Photographer Interview - Jessie Morgan.

 Interview with documentary, music and concert performance photographer Jessie Morgan, from London, United Kingdom who has worked with famous bands, musicians and record labels such as Warner Music Group, Parlophone Records, Island Records, Redbull Music, Big Scary Monsters, Fashion Scout, the band Counterfeit and many others. 

INTRO: How did you get into photography and your specialism as a music photographer? Did you start off with assisting other photographers? Is there any information you can give as a starting point of your work? 

JESSIE MORGAN: Before I photographed music I wrote about it, I didn't have a lot of money growing up so reviewing shows gained me access to them, eventually photography overtook the writing as I created a way to better narrate the atmosphere than the written word. Professionally from that it was rocky, I was always known as the one with the camera, I got my first big job in my first year of university working at Warner Music for Ashnikko, who was much smaller at the time, it came out of right place right time. 

QUESTION TWO: Are there any other specialisms of photography that you may have started out with or at least experimented with before realizing that music was the area you wanted to focus most of your work on?

JESSIE MORGAN: I think music photography is undervalued as a genre, it encompasses elements of editorial, fashion, portraiture, and the fast-paced nature of sports photography. I love documenting people fundamentally; music photography is undervalued in the sense of its challenges. Try working in an environment with little to no lighting, if you miss the shot you can't get it back and have no control of your environment. I always loved live music but more recently I've been able to bring elements of my other works into my works with musicians which has been really cool to develop.

QUESTION THREE: Do you have any equipment that you prefer to use the most whilst shooting for the music industry?

JESSIE MORGAN: The generic music photographer kit for larger scale is a 24-70 2.8 lens and a 70-200, I hate zoom lenses, however. I mostly use a 35mm 1.4 sigma art, it allows me to shoot in low light conditions and to feel intimate with my subject. If you're starting out, a 50mm 1.8 is the dream, it lasted me years of shooting small gigs.

QUESTION FOUR: If you had to pick at least one or two of your shoots from your website or Instagram, are there any that you have particularly enjoyed working with and creating and you would say 'these are my absolute favourite photos I have ever taken'?

JESSIE MORGAN: Currently my favourite photos are from the biggest shoot I've ever done, largely for the 'what the f*ckness of it'. I know that makes literally no sense, but I got to shoot Kylie Minogue and Y&Y for the BBC NYE special which was huge for me. My favourite images right now are of Sigrid on the stairs, they were the first photos of the day, I walked in, and it was such a candid moment, no lighting, just a sit on the stairs followed by a handshake, five minutes, done. But ultimately my images from Coco convey most of the direction I want to take as a photographer. 

QUESTION FIVE: How much editing process do you go through before showing your work to any clients/ band management and until you are happy with them yourself? Do you have any favourite ways of editing that you prefer using over others? 

JESSIE MORGAN: Music photography requires a really tight turn around, for example the other night I wrapped a shoot at midnight and the photographs were in their inbox by 3am. You could be shooting all day on a music video, they'd need them by 11am, or for a live show, ideally that night if not by 10am the next morning. If you can't deliver that, especially with large labels where content is key, you won't succeed. I use Adobe Lightroom for everything, I sat down for a week in first year and made a bunch of pre-sets and learnt my way around it that I now continually develop and expand upon. 

QUESTION SIX: For anyone looking to get into the music side of photography is there any kind of advice you would give them or anybody just looking to get into photography in general? 

JESSIE MORGAN: Just do it. Go down to your local small venue and shoot. No one starts out shooting huge artists, hone your craft, know your camera, find your style. 

QUESTION SEVEN: Are there any experiences within your work as a photographer you haven't particularly liked?

JESSIE MORGAN: There's a ton of things that aren't ideal. I think knowing most of the time that you're the least important person is a weird feeling, having to work around people is a bit weird, mostly the politics of it all and dealing with money.

QUESTION EIGHT: Is there anyone in the music industry - besides from the people you've worked with - that you would want to work for and do a shoot with? If you had to pick any band or musician you know?

JESSIE MORGAN: My bucket list artists are Billie Eilish, Willow and Harry Styles. They all have such unique narratives and aesthetics that it would be such fun to collaborate with them.

QUESTION NINE: How much input do you get in terms of how the images you take get used? Have any of the bands for example wanted to use your work for anything like publicity, concert books etc? 

JESSIE MORGAN: When I get hired for a job the assumption is that image I take will be used for social media etc. If the image was to be used for print or on a t-shirt etc, that incurs a different licensing fee. It's really cool to have photos I've taken on t-shirts, I've got a couple at home. When you're having a bad day, you can look at them and think of hundreds of people wearing something you edited in your tiny bedroom, that's pretty cool. A really big honour is having photos used as artwork for artists, I frame them all.