The time I spent volunteering to help the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music with a photo project has resulted in some recent paying photo jobs. Last August Johannes Wallmann hired me to photograph him and The Sweet Minute Big Band at Madison’s Jazz at Five program. Later that summer they headed into the studio to record. The resulting album, Always Something, was released on June 16 and they used my photos for the front and back covers as well as for six of the images with the inside liner notes.
The photo on the front of the CD cover was converted to black-and-white and a texture was added to give it an old photo look. The colors of the photo on the back were saturated and, for consistency with the front, this photo also includes the texture. To compare them to the originals, I’ve posted them below cropped and sized to the album format. Note that I did not make the edits to the photos as they appeared on the album, I only took and edited the original raw images.
When I went to the shoot I assumed that Johannes only wanted candid photos taken during their sound check and the concert. However, when I arrived he asked if I could take a group shot during their break before the evening program. During the final part of the sound check I looked around trying to find a place to take a group shot of 16 musicians. The late afternoon sun was very bright on the staging area so that didn’t seem like a good place to shoot. There were some blank brick walls down a side street that were in the shade. The lighting would probably be OK but the scene was rather dull. Across the street, however, was the back entrance to a coffee house. The windows and the door and the painted woodwork created some interest. With little time to work I took 9 photos in 2 minutes. The first six were shots of the entire group; the final three were of three sections of the group. I merged the final three into a panorama and ended up using that for the group shot.
So, one way to look at this is that you can buy 8 of my photographs for only $13.99 and get some great music as a bonus!