Brothers Grimm and the Blue Murders, 2011, The Corner

25 March 2025

A reflection on my time in the ‘photo pit’

6 min read

If there is one shot that I specifically think of as ‘the end’, it’s this one.

As I snapped this photo (above) of the Brothers Grimm letting loose at The Corner, my belly pressing against the stage and punters pushing at my back, I knew it was time to call it.

I was 6 months pregnant and just shy of my 33rd birthday, and after hundreds of hours and countless gigs prowling dirty band rooms with a camera in my hand, I knew in this instant that my time as a music photographer was over.

My story started three decades earlier –  among my earliest childhood memories is learning to gently place the needle on a record and then, as I listened to the tunes, playing make-believe with the shell of an old Brownie camera. I worked through Dad’s vinyl collection wearing over-ear headphones and singing along at the top of my voice until Mum begged me to stop.

Back then all I really wanted was to be a rock star. I had the name, but not the talent or attitude.

An actual rockstar… Tim Rogers, at the ‘Blue Atlas Winter Ball’, The Corner Hotel, 2009

Fast forward a decade, and my first real crack at taking photos was during my final year of high school when I dropped maths for photography (something I still can’t quite believe my parents agreed to). Instead of algebra, I learned basic photographic technique on an old Pentax camera, before developing the film in the ramshackle school darkroom. Shooting at school meant the 70’s buildings and rather uninspiring grounds became our muse – rows of metal bars around the canteen an exercise in depth of field, and the one flowering gum near the basketball courts a case for shooting macro. It didn’t feel at all creative, but I enjoyed the science of it—the acrid chemical smells and (ironically) the mathematics of aperture and exposure.

The thing I remember most from that class was one day watching a classmate’s photo slowly appear on paper in the chemical bath—an image of someone performing, a singer screaming into a microphone with a sea of people in the background pumping their fists in the air.

For a moment, I was in awe.

Then I realised it was just a shot she’d take of an Eddie Vedder poster on her bedroom wall. (It was the 90’s after all)

The illusion was shattered, but the idea was an endearing one —that you could capture that moment on stage, an atmosphere, an energy.

Another decade later, and I’d moved across the country and into Melbourne’s massive music scene. In 2006, I took money I’d earned working on a forgettable Marvel film and bought a Nikon D50 digital SLR.  A week later, I took this photo of Murray Floyd (below) at a gig in the basement of The Limelight Lounge in Geelong, and was officially hooked.

Austin Floyd, 2006. The Limelight Lounge, Geelong

In the years that followed, I took my camera with me to every gig. Front bars and grubby band rooms became my favourite places. I became adept at juggling cameras and Melbourne Bitter stubbies, hiding my camera bag on the side of stage and had perfected the fine art of squatting in jeans. Within five years I had thousands of shots and a comprehensive gallery of Fitzroy’s music scene in the first decade of the new millennium.

If timing is everything, it’s worth noting that this was before phone cameras were widespread (yes, I’m old!) and social media had just taken off (yes, I’m THAT old). Back then ‘building an audience’ was never the goal – I just wanted to see great music and take great shots, and was thrilled when people liked them or artists used them for promo.

Spoonful in the front bar at The Labor in Vain, Fitzroy, circa 2008

Those first digital SLR cameras were clunky and terrible in low light, and as a result I learned to work with what I had. For front bar gigs, a pool table is often moved to create a “stage,” and lighting consists of just turning off the lights that aren’t directly above the band. I bought prime lenses that gave me the best chance in the dim conditions, and all those techniques I’d learned while roaming the school grounds as a teenager were suddenly put to good use.

A bit of a geek, I only ever shot ‘manual’ (and still do, mostly because I’m a control freak). I also focused by hand, which is a particularly hard-earned skill with super fast lenses and wide-open apertures – sometimes the difference between sharp and blurry is a hair’s width of focus. I learned tricks to predict movement and anticipate when a big moment was coming in a performance. Part luck, part instinct… but mostly just hours of practice.

Wellyn, The East Brunswick Club, 2008. 

It was clear back then that there was limited space for women in the photo pit, which at the time was dominated by pushy blokes with superlong lenses. Whenever I had a photo pass to bigger gigs, I would brace myself for the physical assault – elbowed, shoved, smacked in the side of the head, or simply ignored (so they could stand in front of me and block my shot). 

Still, there were some good photogs and a bunch who made names for themselves with bright, sharp, but extremely heavily edited shots. I felt they caught the image but missed the moment. It’s something I’ve been thinking about again recently when it comes to AI – when that perfectly crafted story or manipulated image that feels “off”. Too smooth and too perfect to be real, unlike that grainy Eddie Vedder shot on the poster from 1992, with all its atmosphere and nuances. Telling a whole story in a single frame.

Nearly fourteen years have passed since that Brothers Grimm gig at The Corner. I’d made peace with it being the end but life has a funny way of working, and circumstances in the last few years have led me back to the photo pit occasionally.

I won’t lie, I still love it.

Happy things are definitely better in the pit these days with the arrival of some incredibly gracious and artful humans – a community of music lovers and camera nerds. Importantly, there are also some incredible women doing cracking work—not just bringing their elbows to the fight but bringing their heart and art to the business of capturing musical moments. (Check out work from the likes of Lucinda Goodwyn, Brittany Long, and Ruby Boland, and you’ll see what I mean.)

I must be a sign of my age – to get so excited when I see the work these fine women are doing – and maybe in a weird way, I’m even a little proud.

So, while I’m not much help to my now grown-up baby when it comes to helping with her algebra homework, and I find crouching in jeans a whole lot more challenging these days, I’m still pretty chuffed when I get a chance to spend time in the pit at a music festival. Anything for a chance to lean up against the stage and capture the moment, the atmosphere, the energy of live music.  Life doesn’t get much better than that!