David Garrison // Blog

The final post from a piece I wrote after a panel on photography got me thinking about the relationship between musicians and the people who capture images of them.

Insider Access
There have been a lot of changes in how people watch and interact with a band and one of the most significant ones is the camera-phone. We've all heard about the democratisation of information, as in journalism (and music if you've hung around Indaba for any length of time), and it's very clear that it's changed the dynamic of the concert experience - except perhaps at certain venues in Japan, where, according to the panel, watching through your phone is still considered rude.

For photographers, this is an important trend, since there are suddenly boatloads of people recording different elements of the session who previously would've been just listening. When everyone's a shutterbug, it means that photographers need to be just that much better; it means they're pressured to take even more insightful or distinct photographs - ones that are more appealing or stylistically differentiated than they've ever needed to be before.

Musicians should care, too, because there's a marked change in the composition of people who capture and spread the images that become a performer's public-facing brand. At a practical level, the accessibility of technology and the prevalence (and credibility) of blogs means that a $300 camera can now get you the access only a professional photographer used to be able to get. "Write a blog and say you're the chief photographer", says Natkin, who pointed to 67 (I'm assuming he didn't really count) photographers covering REM at Stubbs as proof of the expanded media landscape.

And yet, there are a few practical points that continue to differentiate the creative work of elite photographers.

Longer access. Many venues only allow photographers in for the first three songs. But that's not as hard-and-fast as you might think. As Natkin notes, "Given that the point of setting out a play list is to build up and get warm, most photographers aren't allowed to shoot the best part of a show." See if you can negotiate your way into shooting the whole show. You may be surprised to find you're the only one left - for no other reason than that you thought ahead to ask. Bands are your allies here, since they're probably saving the best for last and they'll want that captured.

Context. The show doesn't just happen on-stage. Having a relationship with the band both gives you more pre- and post- shots and gives you insight into when the most representative shots will occur.

A sense of what's cool. With the continued shift toward digital and reductions in marketing budgets, photography is feeling the heat. More than ever before, people only want to pay for what's cool and what will resonate. And, with the openness of the Internet, they can be picky; they have access to so much material that, if they don't think you're good enough to get them "cool-in-a-shot", they can take the DIY approach, trust their own instincts and go somewhere else.

Along with the fact that a goodly proportion of people deciding who to hire for record companies are young and look for signals that reflect what they think is cool, this all just means that professional (and semi-pro) photographers need to be able to show different styles and content types. So, when you think about landing photo gigs, consider that you're more likely to be successful if you [a] generate interesting insights in more than one genre, [b] generate interesting insights around more than one part of the show, and [c] generate interest insights that will resonate with the person making the decision.

How Do You Take a Good Photograph?
This is what it all comes down to. Here's what the panel had to say.

Wright. Be ready. If you don't have a camera ready to go and with you, you've lost the moment. It's a real decision each day whether you're taking photos or not.

De Wilde. Try to have fun with the people you're with. Timing is really magic. Someone famous once said, "There's nothing worse than a sharp photo of a fuzzy concept."

Natkin. There's always a decisive moment. Don't take shots around it. Wait for it.

Weschler. Be passionate about your subject - it shows. There are two types of photo: spontaneous shots and planned shots. Love the first. Prepare for the second.

The fourth post from a piece I wrote on the way back from SXSW. A panel on photography got me thinking about the relationship between musicians and the people who capture images of them. It made me wonder where photographers see Not-Thems fitting into that relationship. 

The Artistic Equation: Creation + Experience = Art
Artists have any number of visions of success: from economic winfalls and public recognition to changing people's lives and influencing other artists. Some modernists [gasp!] even say they do it for creativity's sake - to get an image out of their Selves. In many ways, it's a weird notion, that we each have unique and intensely personal reasons for doing art. 

Not surprisingly, the flip side is also true: we each have distinct things we appreciate about art; distinct things we expect art to do for us; distinct things we look for in art. And, to make things worse, we usually have more than one expectation of art.

You may, for example, want art that's bluntly political (e.g., Andy Warhol's Mao) at the same time that you want art that merges primitive and classical form (e.g., Modigliani's Nu couché de dos). With little inherent contradiction, we love seemingly random combinations of genres like jazz and death metal or funk and Bollywood.

There are two related points worth emphasising here. First, while people are different, there's almost invariably overlap in what we appreciate. And the implication is that my making art (at the extreme) purely as a means of disgorging into the world the blurred image of the evening I broke up with someone doesn't mean you won't appreciate my work as representative of the romantic soiree you spent with someone else.

