Unit 57: Photography and Photographic Practice

Research of other photographers work (P1, M1, D1)

Photographer: Adam MelmakiasPhoto 1/ A Day To Remember- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo 2/ A Day To Remember- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo 3/ A Day To Remember- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo 4/ A Day To Remember- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo 5/ You Me At Six and A Day To Remember- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo 6/ Blink 182- Leeds Festival 22/08/14

Photo Analysis

Adam Melmakias, the professional photographer that captured all of these marvellous pictures. He is a music photographer and in all the photos that I have chosen above was taken on the August bank-holiday festival, Leeds. As I attended the festival myself and witnessed all of the acts featured in the pictures perform live I thought I could obviously be very passionate about describing the pictures. The first 4 pictures feature a band called A Day To Remember. Like I mentioned I watched them, live and they were amazing. The photos truly express how good it was. The first one especially, it shows a lot of emotion and feeling. How Jeremy Mckinnon (the lead singer) has his eyes closed and looks as though he is just embracing the atmosphere. It’s truly a moment that Adam captured and I love it. This was definitely a strength to the picture. Buts it’s all about getting the photo at the right time. That one thing I truly love about music photography is that it is all so in the moment, it isn’t staged, you literally only get one shot at getting the perfect picture. This image truly expresses that. I have always loved live photography especially at festivals because its outdoors therefore it adds more to the image. So with this photo the picture goes so far back, the field of depth is crazy big! You can tell that the overall focus of the photo is obviously Jeremy but the crowd adds to that and makes it more as though their engaging well even though he has his back to the audience. Also I really love the outcome of using a Fish Eye lens. I think it makes a photo look so much cooler. In fact photo 1, 2 and 4 of A Day To Remember were all taken with a fish eye lens.

The second and third pictures are very similar, they’re both action shots. Photo 2 is of Drummer Alex Shelnutt and photo 3 is of Guitarist Kevin Skaff. Like I mentioned above

there was fish eye lenses used in some of the photos, the one of the drummer had one but the one of the guitarist didn’t use one. The one of Kevin Skaff is more a closer up image, it well focused and it’s as though Kevin purposely looked into the camera whilst Adam was taking the picture. Its good because it’s in mid riff and its legitimately caught in the moment. Its the same with photo 2, however Alex was unaware the photo was being taken. As you can see from the image he is truly strained because he is so into playing his drums. You can tell it was a moment of the song where there was even a drop or a climax because there are smoke machines with smoke emerging from them in the background. It’s clever because just from that it’s apparent that it was a major part to the song. And like I said you can tell from Alex’ body language. This photo contains a lot more than what the one of Kevin contained. It features more a background because it isn’t a close up image. I love how with photo 2 you can see the on stage artwork behind him a lot more. You can pretty much see it all. Where as in the third one you can only see a little tiny section because the photo is a close up and zoomed. Photo 3 is good and is quite humorous however it could’ve included more than it did maybe, like I mentioned with the photo 1, it looks so much better when the crowd are in the picture. It would have made it more effective. Photo 2 I don’t think you could’ve improved from that. I think it’s already good enough.

Photo 4 and 5 are both images of bands but when they’re not performing. These photos don’t really require much talent but I like how not all the photos are action shots. Sometimes the pictures taken like this are unaware. So the bands aren’t posing. However photo 4 is of A Day To Remember and they posed for it. This photo is good because again it was taken with a fish eye lens and the quality is unbelievable. The lighting is good because it was taken when the sun was setting so all the lights from the staging and around was where the light really came from. Its a cool band photo as though they were stoked and excited. Especially Jeremy he is posed as if to say “we’re victorious”. He could very well of meant that in the sense that their playing at Leeds festival and it’s an honour and or that they must have been on the stage before this photo was taken because like I said it is getting dark. So It could be a sign as if to say “we did it!” and that their excited about the show they put on. Obviously the depth is in this photo is big due to you being able to see as far back as to the sunset in the far distance. You can see the band as the main feature then the staging sets, the stage, a little of the crowd and tents and then the trees and sunset. It’s crazy! Then photo 5 is very different. This was taken off the stage completely and around where all their personal busses and trailers are. This photo features 2 of A Day To Remembers band members and Max Helyer from You Me At Six. This photo was taken unexpectedly and didn’t necessarily require any major skill. But I like it because it shows you more about the band. You expect to see pictures of the band performing live but when you see pictures like this where it was blatantly taken off stage it means slightly more. You kind of feel like you know the band more personally when you see images like this. Also fans like to see bands merge with other bands and they like to know that maybe 2 of their favourite bands are good friends. Their obviously good friends as their having a laugh and smiling. It’s cute. The sky on this photo does seem slightly over exposed, that maybe could be a weakness but if it’s was any more underexposed it may have made the foreground too dark. It’s quite a distant photo really it could’ve been better maybe if it was a little more zoomed in and focused. And when compared to photo 4 the depth isn’t really anything special. But that’s because their stood in front of a little trailer so that is the background which makes it s little boring. Apart from them weakness’ it’s a cool photo. Definitely a strength is the way its captured Max and Kevin enthralled by what Jeremy had to say. They obviously found it funny whatever he had said. It’s good that you can gather that just

from a little image.

Then last of all is a picture of Blink 182 from the evening of Friday 22nd of August 2014. They played the ending performance and it was something special. From this picture you can’t really necessarily tell anything crazy went down but it did! This photo features Mark Hopus (bassist) and Travis Barker (drummer) having a moment. It has a black and white filter on it and the main focus is good. It’s really clear and because it is dark the drum kit and that whole are is really well visible. Because it is dark there isn’t much of a background purely because the flash on the camera would only have lit up what was closer to the camera. I think its cute how their smiling and having a great time. It’s really cute. It shows that they had a really fun time playing that show and that they really appreciate each other!