Check out my full Soundwave Festival 2011 gallery.
Bands
Crowd

Chef Aaron Harvie on polaroid

Chef Aaron Harvie

Performer Minnie Moonshine

The portrait of Minnie was a spur of the moment shoot using just my iPhone and desk lamp. Pretty high tech eh?.

Sydney artist Sonny Day of WeBuyYourKids

Sydney artist Trent Whitehead

 
I bought two film cameras recently to use for my personal work - a Mamiya RZ67 and 7 Rangefinder. I love the process of shooting film, not to mention those beautiful detailed 6x7 negatives. I’m working on a couple of projects so expect more images soon. In the mean time I’ve posted a few snaps below.

Barron Falls

Flood water along Bruce Highway, Far North Qld

Sister

Brother

Last year I had a pretty big scare when both my main and backup drives failed. Something about firmware corruption and physical drive failure. I had no off-site backup, no online backup, nothing. I’m lucky I have hair left.

I found a data recovery that could recover my files, albeit at a cost. So all wasn’t at a loss. Thanks to generous donations from people who saw my story and liked my work, I could afford the recovery plus new drives. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

20,000 images were returned to me on a single drive, unnamed and in a single folder. While I spend the next few weeks sorting them out I found some that had been corrupted. I wanted to share them with you cause I thought they looked pretty cool with inverted colours and lines of static.

I now have two backups at home, 1 online and 1 off-site. Lesson learned.

Here are some shots that caught my eye.

Alice in Chains

Cog

The Dwarves

Anthony Salame

Dillinger Escape Plan

I wanted to take a picture of a girl wearing an octopus as a wig for a while. I needed someone who would feel comfortable wearing a dead and probably smelly sea creature for several hours. I approached Magdalena from Sydney band Mz Ann Thropik with the idea because I thought she might be up for the challenge.

The morning of the shoot, my assistant and I traveled to the Sydney Fish Markets in search of the biggest octopus we could find. The first few shops were disappointing with only baby octopus or disembodied legs available. It wasn’t until the very last counter that we found a 5kg monster, it was truly massive with tentacles that stretched as long as my arm. $60 later we were on our way to the studio to rendezvous with Magdalena.

The octopus was covered in slimy froth when we took it out of the plastic bag. At first Magdalena was a little squeamish, but she soon made friends with the creature. At the end of the shoot she’d grown so attached she didn’t want to part ways with it, and didn’t even complain about all the octopus juice in her hair.

Check out this short behind the scenes video.

The lighting was a beauty dish on a Bowens 500w head for the key light and occasionally we’d use another Bowens fired into an umbrella behind the camera as a fill. I say occasionally because we were using cheap radio triggers and sometimes they didn’t all fire.

Here are a few more images from the shoot - with and without Octopus.

Thanks to Magdalena’s marketing prowess and her profile in Sydney’s alternative music scene I’ve seen this shot all over Sydney’s inner west, on flyers, posters, street press and even a billboard.

Magdalana next to a poster for Under The Blue Moon festival.

So if you’re in Sydney drop into Polymorph Body Piercing Studio in Newtown to see the shot printed large! Opening night is Tues 9th 7:30pm and running until 23rd November (which is my birthday!). Come along and say hi.

• What’s in my assisting kit
• What’s in my camera bag
• Shoot anecdotes, lighting diagrams and notebook scans
• Revisiting some of the shots in my archives
• Short interviews to go with new portraits
• Screencasts of my digital workflow
• Behind-the-scenes content
• List of industry resources I use
• Photographer’s contracts – especially rights grabbing live music contracts

What else would you like to see here?

I’d love to read your suggestions so feel free to or leave a comment below.

]]> news 2010-10-26T16:55:20+00:00 http://nicbezzina.com/blog/article/new-nicbezzinacom-thanks/ http://nicbezzina.com/blog/article/new-nicbezzinacom-thanks/ This is it! Website’s finished (for now).

Huge shout outs to Deb from Cococello and John from Code72. They’re responsible for pulling together this blog, integrating my Photoshelter archives into the design, tidying up the about page and allowing me to create new feature galleries.

I highly recommend Deb to anyone considering getting any design work done.  If you want more proof, just check out her own fantastic website, designed by Deb and built by John.

In case you’re interested, I use Photoshelter for my archives and ecommerce. It’s simple to manage and has some cool features like light boxes and password protected galleries. It also doubles as an online backup of my hi-res files. After two hard drive failures last year that nearly cost me my whole catalogue, I think you can never have enough backups. Even if my house blows up my work’s safe.






Screengrab behind the scenes.

If you want to keep up to date with what I’m doing, sign up to my newsletter for a monthly email.

]]> news 2010-10-24T02:06:21+00:00 http://nicbezzina.com/blog/article/hi-my-name-is/ http://nicbezzina.com/blog/article/hi-my-name-is/ Welcome to my first blog post. I’ve been putting this off for a while because it takes me forever to write these things. I’m so used to thinking in images that writing can feel like a bit like an uphill battle, but I’ll keep at it and I hope to share some interesting posts soon.

So I’ll start with a bit of background info. I grew up in Broken Hill, which is a town in central Australia. The big industry in Broken Hill is mining, and most of the town’s main streets are named after metallic or mineral salts. Weird right? The landscape is arid and can often seem empty and bleak, but I think the red soil and the vast, flat plains have a beauty of their own. (photo above)

I decided to quit high school and move to Sydney to study special make up effects at 3Arts College. The following year I found myself in New York with an internship making stop-motion foam latex puppets for Carl Paolino Studios.



Woody Allen as Spiderman



When I got back to Australia I changed my focus to photography and haven’t looked back. I’m currently living in Sydney and have been shooting for about 6 years.

My interest in taking photos began with music photography and it’s still something I really enjoy.  It can be hectic and unpredictable sometimes, but I love it!  As a freelance photographer organising media passes can be really frustrating. Shooting live shows and portraits of musicians has meant photographing some of the people I admire and am influenced by. Over the last few years I’ve shot over 100 artists including:




Nick Cave



Slipknot



Peaches



Nine Inch Nails

You can find these images in in my archives.

Recently I’ve been focusing on shooting portraits and my own projects. There’s still so much to learn and do and time’s always running out. I’ll keep updating this thing but you can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Nic

 

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