Music Photography Blog

by Adam Elmakias

On The Road Update

She’s always on my case about blogging more often.

My presence on the inter web has been next to none in the past few days and that is due to our shit Internet connection on the road. Even if we had good Internet, I try my best to experience, rather than e-mail on the road. I have been trying my best to keep up with all your e-mails, so please forgive my lateness.

Its 5:00 am in Germany right now, and our buses are parked outside of the venue, Josh is the only one up with me right now. Meet Josh, as he peeks his head into my bunk.

Josh Woodard
oh, this is my bunk
This is the double decker bus that houses my bunk, and 13 more just like it.

We had an off day today and it was full of Nazi-Zombies, Donkey Kong, Carona and Lime, Steak, good cheap noodles from some corner shop, McDonalds, 1 euro peepshow that scarred my mind (life experience, never again), and late night movies with the guys. We get an off day every Monday, so this was our second one so far. Our first day off was at a shut down skate park, which ruled, although I can’t skate, but I can take pictures of others skating!

Basically I have been taking photos as much as I can, I am up to 50GBs of images at about 10-12mbs/shot, you can handle the calculations. I photograph the tour, which consists of about 35ish dudes, day and night. This could mean live, candid, party or passed out images of people. I almost have everyone’s name down by now, but it’s going to take awhile.

Here are a few examples of the shows and shots I have been taking.

sold out show at The Roundhouse in London
bus parked outside the venue in Amsterdam

Alex multitasking during soundcheck
on the streets of Amsterdam
backstage beauty
Kevin singing
you can drink here when you are 18, some places 16

Catch me at 2:40, red shirt, left-centerish.

and here is the image being taken in the video above

As you can see BMTH does that little stage invasion gig at the end of their set, and I try to photograph it every night. In Paris the stage was sorta small and I got hit over onto the drums, Matt (drummer) was nice enough to snag a photo after a few kids got off from on top of me.

And I just dropped my hard drive onto our tour manager who sleeps beneath me, oops. I guess I’ll let him sleep with that one and plug my other one in….always bring back-ups.

A lot of people may not really know how life on the road works, so I am doing my best to pick it apart piece by pierce with my eye, shoot it onto my card, and spit it back out onto your computer screen. Ideally the end result of this trip will be a nice little guide to how each day works for crew, band, and photographer. I suppose you have to do it to really understand how it works, but I can at least give you a glimpse of what it’s like for me.

I have met up with about 6 different photographers so far, and each hang out has ruled, thanks for everyone who is coming out.

Oh! Scott Kelby gave me a shout out on his blog literally as I was getting on a plane to London. I screen shot it to make life easier, however linked below as well.

Scott Kelby’s blog

Well that’s all I got, leave a comment if you have any questions (or e-mail me)

much love
ae