talented panellists exactly that.”

“At the Oh Snap event, we want to inspire budding photographers and give a realistic assessment of the music photography industry, tell some funny stories and show some of our work,” added Levy.

Joining Boud and Levy will be Pat Stevenson (Hobogestapo, Peking Duk), and Kiera Chevell (The Voice, Masterchef) and Cai Griffin (Graphic Designer, Freelance Photographer).

Oh Snap! takes place at Brand X Rehearsal Space – Inside Central Park Broadway. Click here for the Facebook event.