Shot for Balios Umbrellas look book Autumn 2017. The brief was pretty simple... London.
Observation & Reflection
Shot on a cloudy day in East London in digital and 35mm.
Roam - Great Heights and Nosedives
Making album art is definitely one of my favourite things to do. Roam approached me with an album title and a brief of creating something colourful that reflects the ups and downs of life. I found it really tough at first. Went for a zillion walks to try and trigger some ideas. Deciding just to try to write an email with some loose directions, the ideas began just flowing out. From a picture of a dog jumping up to catch a frisbee to a kid on a rollercoaster looking absolutely terrified. Writing things down is so important, I never would have got those ideas just walking around thinking.
We decided on the helium balloon struggling to stay up above a cactus. thought process being that no matter how high you get there's always something to pull you back down to earth. Initially I wanted it to be a distant image of a balloon, running low on air and falling to the cactus below. But for some reason it just didn't have enough conflict or tension about it so I changed tact and went for a close up image. 50 balloons later and scaring myself every 30 seconds as they unexpectedly popped, I got the shot that would eventually be the album cover. It needed to have the perfect tension just before it popped and with enough pressure to see the cactus needles pressing the balloon. not an easy task. Shot with a Canon 5Dmkiii and a Sigma Art 50mm lens and if I remember correctly just a speedlite for the final image.
The album is out now and it's a banger. Check it out and to see a few more images head here -> https://www.roam.uk.com/
Sutherland, Scotland
Every year we go to Scotland for an escape from life in a city that doesn't let you have a moments peace. London can be the best but I feel like I need these trips with no phone signal or internet for a week to reconnect and refresh. It's nearly impossible to ignore notifications and emails unless you have no choice. On top of that the fresh air is so revitalising, it's really on my mind how polluted our air is and being in the middle of a forest on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere I can really feel the benefits. Mountains, forests, rivers, lochs, beaches, oceans and a tonne of rainbows. I'd recommend the Scottish highlands to anyone.
Swimming Tapes 'What's On Your Mind' Video
Occasionally I make videos too. Absolutely love this song and I'm really happy with how this one turned out.
A mix of found footage and new. Enjoy!
F.
sunny days in the toy town
fire on the summer solstice
On the longest day of the year which also turned out to be the hottest I met Nicola for a super quick shoot in Stratford. It was perfect weather for some colour.
Model: Nicola Matear.
Slowlights
In what has been one of my favourite projects, I've been working with Slowlights on an ongoing basis since February this year. From promos at 5am on the coldest morning of the year to their biggest live show to date. Getting creative on the design and videography front is a massive bonus for me too. I would love to get involved with more campaigns like this but it helps that I'm totally into the music too!
It's been a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to continuing the journey.
The new I Try So Hard EP is out now on Spotify. Check out the video ad for the ep below and have a listen in full here
I Try So Hard single cover.
I Try So Hard EP cover
Short video ad for the new ep
Palmistry
Been too busy to actually go do something for myself and see people so we made the trip across the overground to Kew Gardens. Straight to the palm house, always a favourite.
So much greenery makes me feel a certain kind of wistfulness. Like, I need to be in amongst it. I suppose that's a little odd but I love plants, alright?
Because of a lack of nice compact camera to take with me I decided to bring along my two smallest and cheapest lenses. the canon 1.8 50mm and this old olympus g.zuiko 28mm lens I found in amongst some old slrs. I bought an adapter off amazon for a few quid and it's turned out to be really useful. It's not super unbelievably sharp, it's a manual focus, it's only f3.5, but, whatever. I've used it for commercial shoots as well fun projects. Just goes to further prove the point that spending loads of money on gear isn't the solution to taking photos you're happy with. you can pick one up for next to nothing on ebay.
I'm pretty happy with them. Especially seeing as I didn't have to lug those heavy sigma lenses around.
In conclusion, get some green and cheap lenses in your life.
F.
LTA/YG european tour March 2017
Some of my favourite shots from the LTA tour in March. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Touring with friends is the one. Playing shows at night and taking snaps all day 10/10
A freezing January in London
Sunrise is often the most rewarding time to be out of the house. particularly at this time of year. It feels special.
Here's various 6am outings across our freezing, foggy and unfortunately very polluted city. Each sunrise as unique as the icy crystals forming on everything in sight. Deep stuff there...
Skye
Here's my top 10 from the Isle Of Skye. People forget how amazing the UK and in particular Scotland can be. I'd go back every year if I could. Starlit skies, lochs, waterfalls, snowcapped mountains, lighthouses, highland cows almost running you off the road and oh so many sheep.
