In The Studio with Old Sea Brigade
THE BACKGROUND
Everyone needs that friend who knows their taste as well as they do. Who pops up with perfect recs and intros to music, film, and TV.
Do you have someone you trust implicitly, every time? You're downloading that album for your flight without thinking, setting aside your Friday night for the obscure old BBC documentary you've never heard of.
I'm lucky to have this second, algorithmic brain outsourced to one of my closest pals. Our Venn diagram of music taste is almost a circle. So when he tells me he's started managing a new musician, my ears are gagging for it. I fell hard and deep for that artist, Old Sea Brigade.
I first met Old Sea Brigade, aka Ben, as I road tripped the USA in 2016. As wonderful a person as he is a musician, I'm glad to now call him a friend. When I was asked to have him in the studio during a brief touring visit to Glasgow, I dropped everything.
THE BRIEF
There was no brief.
No specific outcome requirements. Just some time in the studio, only two of us, to capture interesting portraits.
This can be an exciting prospect. It can also be a little intimidating.
Having a mood board, reference images, or even some suggestions on direction gives a starting point in the studio. This was a fully blank canvas, a rare opportunity in the world of commercial client work and its demands.
I immersed myself in Ben's music and scoured online images of him. I wanted to create something unique and maybe a little unexpected.
His recent work (at that time) was exploring different territory from his debut album and hinted at new directions. To my ear, there was a new sense of boldness and confidence to accompany his breathtakingly beautiful, fragile vocals.
So my brief to self:
Bold, confident, unexpected.
MY APPROACH
I rarely go into the studio with a defined lighting plan. Experimenting and play is a huge part of my process. I found a handful of reference images with elements I liked, and I had just bought a huge roll of mylar that I was going to find a use for (my accountant thought I'd taken to growing weed at home).
Ben is experienced in front of the camera and accommodating of my experimentation, with mylar clipped to an umbrella (textbook portrait lighting), a smoky room lit only with a projector beam, and a bold yellow colorama that happened to be torn up the middle.
Adapt and embrace.
I'm really happy with the set of photographs that we created. Mostly, I'm thrilled to have the chance to work with an artist whose work I admire so deeply.
Ben's show the next night was cancelled due to a burst pipe, which made me even more glad to have had the chance to hang out.
Easily the best part of my job is being in the room with incredible people doing incredible things. Many more days like this, please.