Second, identifying what's likely to resonate with people still only helps solve for one half of the artistic equation. That's both the easier half and the harder half. While we're fascinated by the artistic process (the first half of the artistic equation), we tend to focus on people's appreciation of art (the second half of it).

Make the Bands the Recipients of the Shots
So why do you as a photographer (or musician) care about all this? Because the images you take (or pose for) are the product of your position on the equation. Applied to a backstage or offstage setting, for example, shooting solid candids gives you shots that bands themselves want. Get shots they're proud of or want to give their moms. That's probably a good way to get them to like you being around.

Many photographers think that, so long as shots get them the insights into the music and players they're were hoping for, they're all good. But there's the observer to consider. Post-modernism eschews the idea that you can create art in a vacuum. In the end, I tend to think that, since you're kind of stuck thinking about the person who's going to see your work, you might as well take a second to think about what they'll like about it - even if you immediately discard what they want as not consistent with your artistic objectives.

I suppose, when it comes down to it, the point is that you have choices to make. Sure there's the same old one contrasting internal and external objectives, but there's also another one that relates to what you'll do to get access to the artist. At its core is the idea of degrees of "selling out". If you want access to, a relationship with, or the trust of the artists you're capturing on film, don't forget that there's always the band's perspective to consider. Why do they want you there? Why does the audience want you there? Is it worth taking shots that they want and will covet in order to get deeper into the experience of them as musicians?

So, assuming you buy all this, what does one do? Thinking about what others are looking for - stepping away from your own objectives and perspective - is unnatural. You won't get it right away. You may never do it a lot. And you will never entirely do it. But you can get the idea in a venue you already know: the concert itself. Next time you're taking a shot of a musician, turn your head and watch the audience. It's an eye-opener; always different.

Take a moment to watch the people. What are they watching? What are they looking for? Why are they there? What do they notice aside from the band? Each other? The building? Take a moment to play on this, if only for commercial gain. The gist is that, even as a crowd, we have egos. We like to know that someone else cares about what we think, what we want, what drives us, what we aspire to. We like to see ourselves reflected in others and others' work. Take a picture of the crowd. And see if it doesn't give you a perspective outside your own.

The third post from a piece I wrote on the way back from SXSW. A panel on photography got me thinking about the relationship between musicians and the people who capture images of them. It made me wonder how musicians and photographers think about different elements of that relationship.

Money Makes the World Go Around - Sometimes Too Much So
We all have a perspective on money - its value to society, its symbolism, its corrupting or liberating influence. Some see it as an enabler, others as a distraction, others as both. But, for artists, it's a loaded topic.  Money implies objectives other than artistic ones.

Panel members suggested that they felt that not focusing on payment early in their careers improved the quality of and nature of their product and reflected their reasons for doing photography. Wright, for example, didn't even do music photography until he was old enough to retire. Natkin started because he liked the music itself and wanted to get into things for free.  De Wilde started out just taking photos with friends, some of who were musicians.

I suspect this really just goes to the greenfield point again - art for art's sake.  None of the panelists said they do photography for the money, although all have seen economic success come from it. And, while it may seem obvious to those of you who are artists, it's worth noting for the rest of us that not having a monetary goal necessarily means you have another one; not being distracted by money means you're more focused on something else, like the image you're capturing.

Now, I'm aware that the implication here is that young photographers should focus on their craft and success will follow. Frankly, I'm not sold on the idea that money comes entirely in its own time and fashion. I think, per the proverb that luck is the combination of preparation and opportunity, that successful people do things to position themselves to reap rewards.

What you do to position yourself is up to you, but creativity and discipline are requisite. Natkin, for example, talked about how he broke onto the scene by making sure he was at every show possible. Having been invited to shoot Prince's birthday party, he figured he'd be one of many photographers at the event, which wasn't in NYC. But, because it wasn't in NYC, when he got there he found he was the only photographer who'd bothered to show up. That was a couple days before Purple Rain was released. Prince had worn his new outfit for the occasion and, when he went into seclusion for the next six months, Natkin was the only one with pictures that could be marketed.

I don't think anyone on the panel was implying you should disregard money or not try to set yourself up to be successful. Instead, they were alluding to the idea that we often either reject success outright because it "distracts from our creative genius" or run headlong into success thinking we're big enough to handle it.

It seems to me that our greatest successes come when we work hard to position our work in the most favourable light (often requiring that we follow more than one path simultaneously - what the financial world calls "mitigating risk") and also acknowledge that the path we choose really does impact our perspective.

My second post from a piece I wrote on the way back from SXSW.  A panel on photography got me thinking about the relationship between musicians and the people who capture images of them.  It made me wonder what both musicians and photographers can do to develop that relationship.