Whenever we go somewhere I always insist on at least 1 or 2 sunrise mornings. It's the best time to be anywhere in the world. It belongs to you because everyone else is still asleep.
and you get to see the fog rolls out of touch.
loved them.
Sunset is almost as good as sunrise but by then the clouds covered every inch of skye most nights. Sat on the edge of a cliff to get this and I was definitely shitting it.
The 14 hour drive back to london led us through magical views of snowy peaks and lochs. I'll definitely be returning soon.
You get to see views like this! Purple skies and the moon, what more could you want.
house goals
you could barely the other side of the loch for the fog, it was so peaceful.
something a bit cheesy about long exposure river shots but I couldn't help it. Spent some time exploring the Fairy pools. A massive hailstorm came through all we could do was huddle together like penguins and face away from it. The back of my legs were getting pelted with stones but thankfully it only last about 5 minutes.
This is now available to purchase from my print store. Go check it out!
Prints!
Finally! I have had the time to organise and set up my print store. The first two are a limited run of 18 x 12 inch prints for £20 each. I took the time to find the best quality printer in my area and i'm really happy with how they've turned out!
This is just the beginning so to say thanks there's a 20% discount for the first 10 orders of these two. Just enter the code 'first10' at checkout.
Also, for a limited time I'm offering to print (almost) any picture of your choosing from my site. They range in price from £15 to £25 depending on size. This is where it gets a little tricky... If you are planning to order one of these, please email store@frasertaylor.co.uk with a screenshot or description of the image you would like before placing the order. As a general rule any band promo shots are not allowed to be reproduced so please don't request them. find some inspiration in the gallery below or just browse my site and pick!
YG October 2016
Sorry this is a bit overdue! Here's my favourite pics/places from our European tour with Billy Talent. It had been a while and I intended to make the most of every city we were in. The full set of shots is up on my new facebook page.
The shows in the UK were amazing as they generally always are. I love touring at home. A few snapshots during soundcheck.
I also love pizza! I dunno if it was the influence of local treats but Pazzi in Amsterdam was one of the finest pizzas I've ever had. For real.
I Have wanted to visit these underground stations in Stockholm for a few years now. We actually bought tickets just to wander about various stations but it's worth it. A series of stations unlike anywhere in the world. This particular one was Radhuset.
Even though I was really pushing a countryside yurt, we stayed in Salisbury on our first proper day off. The tallest church spire in the UK resides in this chilled town. So instead of a picture of the spire here's one of the inside. For all the horrors that religion has created, the architecture is regularly mind boggling.
I LOVE fog. That is all. I'll get up at whatever time is necessary to see it.
mellow yellow
Exploring Luxembourg. Always on the look out for reflections.
A bizarrely difficult photo to get. We were just pulling into the port in Turku, Finland on an overnight ferry from Stockholm. The sun hadn't crept above the horizon yet so it was super dark and we were on a moving boat. I decided to trust the high iso function on my camera. There's definitely a vibe even if the added noise is a little distracting.
A little note to Billy Talent for being so welcoming and awesome every night. What a band!
US tour September '16
Unfortunately I didn’t take a lot of photographs on this tour. The schedule was insane. We’d be getting to festivals at 10 am, playing between 1 and 3pm, doing press and leaving by 5 to get to the next show in time. But here's a brief run down of what we got up to on our time off on this tour.
We flew from London to New York, our home from home, for a day of press and to say hello to all the great people at Wind Up records.
A day later Echoes was finally out! Everyone was more stoked than they look.
We had the unfortunate news of some of the shows we were playing with our friends in Of Mice And Men being cancelled due to illness. I’ve seen enough hotel rooms and cinemas around the world so instead of sitting around for a couple of days, we got into adventure mode. TM and general legend Brendan rented an Airbnb by a lake and off we went to chase some waterfalls ;). The US is such a place of contrast. Most of the time we go from city to city seeing the same old beige shopping centres and straight roads with, bluntly, no character at all. I’m being harsh on some of America’s great cities but if you have ever toured there you would understand what I mean. the major travel routes are littered with them. However, most of the time, if you have a vehicle and the desire to see more, you tend to never be more than a few hours away from natural beauty.
Here’s some shots from Cummins state waterfall and swimming hole a few hours outside of Nashville, TN.
Handed the camera to Brendan Donahue for this one.
pretty glad to see this guy as we were leaving.
Pictures from the shows themselves can be found on our band Instagram
I think That’s a wrap on our US touring for 2016, but we will be back next year!
F.
Echoes
Echoes was recorded, nearly mixed and ready for reproduction except for one fairly important detail, the album cover. We had been sent some initial ideas (admittedly from our own basic thoughts on how it should look). Nothing seemed right. Management suggested I give it a go. Massive PRESSURE!
