Katy-Rose
Cummings is a music photographer and creative director from Scotland, United
Kingdom who has worked with famous bands and musicians such as The Hunna, Two
Door Cinema Club and Circa Waves and others. The photographic work of Katy-Rose
Cummings focuses on documenting scenes of emotion, movement, performance, colour,
and lighting to emphasize the atmospheres she captures within her photographs,
often focusing the angles of her compositions as though looking at both the
venue and performances from the audience and performer’s perspectives through
close-ups and wide shots.
As someone with
an interest in the specialism of music, performance, and concert photography, I
decided that looking at and researching the work of Katy-Rose Cummings would be
best for learning a lot more information about this area of photography which
will then be developed further in later interviews with music industry,
concert, and performances photographers. By researching and analysing the work
of Katy-Rose Cummings, I discovered that her style of photographing the
performers, audience and venues relies a lot upon the formal elements of tones,
and colours to emphasize the atmosphere and mood captured through the lighting,
stage setup and designs and motion that is going on around her within the
concert venue or backstage.
Many of Katy-Rose
Cummings’ photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds and diagonal
leading lines of focus, ranging her compositions from close-ups to wide shots
to document the performer, the audience, stage setups, and the venue around the
stage to show how these factors have been deliberated arranged and structured prior
to the concert to have a major impact on the atmosphere of the show and venue
as well as the emotions of the audience and performers, which is often made
obvious through her backstage shots of the musicians and performers. Since
Katy-Rose Cummings documents her photographic works from the perspective of the
audience in different sections of the venue – standing and seated – focusing on
only the performer, the performer and the audience or the venue as a whole from
the back of the concert hall and how the performers and stage designs and audience
fill the deliberately structured space, she creates a variation of emotions
focusing on elation, joy and high energy but also an intimacy through the
backstage shots she creates. By also comparing these live performance shots
with private backstage shots either before or after the performance, her work,
gains an intense contrast between what people see and share emotionally in
public compared to the musician and their emotions that they have in private, keeping
the backstage shots more intimate and close-up in comparison.
Katy-Rose
Cummings’ photographs are focused on the formal elements of tones and colour created
through the artificial lighting and stage designs around the stage and venue which
are captured within her photographic imagery of the live performances and concerts
as well as backstage. The photographer uses the intense coloured lighting of
the stage design to create intense shadows and contrast within her photographs
which in turn draws attention to the audience and performer and emphasizes
their emotions of joy and high energy. By also comparing these live performance
photos in colour with the monochrome backstage or performance photographs can also
emphasize these atmospheres and even make them seem more serious and intimate
in comparison to the more brightly lit coloured photographs. This in turn also
draws the attention of the photographer’s target audience further into the
imagery, allowing them to focus on the change of emotions that the performer
can portray publicly in comparison to in private.
The way that Katy-Rose
Cummings documents the formal elements of colour and lighting within her work
to portray intense emotions of joy, elation and high energy which is shared
between the audience and the performers on the stage compared to the backstage
photographs she takes of the performer in private creates an interesting
perspective between the two sectors of their job and lives, which is something
that I find interesting and would like to experiment with portraying further
within my own work as I have always had an interest in the experimentation of
showing emotions and emphasizing specific atmospheres and moods within my own
photographic work and how that can often change for my sitters both in public
and privately. I plan to gain further information into this specialism through
further artist analysis and interviews with professionals within this area of
the industry regarding their own experiences and photographic works.
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