Maximo Park shoot - Ibiza

Last week I was lucky enough to get a job that saw me going to Ibiza. Part of the work involved shooting the British band Maximo Park. As always with PR events getting time with the talent can be quite difficult and often time spent shooting is minimal. This of course is frustrating because often you can see so many great opportunities that you know you're going to miss, but at the same time it's understandable and you can't always expect your wishes to take priority. In this case I was able to spend about 30 seconds grabbing a couple shots inside before the band had to rehearse, if I'd had another minute I would have stuck a flash behind them just to pop them out from the background and make it a tad more interesting (see above). As it was this shot wasn't going to be much use for the client as it didn't involve any of their branding so I was lucky to be able to grab it all (I'd obviously shot the image that I new client wanted prior to this).

Afterwards however I felt that since we were in Ibiza it would be a real shame not to get a shot of the band which really showed that off. Towards the late afternoon the band arrived a villa for more media interviews and as most of these were being filmed for web it meant I couldn't do too much working around them. This meant I had to sit and watch the beautiful light fade, and with it my chance of getting a great photo...


You can see in the images below how it was getting darker...

...and darker...

..before...ziiiip..the light vanished. Another 30 seconds to shoot but by this stage all Balearic scenic splendor was gone. bugger.

It was frustrating but just one of those things, as I said before these images weren't priority and the interviews were, so there wasn't much that could be done. It could have been a lot worse too, everyone from the client company was incredibly easy to work and get along with - making it a pleasure to be there. The band, it has to be said, are some of the most grounded individuals in the music industry I have ever met. They're not pretentious or at all aloof as some others in the music industry tend to be, just five guys who love making music. Hopefully one day in the not too distant future I'll be shooting them again.