I roped in our long time friend and photographer, Marcus Maschwitz, to help set up a shoot to help bring some of our ideas to life. I strongly recommend looking at his work. In fact I’ll put some of his stuff on my next 'yeh, nice' blog. I’m really happy with how the portraits turned out. A large part of the visuals for this record stemmed from that shoot. The artwork booklet, which I know many of you are still waiting for, will contain a lot of those photographs and sentiments from Echoes. I have put up a selection on the projects tab but I’ll add another blog when the book is finally sent out.
The last idea I had is what became the final artwork. I’m torn between explaining fully or not. There's something to be said for leaving a bit of mystery to your work in this day of youtube tutorials and walkthroughs.
It’s a macro photograph. I’ll let you decide what else was involved. The lighting was important but it was all done in my flat with minimal equipment. As usual, the set up took far longer than getting the shot. After all the processes we went through to get the right piece for the cover, shooting this set up only took 15/20 minutes. Which I often found writing music too, my favourite things tend to come out of nowhere and fall into place really quickly. It’s too easy to overthink things.
Here’s the final image that I came out with. It felt right. We had been sent a number of images with repeating sharp lines representing the echoes. But I like the way this image has natural echoes in the swirls and it is a bit more ambiguous than initial ideas. We felt like the cover needed to be dark in colour. The lyrical content of this album isn’t light.
The inlay was made of other shots from this set up and a portrait we had done earlier in the week. I'm not overly pleased with the execution of the group shot, but it didn't really matter for the way it would be blended in.
I know people were asking for a full explanation of how I got the shot and I'm sorry that I didn't oblige. But the thoughts behind it are often more important than the final piece. Making album art is something that’s new to me but through all the pressure of deadlines, not to mention making sure everyone was happy, I found it to be something that I really enjoyed and would love the opportunity to do it for other artists.
If you haven't already, please check out Echoes at all the usual places.
My Warped Tour top 12
Warped Tour is over but it was a time. Here's maybe (I dunno) my favourite photos of the tour.
1. You know I love crazy weather as long as it's not dangerous of course. Only had to wait about 5 or 6 days for our first storm down in New Orleans. I've never seen bus world so quiet.
2. Jacksonville. We spent 4th of July with our buds in Yellowcard in Jacksonville, FL. First opportunity to swim and the first time I got to test this cheap-o waterproof case. I was terrified. Here's Johns's opinion.
3. It obviously worked well enough for me to test it again. Another day off spent underwater with Gus.
4. I can't remember where we were here. In general when a tour is near water everyone seems to be in high spirits. There was knock on the bus at 1pm, we promptly got dragged over to a bloody mary place across the street before we played. The whole day was spent exploring the waterside.
5. What a surprise, another day off underwater. We had 2 days in Arizona before the Phoenix show. Waking up with the prospect of just spending the day in a hotel room or at the pool sounds nice but I think I would have gone stir crazy. John, Si and I decided to hire a car and just drive somewhere cool. We stumbled across a place on the map called Slide Rock Park so we drove the 3 hours to check it out. It was FREEZING. It rained. But, after spending 90% of your time sweating in carparks that was just what we needed. The park was by a very relaxed place named Sedona. Surrounded by amazing views the town had a special feeling about it. One that you can't explain.
6. Arizona days off part two. This and the following 4 are from our second day of rest in Arizona. We drove about an hour and a half from the hotel to the Salt River. Basically a relaxed flowing river where people hire rubber rings and float down in the sun.
7. The trip down the lazy river lasted just over three hours. Stopping at a few places to jump off some rocks on the way. I'm so glad we made the journey.
8. The first of two occasions in which we turned a corner to see wild horses grazing. A totally unexpected sight and I will always feel privileged to see that sort of thing. Apparently the local government wanted to kill them off but the people stood up and stopped the action. Thank you people!
9. Here is our new friend Chris Kamrada chilling in the desert. The drum performance on Echoes was killer and it was a pleasure to spend the summer with this dude. So much aesthetic out there.
10. One of the best parts of tour is making new friends. Here's Si with our new bud Brandon from Crown The Empire showing the love after another hot day of shows
11. Sometimes you have to try to find the beauty in where you are. Yeah, it was a dusty car park and yeah, it was really hot and the Bus engines were cranking out some serious noise but there were stars in the sky and the departing car were kicking up dust enough to give the lights an awesome glow.
12. One of the last pictures I took on Warped Tour. There was a meteor shower that night but for all of the lights we were surrounded by it sadly wasn't visible. Myself and Simon were just finishing up our beers as all the buses switched on their engines and the trailer lights lit up the area around us. Maybe my favourite shot I took the entire time.