Just Being There
There's a trick to being there at the right time for great shots: don't announce that you're the photographer. If you're lucky, people may just assume you're with the band.

I'd certainly come across the idea before that the moment is only captured or experienced by those that are present and watching. It's ingrained in our popular culture - in language, like "those who win are the ones who simply show up;" in movies, from "Being There" and "All the President's Men" through to "Run Lola Run" and "Amores Peros"; songs, from On the Street Where You Live to For What It's Worth; and the written word, from democratised journalism and non-fiction, like Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate, to theatre and fiction, like Romeo and Juliet. But I suppose I hadn't recognised that showing up doesn't always mean the same thing. The line that struck me on the panel was Wright's. "Others announce that they're photographers, the band stops what it's doing, stands in a corner for a couple clicks, sends the person away and goes back to normal, which is when I take shots."

The point is that photography requires timing, a relationship and a degree of comfort. De Wilde, for example, suggested that success is the musician having an almost friend-like trust in the relationship. Getting there for her means capturing a moment they both enjoy. Like a good conversation over a glass of wine, de Wilde's photos are an experience the artist wants to relive. As Beck, for example, was becoming increasingly famous, he started getting shot as a weird star and she built a solid relationship by doing several softer takes that made him realise she appreciated who he was off the stage.

Proposing ideas that challenge an artist's image of themselves, however, is a delicate task that can quickly alter a relationship. Most experienced music photographers bring new ideas to an artist first, working with them to develop the idea and ensure they feel natural in any staged settings and at ease in their natural settings.

Capturing people (never mind musicians) in natural settings and poses takes patience and unobtrusiveness, but not necessarily loads of time or set-up. Natkin described how he often doesn't have any communication with an artist. For example, finding himself backstage with Erykah Badu, he set up rudimentary lighting backstage, motioned her over before a rehearsal, took 12 quick shots and sent her off after 3 minutes. In the course of the shoot, the two didn't say anything to each other, which he suggested was important in that it didn't distract her.

De Wilde tells a story of shooting Built to Spill, a band that doesn't like being photographed and just wants to get on with making music. Told that they "weren't going to shoot for more than two hours," she decided to just start shooting against a mural they were standing in front of to get them "warmed up". With Deathcab for Cutie, she realised that what would best represent their character would be to make it seem an accident that they ended up in the shots. Photographers like Natkin and de Wilde play to the idea that fans want to see inside the creative process and feel like shots weren't planned - a this-is-them-in-real-life-type deal.

What struck me after listening to the panel talk about this was that "being there" can occur whether you're taking candids on the fly or getting an artist to put on an orange furry coat for effect. It depends on what's appropriate for the artist, but, when it comes down to it, it's really about finding ways to either capture people in their natural environment or capture their response to being in a new one.

Key Points 

• Build trust with the people around you. Don't intrude by overshooting, but don't be afraid to just hang around with people until they stop watching you
  
• Discuss your ideas with labels and artists first and then develop them together. There's generally a reason - a "base truth" - that they're uncomfortable with something
  
• Eye contact - in all its variations - is one of the most striking signals of a person's trust
  
• Blur the line between when you're shooting and when you're not. Make shooting candids easy for the artist by not forcing them to "get ready..."
  

I recognise that this post comes a little after the fact, but I've been busy absorbing SXSW for the past week. Matt and Dan covered a lot of the broader insights that we, as a team, drew from SXSW 2008, so I wanted to revisit a specific panel. I started this as a single piece, but it's turned into a real beast, so I'm going to post it as a series over the next couple days.

Music Photography
For those of you who know the Indabans, you're aware that several of us are enamoured of the visual image. Jesse, Gordon and I, for example, are partial to stills, while Chris goes in for the moving picture.

So, when we saw that there was a panel on music photography at SXSW featuring Paul Natkin, Thomas Weschler, Autumn de Wilde and Tom Wright, we were pretty stoked. While I don't have the glossy slide shows that made the panel inspiring, I thought you might appreciate a quick summary, if only because it'll get you thinking about what generates the best images of you as performers.

For the Aspiring Photographer: Consider the Long-Term
The panel's recurring theme seemed to be that photographers can make hay in the long-term, but that (with some exceptions) they get screwed in the short-term. As you work your way to being successful, here are two things to remember.

1. Irrespective of expectations of eventual greatness, you really need to like photography and the people you're around
   
2. In any type of art - including music and photography - there are two broad categories of artistic undertaking: commissioned art, undertaken with a commercial purpose in mind outside the art itself, and what I'll call greenfield art, which has an inherently artistic objective
   

One set of resulting questions is clear. Do you develop relationships with the artists and audiences who are the subject of your work, with the labels and marketers who pay for your output or both? Is there a necessary priority among those relationships? Is your emphasis on a commercial product or on an artistic one?

