I'M BACK!!!!
If you don’t want to read everything below, that’s ok, images are at the end of the post.
Here we go! The blog is back…. Honestly, I really missed writing these blogs, even though my website really doesn’t get any traffic and no one really reads this stuff.
What to Expect:
Well…. not quite sure.. I’m sure you’re going to see a lot more Music stuff because that has been a huge focus for me over the past 5 years, but I will say, the music world has changed, from my perspective at least, since the world shut down. Rumour had it that Live Nation could possible be axing freelance photographers or at least limiting their access to shows… after the stupid C19 scandal, I have not been able to land one concert through them, when before, I was getting approved for almost every show I applied to.. maybe it was all just a coincidence, who knows. I have also noticed that Venues I was constantly getting approved for also fell off and stopped responding to email.. such is life.. C19 changed the world in a way I never thought would be possible, but here we are.
I am very thankful, however, for wicked venues and festivals that are holding true and still granting access to those who love live music and who work their asses off to capture the live acts the best they can and provide quality work.. festivals like ROCK THE PARK in London, Ontario. Rock The Park has been a staple in my life, not just as a photographer, it actually took me 6 years of hard work and writing emails year after year to gain access, and it finally happened 6 years ago, but it also was/is a staple for me as a fan of live music.. I’ve been going to RTP for as long as I can remember. Harris Park is where Rock The Park is held, it’s a lovely little park on the outskirts of downtown London tucked away beside the Thames River and amongst some trees and tall apartment buildings. This festival has been working their asses off to bring in HUGE and amazing bands for years. If you go check out their website www.rockthepark.ca you can see the incredible bands they have brought through year after year.. big acts like: Ice Cube, Mumford & Sons, The Glorious Sons, Ludacris, JaRule, The Tragically Hip, Journey, Our Lady Peace, Alice Cooper, and many many more… This years line up is wild as well: Nickelback, The Glorious Sons, Tea Party, Tyler Childers, NAS, Lil Jon, Neil Young with Crazy Horse and more! I am very thankful to be accepted to Photograph this event, not as an official photographer but as my own outlet and lover of live music.
This post will be to focus on Last years ROCK THE PARK. Let me tell you, it was a wild time, it always is! let me first start out by saying, the people who put RTP together work so hard.. its months of gruelling work to get these bands in, working schedules and budgets, getting a huge amount of volunteers together to make it all come together.
2023 Line up was pretty stacked:
Ludacris, Ja Rule, Cypress Hill, Papa Roach, Mumford & Sons, Vance Joy, Volbeat, Halestrom, Chingy, Billy Talent, Alexisonfire, Silverstein, The Trews, The Dirt Nil, T.I., Bahamas, Default, Ashanti, MYA. I have to let you know.. I did NOT get to attend all of it which made me so upset because the night I really want, the bands I grew up going to see and listening to, the main night my heart lived for I had to miss due to car trouble…. it killed me, and that night was Billy Talent, Alexisonfire, Silverstein, The Dirt Nil. I spent months pumped to have them on the bill and get to photograph them after all these years and I missed out.
None the less, the nights I did get to photograph some of it and it was a blast as always. There’s something about being out in that hot July sun sweating to death, legs shaking from the long days and all the squats you end up doing trying to stay out of fans line of sight and get good angles that just makes life feel so damn good. Those moments I’m in “The Pit” as well call it ( That area between the fans and the stage where security is ) is when I feel like a really full time photographer, just working hard to get those shots and make the bands look great on stage, capturing the emotion, the movement, waiting for the right moment to get that shot that makes you smile when you know you’ve captured it…. accomplished, amazed, and living in the moment.. that’s what it’s all about.
BAHAMAS
MUMFORD & SONS
THE TREWS
VANCE JOY
Natalie & Sergio Maternity Fairy Tale Shoot
Natalie & Sergio: Maternity
Natalie & Sergio were directed to me through a great friend, Cassidy. Cassidy and I have worked together on various projects over the years, you've seen her in many images if you've gone through my portfolio and blog, and is always pushing my work and sending her friends and contacts my way, which I hugely appreciate. Natalie and Sergio are good friends with Cass so when they decided they wanted to do a maternity photoshoot before their daughter was born, Cassidy mentioned Kevin Vyse Photography.
Originally we were supposed to do this shoot the weekend before, but due to a few minor medical hiccups, we pushed the shoot back a week to ensure Natalie would be good to shoot and this actually worked out better for us because the weather had a chance to turn around as well and leave us with a somewhat warm day to shoot the out door portion.
We had two parts to this session: 1) Indoors at Natalie & Sergio's, where we would use an empty room that they were renovating to be their bedroom, which was perfect because there wasn't anything in it but a white couch and a dark grey-ish blue Shiplap accent wall which was perfect, gave some texture to the images. We started out doing some clean shots of Natalie using the windows in the room and it's beautiful light, did a couple of her alone then some with sergio in them as well.. and a few with both of them on the couch as well.
2) We moved outdoors to a nice spot in London near the river that had some wooded area's and some walking paths. We utilized the woods and the edge of the water bank to create some original shots. You might have noticed that in the title of this blog I said "Fairy Tale Shoot " .. well.. thats where this came into effect. While we were out in the woods getting ready to start shooting, I had this vision pop into my head when I saw Natalie standing there in her vibrant red maternity dress and flower crown up against the earthy tones of the woods. This vision was a new take on an old fairy tale... Little Red Riding hood.. but now, Red Riding Hood is all grown up, still out in the woods, in love and pregnant with her first child. The weather was a bit gloomy, grey sky very soft filtered light, and since it was the beginning of April, it was still chilly and there were not leaves on the trees, rainy .. it's spring.. so instead of trying to fight the elements and make these images look all light and sunny, I decided to work with them and not against. Natalie and her baby were the "life" in the shots.. the woods were dark and earthy.. no real life to them yet as spring is the birth of life ... so we used this to create the images.
