A2 PHOTOGRAPHY - EMILY MOORBY
MUSIC CULTURE
Adam Elmakias
Adam Elmakias is an American Music and Travel Photographer who is based on the outskirts of San Diego. He first got interested in photography in 2005, and he now travels to various locations around the world to photograph predominantly bands that are categorised under the ‘Rock Music’ genre. Through the use of websites such as ‘Blogger’ and ‘Tumblr’ to broadcast his work, Adam has gained his iconic status over the years through this digital approach to the promotion of his images, as well as recommendations from the bands he has photographed through social media such as ‘Instagram’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’. Considering the editing and manipulation that goes into most of Adam’s work, his kit and the social media promotion, I would say that Adam is a very modern photographer and as a result, is up to date with the demand that the Photography industry requites to succeed. Adam uses four camera bodies when capturing his work:
- Canon 5D Mark III (his main piece of kit. Along with the Canon 6D, Adam relies on these two camera bodies in order to shoot the best possible images of the performers on stage and off)
- Canon 6D (not as advanced as the 5D Mark III, however still essential and a very good camera)
- Go Pro Hero 4 (he sometimes attaches this to the band members instruments in order to collect point of view shots, both stills and videos)
- I Phone 6 (only for heat of the moment shots and updating his blogs, he does not rely on this to collect his main images)
Although Adam does publish some coloured images, most of the work that is posted is Black and White. I believe that this intensifies the mood of some of the shots, especially when the pictured musicians are part of Heavy Rock/Metal Bands. As well as converting most of his images to Black and White, I have noticed through social media updates that Adam often experiments with the levels and contrasts of his images, as well as the saturation. So, in terms of editing, Adam doesn’t actually need to do that much, due to the quality of the kit he has for collecting images
(As shown on his website: http://adamelmakias.com/)
When looking at the Lighting of Adam’s work, as most of his images are of Performing Bands, some of these have turned out quite bright when compared to his portraiture work, due to the stage lights. However on a whole, I find Adam’s Work quite vibrant and detailed, probably down to the contrast being altered in Photoshop. I suspect that it has taken a while for Adam to perfect capturing bands at the quality that he does. I am yet to see an image of his where movement from one or more of the performers is present. When I have shot Bands in the past, there have always been a few images at least with evident movement from the drummer for example, where you can see how fast the drum sticks are moving. Personally, I think this kind of thing decreases the quality of images, and when it isn’t in the images, they can look amazing. So because of this, I would say that Adam Elmakias has a very strong photography technique, and is able to capture even the fastest of musicians in a clear shot.