Tom Wright, for example, noted that his approach - taking photos that trace artists' personal growth and character development - hadn't always gone over well with organisations that might commission pieces, in part because his singular focus was on the musician. All his immediately lucrative work focused on the accepted, existing public image of the artist.

To illustrate, he showed a photo he'd taken of The Faces, shot in silouette. The label had hated it. Not showing the faces of The Faces, they said, seemed excessively ironic. Irony was a characteristic it didn't want associated with the band.

The point to take away is that labels, which exist to make money, are naturally concerned with the marketability of the artist. Generally speaking, this means finding ways to consistently communicate an album's theme or emphasise given strengths of an artist's character. In an effort to maximise commercial activity, they look for images that reflect the brand they've built around the artist.

Often, though, this is in contrast to the image that a photographer actually wants to capture. For a music photographer, the point is generally to express a progression of character, to capture a story in an image, to convey a belief or perspective on a relationship. The idea is to represent the artist the photographer gets a glimpse of, glowing halo, damned warts and inspired normalcy alike.

If you're looking to be a substantive photographer, the point is not that this is a choice about whether or not to sell out. It's that you should think about why you're taking the photos. For any number of reasons, images that fall into the greenfield category tend to have greater value later on in a musician's career. Given that, consider what your objective is, enjoy the moments you capture and, if your aim is to sell your images, make sure you think about what your client and their audience want to buy.

But, along the way, make sure you take some that you'll want to look back on later. Chances are, someone else will want to, too.

Key points

• Be patient
  
• Enjoy the music, the people and the moments you're capturing
  
• Take the photos you want to take and supplement them with some shots that will resonate with labels and fans 
  
• Take images early on and throughout a musician's career. The initial images as well as those showing progression will be the ones you'll care about later, since they'll give you insight into who the performer becomes
  
• Be prepared to not be respected and/or not make money until well after the bands you follow are famous
  

A friend from Pequot Ventures, Sam Hodges, asked me yesterday about ESPN's recent decision to not use ad networks and what I thought the upsides and downsides of using them are for small, vertical consumer sites.  Below is my response.  Thought it might give you some insight into how we think at Indaba.

S,

There are a bunch, but a few below off the top of my head. It's a very real decision for any startup and depends entirely on its specific situation, although there are common factors. Glad to give more details if it'll help.

As you might guess, you can build an easy calculation based on percentages and CPM rates which lets you weigh the immediate revenue opportunity against positioning issues and brand erosion. My point of view is that for many startups, selling the entire banner ad inventory isn't going to be the deciding factor in their success.

As sites grow, it's also important to remember that this isn't necessarily an either/or decision. Whatever you do, stay away from blind networks - you'll waste your money on them.

Pros

Ease of execution. Doesn't require sales or significant service. Brings in relatively consistent revenue. Sites usually don't sell all their space (e.g., a piece by Mediaweek claims 20%-70% goes unsold) and this is a good way to increase utilisation with a relatively small investment of time up front.

Immediate revenue. Revenue generally flows sooner than if not associated with a network.

Reach. Gives a good sales person more time to focus on strategic campaign development and the chance to connect with partners you might not otherwise have a reason to talk to.

Credibility. With the market generally ("We have brand X on the site"), with advertisers (most experienced digital marketers will ask whether you work with a network) and with investors (implies structure and a more stable revenue source).

Insights.  May result in interesting connections or insights, based on solid analysis, that you might not have arrived at. Some say that this alone means it's worth always having an experiment running with a network.

Benchmarking. Gives you a sense of your relative value, although for many sites (e.g., 2nd- and 3rd-generation social networks) this is biased data.

Cons

Brand control. It's hard enough for a small brand to protect its positioning. Ad networks don't really give a damn about who they place, as long as it performs (that is, after all, part of their value proposition). Even if an advertiser buys category placement with a network, it's not site-specific. The degree of control is something that's still being worked out in the market, but the problem won't ever go away.

CPM rates. Often lower than you'd negotiate on your own, since you're a commodity and aren't there to represent your strategic value.

No relationship. A site doesn't really have a relationship with its advertisers.

Customer control. As per above, advertisers have less input into the placements. That means you're driven toward an executional relationship, rather than a strategic one. This is a big factor for many sites' (e.g., Indaba) decisions.

Talk soon,

David Garrison
Chief Marketing Officer

indaba music
268 bowery | suite 3 | new york, ny 10012
phone.212.217.9795

Indaba has always been about giving musicians flexible tools to manage their musical lives.  If you've created a session, you've encountered our use of Creative Commons licenses.  Rights management is a complicated and very real issue for artists both online and offline.  We've tried to make things more transparent by supporting Creative Commons' rights standards.  

