How To Become A Rockstar Photographer Podcast with Matthias Hombauer

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 opportunity to sit down with Zach and discuss about his life as musician, which struggles he had on the way to success and why he has more cameras on tour with him than me as a professional photographer.   

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.