The road to Australia’s most prominent rock photographer…
partly published in http://www.kryztoff.com/issues/022/#/16
Bob King has been around on the Australian rock photography scene since 64 when he photographed the Beatles in Sydney. His unique collection includes shots from the early days of AC/DC, Bob Marley through to the early big day outs and soundwave festivals. He’s been around on the scene a long time and is now the tour photographer of choice for a host of prominent bands. He knows what’s going on around Australia. Recently he chose two of Adelaide's own rock photographer Craig Beaumont's photographs for a shortlist of 20 out of 3000 live music shots for Jim Beam's Label behind live music program.
Craig runs Studio Crossbow photography in Adelaide (www.studiocrossbow.com.au)
I was lucky enough to catch up and chat with Bob King and had the opportunity to talk about the competition and his history as an australian Rock photographer since the 60's
Check out Bob's amazing archives at www.bobking.com.au
Socratos.
Being in the right place at the right time seems to be one of the most important skills for the job, you have had a knack for it throughout your career. How did you organise yourself into the situations, can you explain that or are you just lucky?
Oh no, a lot of late nights and early mornings! It’s made now a lot more difficult because there’s so many more kids doing it because of digital. The rise of digital cameras has created a lot more people that want to shoot concerts.
From in the 60s I can recall photographing the Rolling Stones in 65 and I was with 2 mates we were amateur photographers, we were into rock and roll and people were going “why are you photographing the concert? what do you want to do that for!?” The only person photographing it would be the newspaperman who would run out holding his ears after taking his shots. We were in the audience photographing and people couldn’t understand why. These days everyone’s got mobile phones and small digital cameras.
Back at those early gigs did you always photograph from the crowd or did you sometimes get yourself in a good position?
I used to oddly enough the Horton pavilion? Was the main place in Sydney, this was before computer tickets so I’d get up at 4 oclock, drive down to the box office, get there ar 6 o'clock to join the queue the morning the tickets would come on sale and I would get the front row, you know, row a and they couldn’t kick you out cos' you were there!
But later on when a few magazines started to surface I started working for them and you’d get a photopass and then you’d be in the pit which would be infront of the audience so you’d get access to the act that way. Up until 1988 you’d be allowed to shoot the whole show, after '88 they became more selective and you’d only be allowed to shoot 3 songs and that held true to today. And quite often sometimes some bands will give you only one song. Some bands want you to stand back on the sound desk way away, you know the older ones, people like Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart and a few others you know they’re getting older so they figure they don’t want close up photos taken of them so you’re banished to the sound desk! And then a lot of bands wont let the accredited press in to their acts. They will only let people attached to magazines and websites and it knocks all the guys like myself that have been doing it and are still doing it, it keeps us out! Who does it? Greenday does it, Kylie Minogues does it. Half of them only let accredited magazines in. Which makes it more difficult.And then sometimes people are in the audience with gear as good as mine and they don’t stop them from shooting the whole show so you know, it’s a little bit disconcerting but anyway that’s the way it goes.
I can’t understand their reasoning., I mean we’re giving them free advertising you know? I really can’t understand why this has never happened up until mid to late 90’s it started occasionally, now it happens quite regularly.
Do you see a big division between printed press and online publishing or do you think they are the same thing in a different guise?
Sort of yeah, but I mean the people who get in for these small magazines and websites you only see them once in your life and then you never see them again! Its confusing in how they can get in, but they do get in, when the major acts say no freelancers and no agency photographers. I’m an agency photographer I shoot for Corbis, a big American library which my shots go worldwide through.
Did you finish all that scanning you were doing yesterday?
Yes Its never ending though Im scanning all my old stuff from way back to the 60s 70s and 80s there’s a lot of interest in all my old stuff, which is good, that’s what I make a lot of money from selling through agencies. Onto people that are doing books and what not.
You have some very unique shots that not many people would have
This is true and they keep selling which is great
What is Jim Beam's Rockography? Do you think its a good format, Tell me about how you picked 10 out of 3000 shots!?
Jim Beam approached me to be the curator of the exhibition, they had, well their website has people sending in their rock photos from various places around Australia and for this competition out of I think it was almost 3000 images they wanted me to select 15 at first and then they came back and made it 20, out of the 3000 so it was quite a mammoth task to go through them.
