METALLICA: World Magnetic Tour

Metallica's World Magnetic Tour

Metallica has been on their World Magnetic Tour for two and a half years. It will wrap up it's final show in Australia next month.

Out of all of the bands in the world Metallica is the one band who simply is the best to photograph live.

James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo are four of the best live performers on the planet. They give absolutely everything and it shows from their body language to their facial expressions.

I was lucky enough to photograph Metallica twice on this tour and they are the one band I would shoot for free, and I never work for free. 

It's not just the band which makes shooting Metallica so memorable; it is their fans.

Over the past decade Metallica's fan based has morphed into a wonderful metal melting pot. Teenagers are now bringing their parents, parents are bringing their children, and Metallica's original fan base, who is now in their early 40's to late 50's, are still just as passionate about their band as they have been since 1981.

Below are a handful of my favorites from Metallica's World Magnetic Tour. In the two times I went in to photograph them I walked away with over 800 shots from each performance. 

For more pictures from Metallica's World Magnetic Tour just go to my website H E R E

Audra Mae

I had the pleasure to do a quick photo session and extensive interview with Audra Mae at SXSW. Audra Mae is a uniquely gifted singer/songwriter signed to OneSideDummy Recorders, who happens to have signed another of my favorite bands - Flogging Molly.


Audra Mae gained much notoriety last year when her haunting and soulful cover of Bob Dylan's Forever Young was featured on the Fox series, Sons Of Anarchy.

This shot is the perfect example of shooting on the fly. It was taken in the hall outside of Audra's hotel room and I used a camera mounted Nikon Speedlight to give me nice contrasting bounce light off of the left wall.

We did a quick series of ten shots and then Audra was on her way to perform a riveting set to an eager SXSW crowd.

Audra was truly delightful to interview and she is a stunning natural beauty to photograph.

Post production on the above image included some slight feather retouch on her cheeks, with little to minor retouching under her eyes to help enhance their sharpness.


For the image below I did two extremely high key exposures and shot in RAW format black and white.

30 Seconds To Mars - behind the scenes with Leto

This is one of my favorite candid shots taken after the 30 Seconds To Mars concert.... after shooting the show, I was able to sit back and enjoy the band taking time to do autographs for their fans.

Jared Leto was in rare form and I live for capturing moments like this

Session 2 with The Pretty Black Chains

Two weeks ago I was in Oklahoma City to do a 1950's inspired session with the staff of Oklahoma Film & Music.

While there, I had another session with The Pretty Black Chains. I recently went to Cain's Ballroom to embed with PBC's for their groundbreaking performance opening for the Smashing Pumpkins.

Out of the many Oklahoma bands I have covered of the past years, The Pretty Black Chains are without a doubt the band poised to break through into the national market.

Their sound, and stage presence invokes the feeling of MORE, that they are more than a band who has only been together for two years... that they are more than a band in Oklahoma City. The Pretty Black Chains have the IT factor that is going to land them in the rare group of bands who make it out of the local scene and into rock history.

I started documenting the Pretty Black Chains at South By Southwest, in March of this year. Since then I have been following their rapidly changing sound, flourishing from British inspired pop rock to heavy guitar driven rockers.

Here are a few of my favorites from my latest session with the Pretty Black Chains.

Bikes, Blues, and BBQ + TAYLOR SWIFT

Janet has NO downtime this week.

After just returning from shooting Lemmy and Motorhead she is being sent in to cover one of the biggest
bike rally's in the Midwest: Bikes, Blues, and BBQ.

After that she is back on the road, Sunday to cover Taylor Swift's tour.