100 people in 10 minutes.
Last year I had an assignment for Billboard, shooting a reportage’ story involving fifteen EMI songwriters collaborating in a studios, literally writing the next big radio/internet hits. Totally fun being a fly on that wall, even the phrases that they wrote in my presence got stuck in my head. Things like, “You’re freaking me ow-out, you’re freaking me ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-out… “ A kind, barefooted German-Dane handed me his business card politely, on it were some of the hits he had written… Beyonce “If I Were a Boy,” Fergie “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” entire seasons of Hannah Montana… I couldn’t wait to hear something I had been present at the origin of, blaring out of slow rolling cars all summer long. Simply so I could say I was there. I was there at the genesis of THAT.
Cut to last month when Dylan from EMI asked if I would do a group portrait of the Urban Songwriters Conference. Some of the same guys would be there and more, all shopping their diddies for the “next Ke$ha” who might need just the right ballad to complete her album. I was warned that time was tight; ten minutes, one hundred writers, one shot that couldn’t look like a class portrait, all even heights and perfect rows. Well it all came together well; I had some time a few days in advance to the ballroom and really sketch out the gist of it, setting up some unequal risers and getting that piano in there. Plus I had some good assistants the day of and a bullhorn. I am now trying to figure out a way to use a bullhorn on all my shoots, even single portraits. Or buildings. It’s simply so much funnier. Everyone was great and we actually all had a really fun time given the fact that it was first thing in the morning for a bunch of night owls.
Click on any of the below frames to see a short timelapse video of the whole thing.
Though for some reason I only used the bullhorn off camera.