I had my family help me, my wife and my son aswell, he does a lot of photography, he works for Nikkon, he’s a Nikkon rep for NSW and my daughter is a graphic designer so the four of us, after I’d whittled them down to about 150 we then sat down and whittled it down to 20 and the culmination was last week at the Oxford arts factory where it was launched, they had all the accepted prints on display Ken Taylor came up from Melbourne to design the wall and he did a great job of setting them out in the exhibition together and that’s basically my involvement with it. I think it’s going to be a yearly event. Whether they get me back is irrelevant but it looks like they’re going to push it on a little bit further.
You must have seen some awesome photos when you were whittling the list down… What makes a great photo? and what made these make the grade?
There was a lot of great stuff, the use of light, a lot of the photographers have got down light, action and its not just a photograph, you know? They’ve involved them selves in the action and in the way they’ve created the image, there was a lot of beginner stuff which is natural and it’s a shame that you cant pick them but there was so much that shined through.
The other thing that I did with them, once we got down to the 150 was to download the images off the website and of course they all had names on them so I went and renumbered them so that I wasn’t influenced by the names all we saw was shot number 22 and shot number 80 that we’ve selected and then when we picked our 20 with the names and that’s what we sent to Jim Beam, We let them speak for themselves, a couple had 3 or 4 four of them so you know it’s good, good to them, they turned out some really really good work.
You picked out some photo's by a mate of mine here in Adelaide, do you remember a shot where someone’s kicking the camera?
"Oh that one that was great yeah, that was a great shot, he turned out some nice stuff. Rock photography is alive and well and has a great future ahead, with lots of young talent,” Bob has said about all of the photographers chosen to exhibit their work.
"There are some great action and creative shots, with well thought out use of light and movement."
Do you think the aspect that’s been lost in translation between the old style and the new style that’s been brought about with all this access to technology and stuff is the craft and the care that’s taken in setting up the shot?
I’m not knocking people but a lot of people shooting today have not learned photography. Like the older photographers that are around that have actually physically learned how to process black and white film, make prints all back in what we call the analogue days now, pre digital, where you learned how light works and this sort of thing. So very few of them have been to technical courses but some have and it shows through their work.
And stringently in this exhibition that I just had a hand in for Jim Beam there’s a lot of talent out there, a lot of great talent
When you are photographing a concert do you try to blend in to the scene and read the stage, read the lights and let the shot come to you?
Well it was different, now that we only get three songs to shoot. Prior to 87/88 when we shot the whole show and there weren’t that many photographers there’d be 2 or 3 of us would end up shooting whole show, maybe 4 or 5 and we were all mates and yeah you would read the stage. You would read the lighting and you’d look for the pairings you know? When the bass player gets with the singer the lead singer jumps up on the drum riser. The lighting is not on the full stage most of the time, it’s with the lead singer so you’ve gotta wait for the time for that to happen, I might shoot 2, 3 rolls of colour then 2 or 3 of black and white, about 180 shots. Now with 3 songs and digital you shoot everything you go for it! I might shoot 6-700 frames of an act in 3 songs. Its made it easier but its made it more difficult.
I can shoot at 4000 iso where back in the early days the most we were shooting with was 400 or 800 iso so you’re really fighting with the light you had to push the film in processing and now you don’t need to and its not costing you anything. The bad shots you can delete, you can see where you’ve gone wrong straight away and I’ll just shoot a lot of shots and then edit them out and I’ll only send 20-25 shots to my library, and end up on their website. So that’s the difference between then and now. Plus you might have 22 people next to you in the pit like sometimes happens at the Big Day Out and Soundwave. These days you gotta sign lots of contracts which is a problem which you didn’t have in the early days. Its more of a problem for a young photographer starting out in the business these days?
