Senior Exhibition

So, I basically suck at updating this thing, BUT......I'm graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art on Monday and I am soooo excited!

I just finished hanging my thesis show today and it will be up through Monday, maybe a day or two later. I'll post some actual photos of the exhibit later. It has come a long way since I shot it, and I am really happy and proud of the photos. :)

Here's the postcard (front & back) I made for the show:



Also, check out my tour documentary with Gwen Stacy that goes along with my thesis:

The Life I Know: On the Road With Gwen Stacy from Julie Ferguson on Vimeo.

Tour Photos!

Posted some of my tour photos from the Gwen Stacy tour on my flickr. Here's a couple! Many more to come. You can see the rest here.

Check out Gwen Stacy!

TOUR

So, it's my last semester of school and for my Senior Thesis project I decided I wanted to focus it on what I'm most passionate about - MUSIC. I decided to attempt to tour with a band and the best thing happened when I got the opportunity to tour with a band that I actually liked! I was unsure if it would actually work out and getting really stressed since I didn't really think of anything else I wanted to do for my project. I wanted to do something I cared about and was passionate about and make it worthwhile. So it was the most exciting feeling when one of the members wrote me back saying he wanted to set it up - which resulted in me being on tour this past week with the band Gwen Stacy during their headlining tour with Our Last Night, Vanna and In Fear and Faith.

I traveled all over the place crammed in a van with 5 dudes and 1 other girl, their tour manager Katie (who is awesome) and it was one of the best experiences of my life! I can definitely see myself doing this again and hope to in the not to distant future! I would be the happiest person if my job could be a tour photographer.

These were the dates and places I went with GS:

1/20/09 - Energy Nightclub Plains, PA
1/21/09 - The Dungeon Watertown, NY
1/22/09 - Melrose VFW Post 1506 Melrose, MA
1/23/09 - Aquifer Music Venue Clinton, NJ
1/24/09 - Champion Ship Lemoyne, PA
1/25/09 - Blender Theatre New York, NY
1/26/09 - Knights of Columbus Annapolis, MD

TJ, Brent, Geoff and Pat and Jordan (merch guy yeah!) were awesome and hilarious dudes and I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them for the past week. I can't possibly thank them enough for letting me come along! A lot of the members of the other bands were awesome as well. Everyone was cool to me and I was glad. I was worried when I was packing that either it could be really awkward or really cool. It was cool and I was definitely bummed to come back to my normal life of school and work. haha. But so happy to see JOsh and Zero!

I shot almost 5,000 photos and 3 hours of video footage during my time with them. So I definitely have a lot of editing to do! I'm planning on making a book and a documentary vid.

So keep checking back for more posts!

Sweet

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hope everyone had a great holiday! I've been spending time with family and friends and life's been great.

Sorry no updates for the past month. I finished fall semester. Last semester coming up and looking forward to graduating!

I'm at home now in VA.

Good News!

Check out:

RVA Magazine Volume 4 Issue 9 - Grand Illusions



Pages 30-34: My live photos of Strike Anywhere were published for an interview with Thomas! It turned out better than I had thought it would! I'm pretty psyched about it. :)

I also got a sweet Ibanez acoustic guitar for Christmas from Josh so I'm pretty excited about that too! I also found out that one of my favorite shows, Dexter, was based on books so I got the first two and started reading those. cool man.

That's all for right now.

:)

Hey dudes,
I finished the live photos of the Strike Anywhere concert in DC and they are posted here.



I had the worst concert experience ever on Sunday. I was supposed to shoot the A Skylit Drive show with Chiodos at Rams Head Live this past Sun. I went a little after the time doors were hoping the line would be died down. BOY WAS I WRONG! The freakin line was all the way out to the street and wrapping around. I waited in line for about an hour, during which the show started and A Skylit Drive started playing. So, the place was madness and super unorganized. I missed the band I was supposed to shoot for. I was thinking to myself, well at least I can shoot the rest of the bands and this whole time won't be a waste, although I was really looking forward to shooting and seeing ASD. Then I get to the front of Will Call and they give me my photo pass and tell me I'm not on the stupid list to get in. I was definitely not paying for a ticket at this point since I was so frustrated already so I just left. BAD NIGHT, but I guess I wasn't meant to shoot that show.

But, in good news, I went last night to shoot Norma Jean, Haste the Day, The Showdown, My Children My Bride and Oh Sleeper for the Solid State Records show. I was told I would need my own ticket, but when I got there I got a comp ticket. So that was nice. The show was awesome except no barricade. But, got some good stuff anyways. Look for that coming up.

