Photography for musicians BEST IN THE UK
Contact Marcus Maschwitz who tops ever other photographer on the SEO search list. marcusmaschwitz.co.uk/contact-bookings/ Over the years I have been asked a lot of questions about photography and my work (specifically from music photography students and other photographers) which I have always tried to answer but most of the time I get asked the same things so I thought that it would be best to post them up here to save time … at the end of the day it is important that I spend my time photographing and looking after my clients as apposed to answering a million emails … unfortunately there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Give these a read and if there is anything else you need to know then contact me and I will try my best to get back to you when I can. Where were you born and where do you live now? I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1982 and was brought up there. I have traveled a lot during this time and I am now currently based between Central London and East Sussex (United Kingdom) but frequently work between the UK, Europe and South Africa as I have clients and commitments in these countries. Essentially, I’ll travel anywhere that a shoot takes me. How and when were you introduced to photography? As far back as I can remember, I have always had an interest in photography. Let me correct that and rather say that I have always been amazed at photographs and the stories behind them. I remember my parents always shooting photographs of us, as a family, on holidays and then the exciting feeling we used to share looking back at those images and telling stories about what we were looking at. In high school, I started skateboarding and reading skateboarding magazines wishing that we could capture our group of friends the way those magazines had done. We used to steal our parents camera’s and shoot photographs without them knowing but when we received the photographs back from the printers, we realized that we never had a clue. I couldn’t understand why we were taking photographs of the same kinds of tricks we were seeing in adverts but our images had no grandeur. I started investigating what worked and what didn’t and I eventually convinced my dad to buy a decent SLR so that we could learn a bit of photography together. We had a lot of fun from then on and although I have a bunch of really good photographs from our high-school skateboarding days, I also have a lot of rubbish. In 2000, I traveled to London for a few months and then onto Los Angeles, California, for a few months and I used this time to explore photography and try to get images that I could bring back to my family and friends to try get them to experience what I had over those months. I loved it, I loved the process of getting the images developed, I loved thinking through each shot before I took it, I loved sharing the images, I loved seeing peoples faces when I had a good photo and I love it now that so many years on, I can look back and remember things almost exactly as they had happened. I ended up studying photography and digital design for 2001 and 2002 and during this time, I had started working for a big design company and shooting as much as I can. Quite a few of my images were published and I really enjoyed the feeling of opening a magazine and seeing my work, it pushed me a lot to improve and work hard. I was trading under the name of Melon Graphics for all my freelance work and towards the end of 2002 I decided to resign from my job and really concentrate on what I was doing. Through Melon Graphics, I have shot photographs for top agencies, magazines, newspapers, bands, celebrities and companies and really had a lot of fun doing what I enjoy and trying hard to do it well. Now that I am based in the United Kingdom, I am freelancing in my personal capacity and am focusing on portraiture as well as band photography including music press, live music and promotional portrait photography. What equipment do you use? I started out with Canon back in the day but never really felt comfortable with my camera. I decided to pack it in then and make a shift to Nikon which I have never regretted. My first Nikon was an F801 shortly followed by an F90X. This became my favourite camera and this was the camera that I shot my entire portfolio on during my studies. I still think the results of this camera are amazing but due to the rush that photography brings, I have since had to shift most of my work onto digital. My first digital SLR was the Nikon D70 which served me well. It was not a professional body but I achieved some amazing results with it and had plenty work published proving that the operator and lenses are way more important than the gear. I think I shot 180 000 photographs through my D70 and I decided to purchase myself the D200 when it was launched and keep the D70 as a back up body. Since then things have progressed a lot and I have spent a lot of money investing in equipment.I ended up moving on to the D3, then the D3s, then the D800 and then the D810 which I loved a lot but had a bunch of faults that I just couldn’t stand … resulting in a move, after 20 years, back to Canon. I never thought that would happen and after the first few weeks of stress and panic I feel like I’ve found my sweet spot and am now happy with my kit. I currently use the Canon 5DS as my body of