Well it is and a lot of them ask me how to do it and I tell them but they probably don’t believe me but quite honestly there’s no money in it! Even the 90’s there might have been 4 or 5 music magazines in the country and now they’ve all gone, you’ve got the street press and they’ve got their own shooters and they don’t pay much. The major music mag is probably Rolling Stone and they source most of their images out of the US. I sell them the occasional shot, oddly enough I’ve just sold them 3 shots in the last couple of weeks and they pay $80 a shot. Which isn’t going to make you rich and as I said earlier my major earnings from music today are shots that I’ve taken in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s as they get older the more popular they become so it is difficult a) for young shooters to get into gigs because the major tour promoters have their publicists and unless you can prove to them that you’re shooting for somebody its difficult to get access and then to the point where they refuse or the acts refuse access to the major shooters so what’s left is some of the pubs and clubs and I’ve even been refused to shoot in some pubs and clubs by management cause they don’t want people shooting in their clubs and you’d have to explain that you were with the band and you were working for them and as long as you were working for them they’d let you in.
I don’t know if the same holds true today but its not easy for a young photographer today. This is why I applaud the ones that have put this stuff into the exhibition and I think they’ve done very well.
At the start its about building up a collection of work that’s unique and has your character and that’s basically the art, that’s what it is. Another way to get into it is to work for the band specifically and that works out well. You get accreditation through that and then another band will pick you up. I’ve had stuff like that in the 80’s and 90’s where I’ve worked for different bands. There’s always that way in. you know, you don’t have to know a lot about photography to take shots.
I see new guys come and go over the years. You’ll a face at a concert then you’’ see them again and again and again and then all of sudden you don’t see them which means either they got sick of it, or they’re not making money out of it and to live you’ve gotta make money and if you’re not selling you’re shots you gotta try something else or do it another way. It's cut throat in a away.
Tour stories
I like Tool they’re a great band. He’s a difficult man to photograph is young Maynard! I’ve done them a few times but I didn’t do them just recently at the big day out because again they wouldn’t give access to the agency photographers. When you saw him was he behind a white sheet?His tour manager or stage manager generally comes down (he’s done it twice when I’ve been photographing him) He jumps down into the pit before they come on and say “You’ve got 3 songs, NO FLASH, and if you shoot flash Maynard will jump down and thump you!” So you’re standing there shaking trying to get shots of him!
Mick Jagger is very much in control of his empire, he has his assistants pour coke over the stage. The black kind, not the white kind so that when he is running around in his nikes he doesn’t fall over
One time they came over and someone had built a revolving stage for them enexpectadly and unbeknownst to the them, mid concert began to revolve which threw off the bands equilibrium
Is there something that fascinates you about rock and roll? how would you map its progression over the last 4 decades to where it is today>? What would you consider your most historic moment?
Oh its changing I mean you look at what the stones were playing on stage with, the amplifiers, even a garage band today has got bigger amplifiers than the stones or the bands did in the 60’s so there’s that aspect to it, the equipments got bigger and better but then there’s so many more acts out there trying to do it. That’s the other thing! Back in the day there was rock and roll and that was it but now there’s so many talents out there all finding their own niche
That’s the other thing that upsets me too is Australian idol! They’ve made the record companies lazy! They then pick out the acts they want to sign and they’re not going out to the pubs and clubs and they’re not going out to see all the bands that are trying it out on their own. There’s that aspect to it but a lot of bands that are doing it on their own are kicking off well yet the idol system has made it a lot harder to get in it and the radio stations are not playing much Australian content, they’ve don that for years! They’d rather play an unknown band from Scotland than an unknown band from NSW or somewhere in Adelaide! They’ve got that against them so it’s difficult.
Its strangely limiting the way that music comes out compared to how free it was when it was all starting. In the sixties they thought it would last a couple of years then they’d all go back to art school
The competition was run through Jim Beam’s music website www.TheLBLM.com.
“Our new initiative Jim Beam Rockography is just another way we can celebrate the The Label Behind Live Music. Rockography is a great way in which we can showcase the work which goes on behind the scenes. We have enjoyed working with up and coming photographers and look forward to showcasing their artwork to the general public. Jim Beam would like to congratulate them on their great work of capturing amazing moments of live music”, says Ray Noble, Brand Director, Jim Beam Bourbon Portfolio
The exhibition will be running for 6 weeks for Oxford Art Factory patrons to enjoy.
