How To Become A Rockstar Photographer Podcast With Matthias Hombauer

Today´s guest is San Diego based music photographer and author Alan Hess. He is the author of “All Access: Your Backstage Pass to Concert Photography“ which was published in 2012 and is the first instructional book about concert photography. In total Alan published 16 photography books and in this interview, we’ll talk about the challenges as a music photographer, the complete process from starting writing to marketing his books and how he became part of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team.

Today's guest is Justin Sullivan the driving force behind one of my favorite bands New Model Army. Having him on my podcast is a dream come true, and I am so grateful that he sat down with me to do this interview. The first time when I got to know New Model Army was when they were playing at the Forestglade festival in Austria. I was 15 years old and was fascinated by their music and their performance. Even my parents who picked me up from the concert liked their music and we visited New Model Army shows together in the next upcoming years. I had seen NMA in concert for more than ten times and this year it happened that we worked together when they were playing a show in Vienna. This event was one of the experiences when you know that all the struggles you go after as a concert photographer are all worth it. Working together with a band that helped me through the good and the bad times in the last 20 years and then getting the opportunity to work with them is the most rewarding feeling you can get as a music

Welcome, today's guest is Toronto based Electronic Dance Music photographer William Selviz. I am really excited to have him on the show, cause we shared a similar story. William dropped out from school in order to live his passion and found his way into the entrepreneurial life. He founded an online music magazine called “rendrd” where he provides a platform for upcoming musicians, photographers, and writers to get their career going. In addition, he shapes the electronic music scene in Toronto with his passion for his project. What I love about his story is that he, like me, just did something nobody expected from them. He jumped into the cold water, figured out a way to be successful and stick to his plan. With this interview, I want to give you the proof that also you can live your dreams when you find your mission in life and be consistent with your work. Being self-employed (in any field) is a marathon, not a sprint. You’ll have bad times and you’ll have a good time, but the most important point is to be

Today's guest is music photographer Brad Moore who started his career as an assistant for Joe Mc Nally and Scott Kelby. Brad learned all about lighting and photoshop and is one of the few who had worked with mentors such as Joe and Scott. So this guy definitely knows what he is talking about. In this interview, we’ll talk about transitioning from a job as an assistant with a monthly income to become a photography freelancer, the challenges when building your own brand and we talk about the business side of our industry.

In this episode, I´ll discuss with Per Ole Hagen how to deal with rights grabbing contracts and how the guys in Norway deal with those stupid restrictions. So, let´s think about it. When bands like FooFighters and Megadeath using rights grabbing contracts all over the world, but they drop them in Norway, we sure can learn from our colleagues. Therefore this interview can be the basis for a paradigm shift in the concert photography business. For me it´s important that you understand exactly what those rights grabbing contracts are and why you should never sign them. Per will reveal the Norwegian way on how to deal with rights grabbing contracts and talks about solutions and challenges in our industry.

Today's guest is Liverpool based music photographer and the founder of Shout about it Georgia Flynn. As a follower of my How To Become A Rockstar Photographer Project, you know that it´s all about supporting people in our concert photography community and help them get to the next level in their career. And this is exactly what Georgia is doing as well. With her project "Shout about it" she is helping photographers to promote their work online and right now she is building a worldwide platform. This was the reason why I sat down with her to discuss her ideas and talk about her upcoming exhibition project called "shout about it live", where musicians and photographers work together to spread the word of our awesome concert photography community.

Today’s guest is Los Angeles based Music Photographer Dustin Jack. In our interview Dustin reveals his approach when it comes down to shooting portraits of Rockstars like Motely Crue, Tommy Lee and Zakk Wylde. We will get a behind the scenes look at his Phil X Show with more than 40mio views on youtube and we’ll talk about how he one the Photoshop Guru Award.

My guest today is Austin based music photographer Pooneh Ghana. She started her career by taking photos of musicians with cheap plastic cameras which she uploaded on flickr. This eventually led to her first festival assignment for a blog where she only used a polaroid camera for her band portraits. Nowdays, her clients include NMA, Pitchfork, The Rolling Stone Magazine, Red Bull , VICE and many more.   In this episode Pooneh is going to reveal how to get into a tour bus and tour with bands, her approach on shooting backstage portraits on festivals and why she still shoots polaroids.

Zack Whitford is a Los Angeles based music photographer and known as the tourphotographer of one of the worlds biggest Rock bands Aerosmith.   Zack will share his story becoming a pro photographer, his experiences when working with Aerosmith and his approach to please everyone in the band with his photos. Furthermore we'll talk camera porn about the Fuji and Sony Mirrorless system and why he shot an entire tour with only a 35mm lens.   This interview is full of insights and I am grateful that Zack took the time and sit down with me for the show. So without further ado, let´s get straight into the interview.

Today, I am really excited, cause my guest is Zach from one of my favourite bands Portugal. The Man. The reason why I brought him up is not only that I love their music, but I also started my music photography career with them. I met these guys in Vienna for my first portrait session 6 years ago. Man, was I nervous. It used off camera flash for the first time and honestly saying I haven´t had any clue what I was doing.  MY heart was pounding when they entered the large concert hall where they were playing a gig later on. Luckily everything went well and my portraits got published in one of germanies largest indie magazine. This was the beginning of our relationship, and we started to work together very time hen they came back to Vienna. Fast forward to 2017 Portugal the man released their new album “Woodstock” which kicks ass. Their single “Feel it still” got Nr.1 in the alternative Billboard charts, they played in front of 10 000 people a few days ago and they’ll start their world tour soon. I had the great

Todays guest is Madrid based Heavy Metal photographer Javier Bragado. I met Javier the first time in buenos Aires when we did our concert photography exhibition together with Matias Altbach and Dana Distortion (who I interviewed in Episode 5). Since than I become a fan of Javiers work and personally speaking he is one of the best out there. We will talk about how he used myspace to get started as music photographer, what struggles he had to face in the beginning, how it feels to be on stage with Alter Bridge, his view on the music business and what approaches he is using to stand out in the crowded concert photography world.

