SXSW has become a place for brands to throw parties with bands. I normally grind out as many live photos as possible, but I wanted to do something different for my fourth year covering the festival. My goal for this series was to shift the focus back on the music by placing a literal spotlight on bands in the streets of Austin.
This wouldn’t have been possible without Jessica at MTV Hive green-lighting the project, and Katie for being an amazing assistant. We had somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 minutes with each artist because of their grueling press schedule. I was inspired by Aaron Richter’s Bonnaroo 2011 portraits, and Joey L’s Holy Men series. I brought ND filters and shot most of these at f/2 on the 28mm f/1.8. We carried two Einstein heads. Most of these were shot using a 64″ silver PLM or the 46″ Photek Softlighter II. The photos are in the order they were taken, except for Earl who was after Mac DeMarco.