Brought to you by Bowie at studio crossbowwww.studiocrossbow.com
partly published in http://www.kryztoff.com/issues/022/#/16
Bob King has been around on the Australian rock photography scene since 64 when he photographed the Beatles in Sydney. His unique collection includes shots from the early days of AC/DC, Bob Marley through to the early big day outs and soundwave festivals. He’s been around on the scene a long time and is now the tour photographer of choice for a host of prominent bands. He knows what’s going on around Australia. Recently he chose two of Adelaide's own rock photographer Craig Beaumont's photographs for a shortlist of 20 out of 3000 live music shots for Jim Beam's Label behind live music program.
Craig runs Studio Crossbow photography in Adelaide (www.studiocrossbow.com.au)
I was lucky enough to catch up and chat with Bob King and had the opportunity to talk about the competition and his history as an australian Rock photographer since the 60's
Check out Bob's amazing archives at www.bobking.com.au
Socratos.
Being in the right place at the right time seems to be one of the most important skills for the job, you have had a knack for it throughout your career. How did you organise yourself into the situations, can you explain that or are you just lucky?
Oh no, a lot of late nights and early mornings! It’s made now a lot more difficult because there’s so many more kids doing it because of digital. The rise of digital cameras has created a lot more people that want to shoot concerts.
From in the 60s I can recall photographing the Rolling Stones in 65 and I was with 2 mates we were amateur photographers, we were into rock and roll and people were going “why are you photographing the concert? what do you want to do that for!?” The only person photographing it would be the newspaperman who would run out holding his ears after taking his shots. We were in the audience photographing and people couldn’t understand why. These days everyone’s got mobile phones and small digital cameras.
Back at those early gigs did you always photograph from the crowd or did you sometimes get yourself in a good position?
I used to oddly enough the Horton pavilion? Was the main place in Sydney, this was before computer tickets so I’d get up at 4 oclock, drive down to the box office, get there ar 6 o'clock to join the queue the morning the tickets would come on sale and I would get the front row, you know, row a and they couldn’t kick you out cos' you were there!
But later on when a few magazines started to surface I started working for them and you’d get a photopass and then you’d be in the pit which would be infront of the audience so you’d get access to the act that way. Up until 1988 you’d be allowed to shoot the whole show, after '88 they became more selective and you’d only be allowed to shoot 3 songs and that held true to today. And quite often sometimes some bands will give you only one song. Some bands want you to stand back on the sound desk way away, you know the older ones, people like Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart and a few others you know they’re getting older so they figure they don’t want close up photos taken of them so you’re banished to the sound desk! And then a lot of bands wont let the accredited press in to their acts. They will only let people attached to magazines and websites and it knocks all the guys like myself that have been doing it and are still doing it, it keeps us out! Who does it? Greenday does it, Kylie Minogues does it. Half of them only let accredited magazines in. Which makes it more difficult.And then sometimes people are in the audience with gear as good as mine and they don’t stop them from shooting the whole show so you know, it’s a little bit disconcerting but anyway that’s the way it goes.
I can’t understand their reasoning., I mean we’re giving them free advertising you know? I really can’t understand why this has never happened up until mid to late 90’s it started occasionally, now it happens quite regularly.
Do you see a big division between printed press and online publishing or do you think they are the same thing in a different guise?
Sort of yeah, but I mean the people who get in for these small magazines and websites you only see them once in your life and then you never see them again! Its confusing in how they can get in, but they do get in, when the major acts say no freelancers and no agency photographers. I’m an agency photographer I shoot for Corbis, a big American library which my shots go worldwide through.
Did you finish all that scanning you were doing yesterday?
Yes Its never ending though Im scanning all my old stuff from way back to the 60s 70s and 80s there’s a lot of interest in all my old stuff, which is good, that’s what I make a lot of money from selling through agencies. Onto people that are doing books and what not.
You have some very unique shots that not many people would have
This is true and they keep selling which is great
What is Jim Beam's Rockography? Do you think its a good format, Tell me about how you picked 10 out of 3000 shots!?
Jim Beam approached me to be the curator of the exhibition, they had, well their website has people sending in their rock photos from various places around Australia and for this competition out of I think it was almost 3000 images they wanted me to select 15 at first and then they came back and made it 20, out of the 3000 so it was quite a mammoth task to go through them.
