Portraiture

Where have I been?

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Soooo…… Kevin, where have you been?

Honestly, I’ve been in the same place, sort of. This blog took a nose dive because when I looked at the analytics Squarespace provides me, I noticed that no one was reading it; actually, no one was even visiting my website. Part of that is because I left it in limbo. I never updated it, I stopped writing blogs, I actually almost deleted it all together because it just seemed like I was paying for something I wasn’t using and no one was visiting. I realized I had not quite set it up right and I didn’t have any links to it via Google like I should have so it wasn’t receiving traffic like it should.

Kevin… Is your website receiving traffic now?, are people reading your blog?

* Shrug * I seriously couldn’t tell you. What I've learned being a photographer in these crazy social media times is… it doesn’t matter. Everyone is a “Photographer” everyone has a website and competing for “likes” and followers is draining and over time it will beat you down so damn much you may even want to completely walk away from photography because you feel like a failure. That was me! I watched people start photography years after me, get way more successful, end up with thousands of followers of socials and end up with a ton of opportunities that I wished I had and that made me feel like I was a failure and I should just give up. I stepped away from doing photos for people for a bit, but I kept shooting, just things for myself and slowly my love for it all came back. Here’s where we are today.

For those of you, if there are any of you, who have followed along the entire time, Might have noticed that my photography kind of changed. A lot of the conventional portraits disappeared, The Family Portraits disappeared, all the model work went away…. this is because I took a 5 year long dive into the music industry. Photographing live music is where I started in photography years ago at The Embassy Hotel in London Ontario, Canada. In those days you could just walk into a show with a camera and no one would care at all.. no applying for shows, now getting escorted around, very different from today.
So 5 years of my life dedicated to doing live music photography and band portraits, photographing Single Release Images for bands and website work, Promo work and it was incredible. Guess what happened next? after 5 years of busting my a** off, staying out till 11pm then driving home, going to bed and getting up at 5am for work…. the world broke down because of a virus that was played up 1000x worse than it was… maybe you remember that? you know.. the reason why the world is completely destroyed now and almost impossible to afford.. yeah… After that happened, it seemed like the music industry took a step back, re-evaluated the need for 10 or more photographers to be at shows and made some changes. Can’t say for sure that’s what happened, but I was getting into a lot of shows before, and now it’s very challenging to get in, almost like starting over from the beginning again, like those 5 years had zero merit. Recently, I decided that battling it out to try and get into concerts which I wouldn’t be paid to photograph was not a smart business plan and I have stepped back. Focus shifted from Live concert work into working more one on one with musicians to create their website imagery, Press Kits, Single Release work etc… This is where we are at…

Kevin… Are you still photographing other things though like engagements, Families, Couples etc…. ?

Oh hell yes! of course! I know you haven’t seen those kinds of images on socials because I wasn’t focusing on those, but I also wasn’t getting any requests for those bookings. So to clarify, YES! please reach out through my Contact Form here on the site and get booking.

So i’m going to leave you with some of the work I have been doing over the last 5 years with musicians .. most of these are Country Bands because honestly.. the rock bands don’t seem to want to be photographed or make it very challenging to be able to photograph them and Country, they love it! such a wicked family, they understand how important a photography is tied in with their music. I make a face for their music and I try really hard to match the image with the mood of the song and the title or the story behind the songs… that’s what gets me excited.

KELSI MAYNE

You have all seen her at the mercy of my camera before, usually on stage with her fire red phoenix hair blowing in the wind as she gracefully sings out her country jams in the summer sun. Who am I talking about? .. well who else.. the incredible KELSI MAYNE.
Kelsi hit me up with a message on a Thursday saying she needed new images shot for some summer festival announcements and some other releases through out 2019. This shoot was last minute, we only had a few days to find a location to shoot in and get the images edited and out within.. I think it was 4 days. Game On!
We reached out to some people and ended up having a mutual friend (Scott), who was willing to let us use his beautiful home on the following Saturday and so the one-on-one photo session was born.

Kelsi is a very hard working woman. She is a Nurse, a Country music artists, an Actress and was a Nationally Ranked Hurdler! We first met in my home town Woodstock Ontario, where she was performing at the Woodstock Truck Show put on annually by our friend Scott Verbruggen, all proceeds from this event goes to the local Special Olympics. Kelsi saw me handing out business cards to the other bands that were performing after each set and she came up to ask if she could have one to see the pics afterwards, we got to talking and a new friendship was born! Since then I have photographed Kelsi at the Emerging Artists Showcase at the CMAO’s in London Ontario, as well as in Dresden Ontario at their Kinstock Festival, where she opened the show along with Kansas Stone, Andrew Hywatt and The Reklaws.

The ‘Mayne’ image we shot was being used to release Kelsi’s artist announcement for this summers Big Valley Jamboree in Camrose, Alberta where Kelsi will be sharing the ‘Mayne’ stage with acts such as: Toby Keith, Old Dominion, Kane Brown, Lindsay Elle, Meghan Patrick, Billy Ray Cyrus, Brooks & Dunn and many more. Kelsi will also be performing in Havelock Ontario at the Havelock Country Jamboree in August.

Also Keep an eye out for the release of Stephen King’s short story (movie) WILLA because, yep.. you guessed it, Kelsi is in the movie.. not only is she in it but has a Title Role… does Kelsi look familiar to you? .. well that’s probably because you’ve seen her as the lead female in another country music artists video.. if you have seen her in this you will know her as ‘CHERRY BOMB’. River Town Saints brought Kelsi in as the lead role in their video for Cherry Bomb where she did an amazing job.

Can’t wait to see where Kelsi goes in 2019, all I know is that it will be up.. she is on a roll and shows no signs of slowing down. It was an honour and pleasure to work with Kelsi and get to know her band over the last year, they are all amazing people and I’m pumped every time I get to run into them at shows.

For now I can only release two images that we shot from our shoot as we want to keep them under wraps until Kelsi gets to release them through out the year.

Photography: Kevin Vyse Photography
Graphic Design: BVJ

Maddy & Diesel: A Girl and her Pup!

Maddy and Diesel were something a little different for me as I haven't really photographed portraits for someone and their dog, but it was a lot of fun! We were originally going to do this shoot back in the fall with all the leaves on the trees, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to change the date which led us into winter .... pre-snow winter. 

This time of year the "lake" where I live gets drained out, not completely but quite a bit gets sucked out through the damn which leaves a nice, sandy beach look. Later in the day as the sun set we headed on down to utilize the park area and of course out on to the sand. Diesel was having a ton of fun running around and finding sticks to bring a long for the walk, which ended up in a few of the shots because getting that stick away was near impossible lol. Over all, with the sun set, the beach vibe, the lake and a great person and dog, it was a fantastic shoot! 

- Shutter Click.