Julie Doiron portrait

Most, if not all, well-known musicians cannot be reached directly. Between label reps, publicist, managers, and tour managers, even independent artists have at least one—and usually two or three—layer of insulation from their fans and the media. That generally makes their life easier, as someone can filter the things that don’t need the artist’s personal attention and deal with the details that would otherwise eat up the talent’s valuable time.

But occasionally messages get garbled or lost along the way, especially when an artist is on the road (i.e. all of the time).

Such was the case a couple of weeks ago when I was scheduled to photograph Julie Doiron for an internet publication before her show in Portland. Between the person I dealt with and Julie, something broke down and she had no idea I was expecting her.

Not a big deal, it happens. The good news is that I had plenty of time to set up the shot. On the down side, when she did arrive, we had almost no time to shoot. We needed a horizontal shot for the publication, so it was one wide shot, one tight shot, a vertical just in case, and the whole thing was over in less than five minutes.

The shot itself was pretty straightforward—one medium softbox straight in front of the subject, and a gridded rim light to her far left. Shot with a 50mm f/1.8 nearly wide open (for the wide shot, as far away as I could without falling down the stairs). It was dark in the balcony when we did the shot, so I had Julie’s tour partner, Will Kidman, shine a flashlight on her so I could focus. Thanks Will!