I had my family help me, my wife and my son aswell, he does a lot of photography, he works for Nikkon, he’s a Nikkon rep for NSW and my daughter is a graphic designer so the four of us, after I’d whittled them down to about 150 we then sat down and whittled it down to 20 and the culmination was last week at the Oxford arts factory where it was launched, they had all the accepted prints on display Ken Taylor came up from Melbourne to design the wall and he did a great job of setting them out in the exhibition together and that’s basically my involvement with it. I think it’s going to be a yearly event. Whether they get me back is irrelevant but it looks like they’re going to push it on a little bit further.
You must have seen some awesome photos when you were whittling the list down… What makes a great photo? and what made these make the grade?
There was a lot of great stuff, the use of light, a lot of the photographers have got down light, action and its not just a photograph, you know? They’ve involved them selves in the action and in the way they’ve created the image, there was a lot of beginner stuff which is natural and it’s a shame that you cant pick them but there was so much that shined through.
The other thing that I did with them, once we got down to the 150 was to download the images off the website and of course they all had names on them so I went and renumbered them so that I wasn’t influenced by the names all we saw was shot number 22 and shot number 80 that we’ve selected and then when we picked our 20 with the names and that’s what we sent to Jim Beam, We let them speak for themselves, a couple had 3 or 4 four of them so you know it’s good, good to them, they turned out some really really good work.
You picked out some photo's by a mate of mine here in Adelaide, do you remember a shot where someone’s kicking the camera?
"Oh that one that was great yeah, that was a great shot, he turned out some nice stuff. Rock photography is alive and well and has a great future ahead, with lots of young talent,” Bob has said about all of the photographers chosen to exhibit their work.
"There are some great action and creative shots, with well thought out use of light and movement."
Do you think the aspect that’s been lost in translation between the old style and the new style that’s been brought about with all this access to technology and stuff is the craft and the care that’s taken in setting up the shot?
I’m not knocking people but a lot of people shooting today have not learned photography. Like the older photographers that are around that have actually physically learned how to process black and white film, make prints all back in what we call the analogue days now, pre digital, where you learned how light works and this sort of thing. So very few of them have been to technical courses but some have and it shows through their work.
And stringently in this exhibition that I just had a hand in for Jim Beam there’s a lot of talent out there, a lot of great talent
When you are photographing a concert do you try to blend in to the scene and read the stage, read the lights and let the shot come to you?
Well it was different, now that we only get three songs to shoot. Prior to 87/88 when we shot the whole show and there weren’t that many photographers there’d be 2 or 3 of us would end up shooting whole show, maybe 4 or 5 and we were all mates and yeah you would read the stage. You would read the lighting and you’d look for the pairings you know? When the bass player gets with the singer the lead singer jumps up on the drum riser. The lighting is not on the full stage most of the time, it’s with the lead singer so you’ve gotta wait for the time for that to happen, I might shoot 2, 3 rolls of colour then 2 or 3 of black and white, about 180 shots. Now with 3 songs and digital you shoot everything you go for it! I might shoot 6-700 frames of an act in 3 songs. Its made it easier but its made it more difficult.
I can shoot at 4000 iso where back in the early days the most we were shooting with was 400 or 800 iso so you’re really fighting with the light you had to push the film in processing and now you don’t need to and its not costing you anything. The bad shots you can delete, you can see where you’ve gone wrong straight away and I’ll just shoot a lot of shots and then edit them out and I’ll only send 20-25 shots to my library, and end up on their website. So that’s the difference between then and now. Plus you might have 22 people next to you in the pit like sometimes happens at the Big Day Out and Soundwave. These days you gotta sign lots of contracts which is a problem which you didn’t have in the early days. Its more of a problem for a young photographer starting out in the business these days?