Jason Miller is a London based music photographer and the global content and social marketing leader at LinkedIn. For everyone who is not familiar with LinkedIn. In Jasons words it´s “a professional network, where you connect with your online professional identity.”. You might ask now, “Why the hell has no one ever told me to use this platform?” No worries, 99% of all concert photographers are not using LinkedIn to get in contact with band managements or promotors and so on. Therefore I am super excited to have someone like Jason on the Podcast to reveal  the social media secrets for concert photographers that no one is talking about.

Todays guest is New York based music and lifestyle photographer Drew Gurian. He got his start in the industry traveling the world with world-renowned photographer, Joe McNally for five years, as his first assistant and right-hand man. He was travelling close to half a million miles in the air, he assisted Joe with client shoots, workshops and conferences around the world, working with tens of thousands of people. I am pretty excited that Drew found the time to sit down with me and discuss his photography approach when it comes down to portraits and concerts shots. We talk about his collaboration with Mumford and Sons, how to survive in the photography business and which marketing approach Drew takes to stay on top of the game.

Todays guest is Tim Thornton (guitarist and drummer of the UK band Fink). I worked with Fink several times over the last 3 years and it’s been a fruitful collaboration. They used one of my concert photos in their live album “wheels turn beneath my feet”, I photographed their tourposter for their world tour in 2015 and I joined them for 3 days tour in Austria. Through these collaborations we became friends and I am excited Tim found the time to join my show. Tim will reveal how he got started as musician and how Fink evolved from a students band to a successful indie band. We will talk about his life on tour, how he sees the music business as a musician and what factors are important for him when choosing to work with photographers. Furthermore, Tim is also an author and we’ll dig into his first book „The Alternative Hero“,  which The Guardian titled as „The indiest book of all time“ and he’ll talk about his crowdfunding campaign to get his 3rd book out.  

Todays guest is New Zealand based music photographer Alexander Hallag.  Recently I ordered his book "Shhh...the music is talking” about the New Zealand Music scene and was hooked by his work. Therefore I invited him to sit down with me and talk about the complete process from starting with the book idea in mind to finally having an awesome 200 pages coffeetable book in hands. Alexander will reveal his challenges during this 5 years project and he will share his best tips on how you can self publish your book too. Make sure to listen until the end of this inspiring interview, where we talk about our concert photography community and why we should support each other.

Todays guest is my friend and awesome music photographer Dana Distortion from New York. I met Dana the first time in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when we both were part of the Highlights exhibition in 2016. Sometimes you meet a person for the first time and you have the feeling you know each other already for a long time. This was the case with Dana and we became close friends. This episode is the most inspirational (at leat for me) so far. Dana will talk about how to fight challenges as music photographer, but also as a human being in general. She will reveal what’S her motivation to do the things she loves the most. We’ll talk about why man struggle as much as women in the field of music photography and how she came up with the idea to use a step stool in the photo pit and by the way started a trend. Why she loves wearing Band T shirts, and how she started her own fashion label. 

I know Steve as someone who is really working hard to give back to our concert photography community and I guess this is also the reason why we connected instantly. Beside shooting Rockstars he is working at a Radio station and helped me to set up this podcast. so special thanks to you Steve for helping me out. In this episode we will talk about on how to deal with rights grabbing contracts, a topic that is getting more and more attention in the music business lately. Steve will reveal his point of view when it comes to photo pit etiquette and he’ll talk about his own podcast “Behind The Shot”.

Peter Neill is a London based music photographer and former IT professional. He is also Head of Content at "Be-Hookd", a social media agency that helps musicians with their social media presence. In this episode, Peter will talk about how he landed his first concert photography job for U2, how he felt when he was working with one of his livelong idols Queen and what he loves about when shooting for The Script. Peter will reveal his approach when shooting portraits and we`ll discuss why social media is becoming more important than ever for bands and concert photographers. Furthermore he'll talk his best tips for using Twitter and the importance of using the right hashtags.

Kevin RC Wilson is a New York based music photographer and former media and marketing professional. He also owns a tattoo studio and was the curator of an art gallery called “Sacred Gallery” for the last 7 years. In this episode, Kevin will talk about how his tattoo studio helped him to get in contact with bands such as Misfits, Jane’s Addiction and Lamb of God. Why you should never act like a fangirl/boy and how he landed his ambassador deals with companies such as Think Tank, Black Rapid and Carl Zeiss. Furthermore we’ll discuss the best marketing tips and social media platforms for concert photographers.

Going through hundreds of emails and comments, I realised that almost everyone experiences struggles in this industry. It´s hard to decide which equipment and camera settings you should use when starting out as concert photographer, it´s challenging to get Photo passes for the big shows, it´s almost impossible to shoot directly for your idols and making money as concert photographer seems to be a dream everyone is chasing but only a few photographers are able to achieve. This made me think. How valuable would it be to learn from the best and most influential music photographers on this planet? Hear their secrets, struggles, successes and crazy stories from their Rockstar life in order to help you kickstart your career as concert photographer. This was the reason why I started with my HTBARP Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, and more at http://www.howtobecomearockstarphotographer.com/htbarp-0-why-i-started-this-podcast-with-matthias-hombauer/