In other news, I recently got a sweet new HD video camera. The Canon Vixia HV30. I'm pretty excited about it as I have been really wanting to shoot some video for some time. I think it will work really well for what I want to do with it. This weekend I'm going home to do the project with Chubby, the waterman. So, it will be fun to test it out.

That's it for now, Take Care!

FINALLY

Finally, my new -fixed- website is up! So check it out!

www.juliefergusonphoto.com

Also, I was a complete nerd yesterday (Hope everyone had a fun Halloween!) and worked all night and did a TON of editing to get caught up on my concert photos. I have a few more stragglers left.

I will post some new ones tomorrow maybe. Go to my Flickr account to see them in the NEW collection.

http://flickr.com/photos/julieferguson/collections/72157608562971912/

All in all, it's been a very productive weekend so far.

:)

Strike Anywhere Promos!

Here they are! Strike Anywhere promos. I'm really excited about how they turned out! This was done in about 15 minutes or so backstage at The Black Cat in Washington DC in a freight elevator. I used one of my White Lightnings and my SB800 to light it. I sent the first 2 to them and the rest are just some other outtakes. Fun times!

Dude, I just did promos of one of my favorite bands ever! I am still excited. ;)

Good Times

So, October has been a really busy and productive month with school, work and personal projects. I haven't updated in a while so here's what has been going on.

Music Related:

• I have been starting to do promo photos and am working on building a portfolio up. I shot Gwen Stacy on the 1st and it went really well. Those are up on my website and flickr. Really great guys and a pleasure to work with.
• I also did the live show that night with Unearth, Protest the Hero, The Acacia Strain, Whitechapel as well as Gwen Stacy. I've been really slow at editing so I am working on those still. The G.S. ones are up on flickr though.
• Photographed the VA Metal & Hardcore Festival in Richmond, VA on the 18th. It was crazy! Very fun though except for when someone decided to jump off my shoulder into the crowd and left a shoeprint bruise. haha. Good times though. There were like 17 bands that played. It was definitely intense. Richmond kids are crazy. lol
• The next day I photographed Underoath, The Devil Wears Prada, Saosin and POS at the National in Richmond. That place is nice! I love Underoath. :)
• And last night I photographed the Strike Anywhere show at the Black Cat in DC. I met them and did promos of them before the show and I am really excited about the photos. I shot the live show and it was amazing as usual! Very excited to go through the images. The only thing that sucked was there was a barricade and they wouldn't let the photogs. go up front for any songs. Until they apparently let this guy photographer up there and not me. Oh i was steamed. I wanted to get up there for Strike Anywhere, but oh well, I had a pretty good spot.

Photo Ian shot while I was working :)

• Overall, I was extremely happy to find that they lived up to the picture I had of them in my head. They are truly some of the nicest guys and exceeded my expectations. I love when musicians live up to how you imagine them. :)
  
• Getting to meet and photograph one of my favorite bands ever? Yeah, that was probably the second best night of my life so far, second to when JOsh proposed ;).
• Lastly, I am really psyched about this as long as everything comes through: I am going to go into the studio with Poison the Well in Nov. to photograph them recording their new album! This is definitely a direction I am looking to head in, so this is an amazing opportunity for me and I'm really looking forward to it. (crossing my fingers that nothing changes).

Wow, this is really long. That's what happens when I don't freakin update this thing! Bleh.

Well, in addition to all that, I've been working on some other projects including redoing my website and more night photography and large format work. The new website is up, but I am redoing it yet again, with some minor changes including making it so it won't scroll and is all on one page. My hope for this new site is that it will load faster. So if you check it out, feel free to send me a note on how it went and any other comments. Will be posting the second redo this weekend hopefully.

I'm also working on an environmental project looking at areas around Williamsburg, VA where the landscape is being changed by humans; exploring areas that are being cleared to build subdivisions, shopping centers, etc. I'm pretty happy with where this is going. I will post some images soon.

I'm also getting ready to go out next weekend and do a documentary project/photo essay on a waterman of the Chesapeake Bay named Chubby. He fishes for oysters and clams out of Gloucester, VA and I'm really looking forward to going out with him and getting a better understanding of his life and work. I am also looking forward to doing some video with this as well.

So I'm feeling pretty good about what I've been doing lately and excited for the coming months. Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Pictures coming very soon!

-Julie