Some of the images were all natural ambient light to keep the balance of the light even, kind of working Natalie into the woods. Once we had the ambient shots finished up, I wanted to really play up this idea of Natalie and the baby as the "life" in the images... so I broke out the Octabox and speedlights focusing the light onto Natalie and her baby bump letting the light fall off and making the background darker allowing her to be the focus of the image. Using this lighting style not only allows Natalie to stand out in the image but it also helps with that Fairy Tale kind of look.. almost like a painting with some editing, giving it a different look and feel to the viewer.
Over all, this shoot was a success, I had a great time photographing these two, they were so welcoming, laid-back and fun.. Natalie had a great time "This is so much fun " she said. Pictures have been delivered and I'm so happy to have more happy clients. I'd like to thank them for choosing Kevin Vyse Photography, it was a pleasure!
Shutter Click.
Kevin Vyse.
Jack Richardson Music Awards 2017
2017 Jack Richardson Music Awards In London Ontario Canada in London Music Hall.
London Music Week happens in London Ontario, Canada and it's a week long event all over the city celebrating and honouring musicians/bands from London Ontario. This event is also known as the Jack Richardson Music Awards, as there is an award ceremony at the end of the week with different categories for bands to win under.
This year Kevin Vyse Photography had the pleasure of being brought in, by Cory Crossman of London Music Office who connected me to the Jack Richardson Music Awards founder Mario Circelli to photograph some of these concerts taking place during this week of music. For 2 nights during the week I would be in London Ontario, with an all access media pass at the edge of the stage photographing live music as it unfolded. I would have liked to be able to photograph more, but the full time work schedule tends to get in the way of photography quite often.
Night one (Monday, April 3rd) was the opening show, kicking off the week. Upon arrival, I was met by Mario Circelli at the doors who treated me like gold and took me into the London Music Hall to get my media pass. Through the night of shooting Mario was very accommodating, constantly making sure I had everything I needed and was getting the access I required to get the best shots I could.
Night one was: Taylor Holden and The Law Of Averages, The Weathered and Ivory Hours.
Taylor Holden and the Law Of Averages:
The Weathered:
Night Two (Thursday April 6th) was a big night as the Canadian Icon Rockers HELIX was headlinging the night along with bands After The Lounge and Bobnoxious.
HELIX:
BOBNOXIOUS:
IVORY HOURS:
AFTER THE LOUNGE:
Hair/Fashion/Glamour OH MY!
Cans of hair spray flying, make up pallets blasting colour all over, dresses, shorts, shirts, bra's, shoes all around me. This was what it was like on set a few weekends ago in London, Ontario as I got together with Hair Stylists Cassidy and Jodie, jodie also does make up, to do a hair shoot for the Salon they work at.
Our goal was to set up some simple portraits to show case different elaborate hair styles so we can place some of the images in to hair competitions. But first, before we got into the hair shoot, we decided we would do a little photoshoot for Cassidy to get warmed up. We did the shoot in Jodi's loft which is gorgeous.. 13' high ceilings, crown moulding, all open concept, big windows and a rooftop with an old fire escape... as you can imagine it's a great location with endless possibilities. Due to living in Canada and it being winter.. the rooftop didn't work out for us because it was covered in deep snow, but it will be used this summer with out a doubt.
After Cassidy's shoot, the other model's ( Ellie, Alex and Shelby) showed up so we could get started on hair and make up, this was around 2pm. Alex and Ellie were up first, so we started shooting against my white seamless backdrop, shooting some head shots and some full lengths. It went pretty well, I found that the roll of seamless I have is only good for head shots.. it's only about 4-5' wide which doesn't work well for full body so we decided to move over to one of the walls in the loft and use that. Over all the day/night was a success, it was long ended up being about 11 hours.. but that was with breaks to change looks and change make up, change hair and lenses and lighting set ups.
This post is just a starter post for this shoot... Seeing as how these images are being entered into competitions I can't post a lot of them because we don't know which ones we are entering yet. The ladies are going through the contact sheets to select which images are to be edited for which categories, a lot of them I haven't even edited yet because I want to know which ones are being used instead of editing a bunch that we won't use at all.... Soooooo with that said, I'm going to use this post to show of just a few shots I did of Cassidy in our PRE shoot, and then i'll follow up to this blog post later after the hair images have been selected, edited and entered for competition. Hope you enjoy these images. - Shutter Click.
Loved the wallpaper here, made for a great backdrop and a nice neutral colour to make her hair and skin pop.
This was one of my favourite locations.. Here I had to brave the deep snow on the rooftop to get down to the landing on the fire escape, and shoot Cassidy as she leaned out the window of the loft for a fashion/glamour kind of look.
The bedroom was an outstanding space.. Huge King size bed with this amazing headboard and a giant window behind it making for an awesome amount of backlight to create nice separation and get that hair glowing.
Kevin Vyse Photography Blog:
Keep up to date with every shoot from Families to Concerts, Weddings to Travel. Day to day shoots all broken down into how I it went, behind the scenes, and my thoughts through the shoots.