Well it is and a lot of them ask me how to do it and I tell them but they probably don’t believe me but quite honestly there’s no money in it! Even the 90’s there might have been 4 or 5 music magazines in the country and now they’ve all gone, you’ve got the street press and they’ve got their own shooters and they don’t pay much. The major music mag is probably Rolling Stone and they source most of their images out of the US. I sell them the occasional shot, oddly enough I’ve just sold them 3 shots in the last couple of weeks and they pay $80 a shot. Which isn’t going to make you rich and as I said earlier my major earnings from music today are shots that I’ve taken in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s as they get older the more popular they become so it is difficult a) for young shooters to get into gigs because the major tour promoters have their publicists and unless you can prove to them that you’re shooting for somebody its difficult to get access and then to the point where they refuse or the acts refuse access to the major shooters so what’s left is some of the pubs and clubs and I’ve even been refused to shoot in some pubs and clubs by management cause they don’t want people shooting in their clubs and you’d have to explain that you were with the band and you were working for them and as long as you were working for them they’d let you in.
I don’t know if the same holds true today but its not easy for a young photographer today. This is why I applaud the ones that have put this stuff into the exhibition and I think they’ve done very well.
At the start its about building up a collection of work that’s unique and has your character and that’s basically the art, that’s what it is. Another way to get into it is to work for the band specifically and that works out well. You get accreditation through that and then another band will pick you up. I’ve had stuff like that in the 80’s and 90’s where I’ve worked for different bands. There’s always that way in. you know, you don’t have to know a lot about photography to take shots.
I see new guys come and go over the years. You’ll a face at a concert then you’’ see them again and again and again and then all of sudden you don’t see them which means either they got sick of it, or they’re not making money out of it and to live you’ve gotta make money and if you’re not selling you’re shots you gotta try something else or do it another way. It's cut throat in a away.
Tour stories
I like Tool they’re a great band. He’s a difficult man to photograph is young Maynard! I’ve done them a few times but I didn’t do them just recently at the big day out because again they wouldn’t give access to the agency photographers. When you saw him was he behind a white sheet?His tour manager or stage manager generally comes down (he’s done it twice when I’ve been photographing him) He jumps down into the pit before they come on and say “You’ve got 3 songs, NO FLASH, and if you shoot flash Maynard will jump down and thump you!” So you’re standing there shaking trying to get shots of him!
Mick Jagger is very much in control of his empire, he has his assistants pour coke over the stage. The black kind, not the white kind so that when he is running around in his nikes he doesn’t fall over
One time they came over and someone had built a revolving stage for them enexpectadly and unbeknownst to the them, mid concert began to revolve which threw off the bands equilibrium
Is there something that fascinates you about rock and roll? how would you map its progression over the last 4 decades to where it is today>? What would you consider your most historic moment?
Oh its changing I mean you look at what the stones were playing on stage with, the amplifiers, even a garage band today has got bigger amplifiers than the stones or the bands did in the 60’s so there’s that aspect to it, the equipments got bigger and better but then there’s so many more acts out there trying to do it. That’s the other thing! Back in the day there was rock and roll and that was it but now there’s so many talents out there all finding their own niche
That’s the other thing that upsets me too is Australian idol! They’ve made the record companies lazy! They then pick out the acts they want to sign and they’re not going out to the pubs and clubs and they’re not going out to see all the bands that are trying it out on their own. There’s that aspect to it but a lot of bands that are doing it on their own are kicking off well yet the idol system has made it a lot harder to get in it and the radio stations are not playing much Australian content, they’ve don that for years! They’d rather play an unknown band from Scotland than an unknown band from NSW or somewhere in Adelaide! They’ve got that against them so it’s difficult.
Its strangely limiting the way that music comes out compared to how free it was when it was all starting. In the sixties they thought it would last a couple of years then they’d all go back to art school
The competition was run through Jim Beam’s music website www.TheLBLM.com.
“Our new initiative Jim Beam Rockography is just another way we can celebrate the The Label Behind Live Music. Rockography is a great way in which we can showcase the work which goes on behind the scenes. We have enjoyed working with up and coming photographers and look forward to showcasing their artwork to the general public. Jim Beam would like to congratulate them on their great work of capturing amazing moments of live music”, says Ray Noble, Brand Director, Jim Beam Bourbon Portfolio
The exhibition will be running for 6 weeks for Oxford Art Factory patrons to enjoy.
Brought to you by Bowie at studio crossbowwww.studiocrossbow.com
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