Ahead of their debut joint exhibition “Covers”, Pedestrian asked partners and prolific Sydney photographers Dan Boud and Cybele Malinowski to shed some light (no pun intended) on their favourite work-related moments. The exhibition, which opens this Friday at Sydney’s Mart Gallery (156 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills), will feature a series of the couple’s magazine covers but if you’re a budding photographer read on as Dan and Cybele offer some tips on capturing candid moments, putting your subjects at ease and how to convince them to strip.
DAN BOUD’S TOP FIVE
BLUEJUICE
These photos of Bluejuice were from a session I did with them in January 2007. It was before their first album was released and was quite haphazard. We shot it in an empty office where Stav (the hairy one) worked. The band brought in stacks of clothes. Mainly girls clothes.
I can’t remember the exact series of events which led to Jake and Stav stripping to their undies, but it seemed like a great idea at the time. I love the deadpan expression. We were in hysterics between shutter clicks.
Afterwards I remember hoping that the band would have the balls to use the photo. It was pretty confronting and confusing, which is what made it good, but also what scares most bands.
They put the shot on the cover of their album.
FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
I thought I’d include something recent – and this one is of Florence and the Machine on Saturday night. She was such fun to shoot.
Some bands I struggle with capturing live. Actually, it’s not a struggle, more boredom with feeling like I’m taking the same photo I’ve taken a thousand times before. There’s only so much you can do with a dude strumming a guitar.
But Florence was one of those performers who demands attention, and moves, struts and dresses in a way that the camera loves.
CYBELE IN VEGAS
This is a shot of Cybele and our friend Nat driving down the strip in Las Vegas in a convertible Porsche. I just stuck my camera in the air and clicked. It’s a good memory, and I think it captures some of that Vegas glitz and our excitement.
HAND OF GOD
This was on a shoot Cybele was doing with the band Young and Restless (RIP), but it could be on any band shoot really. I must have been up a ladder. You can see Cybele’s hand beckoning the band to move forward.
BOB ELLIS
These are some portraits I did with the writer Bob Ellis for Foxtel and the Griffin Theatre. He’s such a character – one moment droll and miserable, the next filled with vitriol, then giggles as he amuses himself. For that reason i thought the portrait worked best as a series (or triptych if you’re an art wanker).
It’s quite an awkward thing getting your photo taken, it makes people feel extremely self conscious. So I sometimes get my subjects to do something in a photo. With Bob Ellis I asked him to tell me a story in an animated fashion. After a moment to think he began regaling me with a soliloquy from Hamlet.
RUBY ROSE
This was probably one of my most popular shoots this year. It was for a cover feature in Time Out Sydney, and the pictures have subsequently appeared on two more magazine covers. I’ve spotted them all over the net too. They’ve bounced around tumblr a lot.
I shot it at my home studio that i share with Cybele. This was the simplest set up of the shoot. Just one light on a white wall. But when you’ve got a beautiful subject, often simple is the best way to go.
CYBELE MALINOWSKI’S TOP SIX
TEENAGER
I had shot Pip (Ladyhawke) a few weeks before for her press shots. She was so fun to work with, and when I was asked to shoot the Teenager cover, I knew I had to do something special. Over a few drinks a couple of days before the shoot I convinced Pip that topless was the only way to go. Demi Moore had done it, Janet Jackson had done it, hell, even Bette Middler had too.
On Teenager’s album cover, Nick Littlemore is unabashedly topless, pubes on show, Pip shyly hiding from the limelight. So we switched it around, and covered the extroverted Nick up, and stripped little Pip down. She was far from comfortable, but that is what I love about the shot. All Nick wants to do is show off, he is restrained in his stiff white shirt, and Pip stands there, quiet, timid, and topless.
STUDY OF A GIRL IN THE CROWD
This next shot was taken at Sound Relief in 2009.
When in the photo-pit, photographers get 3 songs to shoot an act, sometimes only two. I spend the first song grabbing shots of the band, on the second song I generally swing around to the mosh pit behind us and focus in on the most ecstatic/zoned out/in-tune/wasted members of the crowd and snap away. When a punter is right up the front, squished between thousands of fans behind them, and their idol is in front of them, they are in a pretty awesome spot. It’s them, and the music, and my camera. They are in their own private world, and this is what I love to capture.
HAYLEY FOSTER (CHAINGANG)
This here is the lead-singer of Sydney band Chaingang, and also a dear friend of mine, Hayley Foster. This was the last shot we took after a loooong day’s shoot. We were exhausted, my camera was having fits, after busting into an abandoned Hillsong site for a location shoot, and being busted by a young Priest (is that what they call them in Hillsong?), we pushed on, came back to the studio, and this is what we got. She’s hot, she’s wet, nuff said.
CATCALL
So by now you might see a certain theme developing here. Beautiful girls. Strong and yet vulnerable. Water. Here is a shot that I took of Catcall, it featured in my last solo show, at MTV gallery in 2008. After, once again, a long day of shooting, I asked Cat if she wouldn’t mind doing just one more shot, for me, back at my place in Surry Hills. I had asked her to bring a singlet along, for this purpose. Cat was submerged in my bath, I was straddling the bathtub, studio lights hanging precariously above. My flatmate, who was downstairs heard ecstatic screams, and ‘oh yea, that’s it!’ ‘again! again!’ He didn’t ask what was going on. Cat ended up using this shot for the cover of her single.
TIM FITE- WEEGEE
Commissioned by Drum Media to shoot Laneway Festival last year, I was given strict instructions. “Make sure you get Time Fite, we hear he is something else on stage.” So I shot him. I was impressed. He was amazing. After the show I couldn’t help but congratulate him on his amazingness, and through some beautiful twist of tipsy conversation we organised to do a shoot together.
We were both fan’s of the infamous New York gangster photographer Weegee, and decided to recreate a crime scene. Weegee would always show up to crime scenes before the cops, flashing away. For a while he was suspected as the killer!
The idea of this shot was a play on the idea of a photographer shooting people. Bang bang you’re dead. Sometimes when I race around, firing away, staring through the lens, ready to fire as soon as the shot comes into focus, it can feel like a hunt of sorts. I wanted Tim/Weegee to look as though he had been busted.
Tim’s ever obliging brother was the victim, and Tim played Weegee. They were such good sports. By the end of the night Tim was smearing his bloodied face in the gravel road, swallowing a questionable amount of fake blood, bending his limbs into unfathomable positions.
DANIEL BOUD – SOUND RELIEF
This is a shot of Daniel at Sound Relief. Look at his little smile as he shoots the screaming punters. We both love a good crowd shot.