Today, Creative Commons posted a piece on Indaba featuring founders Matt and Dan.  We're glad Creative Commons is around, is offering forward-thinking tools and services like this and likes what we're doing.  Check out the piece on the Creative Commons homepage.

[1]  The artistic content argument
[2]  The technical argument
[3]  The economic/marketing argument
[4]  Bonus element:  fluffy filler details 

[1]  There’s not really a section about fluffy filler.  Instead, I’ve tried to seamlessly weave each argument into a larger storyline, incorporating various types of rhetoric and linguistic flourishes along the way.  If I’m lucky, as with a preacher’s sermon, this gives my arguments a flow and a beat, building in images and allusions that are familiar to the reader.  If not, well, it probably means I’m not much of a musician and my points come off largely as fluff.  I’m hoping the former.
[2]  I’ve used all three types of arguments, although you could easily make my points more succinctly (as I probably should.  A philosophy prof once told my wife that it’s harder to write a one-page argument than a five-page one.  I suspect I’ve proved their point with this post).
[3]  This framework can be applied to any Showdown Streeter posts, largely because it’s broad and lends itself to debate.  I haven’t said, for example, that the gramophone was a waste of time.  It wasn’t.  And I think that’s true for any of the options Streeter offers in his challenges.  We prefer arguments that land us comfortably on one side or another, but that acknowledge a grey area.  As in music, everything in debate is a balance; an artistic/technical/economic decision you make before moving on to the next note.

This is a post I wanted to revisit - one that I'd made in response to a piece Streeter wrote last month on developments (in both the story and the real estate sense of the word) around 1520 Sedgwick Ave, the birthplace of Hip Hop.  I thought it was a particularly important topic, since it spoke to how we value the musical institutions we construct.

Here's the link to the original post. Below is my response.

________________________________

Is it the continuance of an important activity that we value or the recognition of said activity? Do we care [a] that Studio 54 still exists and has parties that people remember, [b] that it existed and changed people, or [c] only that it existed way back then because it influenced things that got us to where we are now?

Value Is in Presence
Is it OK if a historic venue is owned and maintained by the same person in perpetuity? I think few would argue that this is not maintaining the integrity of the institution. But does it, in fact? Venues change - without judgement, the Preservation Hall of today is distinct from the Preservation Hall of yesteryear. Is keeping something "unchanged" actually maintaining a venue or is it maintaining only a snapshot of what we remember? And, if so, does that mean we'll never all be happy because each of us remembers a distinct point in the venue's life?

I suppose the test lies in whether we're equally comfortable with someone new buying it (e.g., Trump), but keeping it exactly as it was? I'd argue we're generally less comfortable with this because it implies a shift from active, forward-looking preservation of ideals to historic acknowledgement of passed-away ideals.

Moreover, sale adds a new variable - one that we know from other parts of our lives: new partners change the dynamic of a thing. How often do we refer to someone talking differently about the same topics after spending time with a new friend? "Dang, dude, he changed after he met X." Were the Beatles the same band with Pete Best as they were with Ringo?

If you think it's not ok for Trump to buy it and maintain it, then you're probably closer to the opinion that 1520 has value primarily as an active venue; that, if we lose its real, live, brick-and-mortar contribution to the community, we lose everything.

Value Is in Awareness 
If you're OK with Trump's purchase and alteration (e.g., commercialisation) or the creation of a museum to Hip Hop, you probably at least value the acknowledgement of contribution to society because it implies that we only make solid decisions and advancement because of our roots; that our forebears were what created us. "On the backs of giants", so to speak.

Value Is in Context 
But what if you believe not that something's value lies neither in its presence or in formal education? What if you believe that the value of it is like the value of lessons learned through spoken traditions? The measure of someone's greatness is through the influence they have on others. What if the greatest value of DJ Kool Herc and 1520 is that out of their art grew the movement we now know as Hip Hop, which influenced our culture, fashion, Israeli Hip Hop, Pop, and various dance and visual art movements?

In the end, does it even matter whether 1520 is purchased or [GASP!] flattened as long as it, at one point, existed and continues to influence people? Someone deeply influenced by Plato (their name eludes me) once said of thought, "There is no New Idea, only the realisation and reimagining of concepts we all already know."

Whichever belief you adhere to, the passing of an institution - even the prospect of that passing - is a sad and awesome thing, worthy of celebration and love. Here's to knowing that Hip Hop was born and that DJ Kool Herc was here!