Piper Ferguson Photo Archive

Fitz And The Tantrums Album and Press Shoot

piperferguson — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:41:28 +0000

I’ve know Michael Fitzpatrick through friends around LA for about 4 years. Then one day my friend Lisa Nupoff who was working at Warner Brothers for Perry Watts Russel in the A&R department, invited me to go see a band she was managing at the Hotel Cafe called “Fitz and The Tantrums“. I went based on the fact that she said they were amazing and that she was my friend and wanted to support. When I saw Michael on stage in a killer mod suit with an amazing Soul Band i thought, after doing Cafe Bleu for 5 years and being in the mod scene, This is my kind of Band. It brought back memories of going to Soul nights they used to have at Gilman Street in Berkeley of all places (even though it’s most known for being a punk club)…Fitz killed it. They invited me again to do some shots down at the Echo a bit later, so i showed up and the show BLEW my mind, i couldn’t believe how many people were there when i walked in, that’s when I knew this band was on to something really great and i wanted to be a part of it.
When it came time to shoot the album Lisa and Fitz were both all over it. Lisa and I went to dinner and I mentioned I had just worked with The Uprising Creative design team on an AWOLNATION album Shoot and we got together, conceptualized everything together and the results of their designs and my photos was an awesome collaboration…So thankfully, it worked out the same way for Fitz.
Styling by Elise Velasco

Make Up By Heather Cvar

Studio we shot at was Lodger Films, who produce my music videos

Broken Social Scene For Filter Magazine’s 40th Anniversary Issue

piperferguson — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 04:37:41 +0000

I always sort of knew Broken Social Scene’s music, I knew Fiest had been a part of it, and I know Emily from Metric from over the years too. But a few years ago, my friend Edgar Wright was about to direct his new film that is coming out called Scott Pilgrim (You can see an article on Edgar in this issue of Filter for the film too!). Edgar said Broken Social Scene and Nigel Godrich are doing the music for Scott Pilgrim. Wow, sounded awesome. He invited me to go see them play at the Sunset Junction and they completely blew me away. I met Kevin Drew briefly, but just knew they were a VERY Important band after i saw them that day.
Then, Low and Behold, Pat McGuirre from Filter told me they were shooting a horizontal anniversary issue featuring Broken Social Scene for the cover. I had to do it! I volunteered my services and everyone agreed I should head up to Toronto to do the job.
Figuring out styling, locations, a warm bed to sleep in while I was there was incredibly easy thanks to a twitter that Catonia Whalen put up one morning that said: “My friends in Broken Social Scene’s new single is out and it’s amazing”…Something like that. So in serendipitous social networking swiftness, I tweeted her back and suddenly I am sorted out with a place to stay with Toronto it girl Jane Tattersol who works with the Juno’s. She took such good care of me, I love Canadians!
While I was running around looking for locations she dialed me in with the guy who runs MTV/MUCH music who offered to let me shoot them in the Monastery they broadcast out of. But I would have needed too many P.A.’s to get it ready for the indie rock Vanity Fair shoot I was going for.
I ended up looking at SOOO many places that would have been perfect, but there were so many activities happening in Toronto at that time it seemed every ballroom was booked, until I found the lovely establishment that let me shoot called The Windsor Arms Hotel.

I had an AMAZING crew who allowed me to call and confide in them about anything at anytime during the prep. The stylist was Rita Fiorucci who I wish lived in Los Angeles so we could work together all the time. Make Up was Misty Daniella Fox, a lovely girl who obviously did great make up, but allowed me to call her at all hours for reinforcement. Tony Ciecro helped me out with Locations and was also a helping lighting hand day of the shoot, Ivan was on hair from Flaunt Boutique and he braved an early call time after his birthday the night before, and Paul Stewart, who had assisted me shooting my music video producers wedding in Toronto in November.

Hurley Featured Artist Piece

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 22:55:20 +0000

Roger Gastman at RRock Enterprises hooked me up with Hurley, the surf and clothing company. They filmed and interviewed me during my shoot of Red Bull Records artist AWOLNATION.
Those photos will be out soon. click image to watch the video.

Benefit 4 Haiti With Patti Smith and The Swell Season

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:41:50 +0000

This night was such a gift, I had no idea I was going to finally get to see Patti Smith play with The Swell Season, Yo La Tengo, John Wesley Harding and ended up sitting at Michael Stipes table watching and shooting the show.
Patti Smith, what she does feels like such a powerful sentiment, more than just a song. It’s as if she’s giving you part of herself to everyone to take with them when they leave. Glen Hansard of the Swell Season told a loooong lovely story, he’s so captivating, although I can’t remember now what the story was about, but something tells me I will get the opportunity to hear it again soon..;)

Pavement in Portland

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:31:25 +0000

Mr. Turner at Mojo, my main squeeze over there, sent me the very chipper English style email to head up to Portland to shoot Pavement! This was very exciting as I’m sure you too used to drive around in the mid nineties in your crappy little VW Golfs with friends singing along to “Shady Lane”. At least I did.
I have a friend in Portland who is an awesome photographer called Alicia Rose I met through Laurel Stearns. Alicia has her own amazing Venue in Portland called Mississippi Studios
Thankfully Miss Murgatroid was gracious and showed me an amazing time and helped me do the shoot.
Now this photo below was a miracle. It was raining non stop but I knew I wanted to shoot them in this location near the studio they were rehearsing in. I told my friend Jsun Adams of The awesome Portland band called The Upside Down that I needed it to stop raining for the shoot. I told Alicia that too and her response was..”It’s Portland!” oh, right, it rains all the time. I went into the rehearsal space trying to come up with other options and nothing was looking very good. The band were late thankfully, because suddenly, I saw the windows of the warehouse get brighter, then even brighter, wait a minute, that was the SUN! it had never seemed so bright and beautiful as it did at that moment! I scrambled and rambled everyone together and brought them to the location when suddenly, the rainbow happened! It was truely a miracle and I just love that shot of Pavement! I was stoked, they are a band so I think they were mostly worried about their shoes getting wet! ha!
The other great thing that happened when I walked into the rehearsal studio the first day was I saw Jeremy Lemos! he’s my favoritest, Stylinist sound guy. He does sound for Iron and Wine, The Swell SEason, Sonic youth, You name it he’s mixin their shit. It was awesome to see him and feel instantly embraced. After the shoot we all had taco truck, then strong coffee and as soon as I loaded up the car and got in to leave, it began to rain. I called Jason of The Upside Down to tell him about my experience and he said he had his entire 3rd grade class singing and praying for me for the sun to come out! I couldn’t believe he did that for me, he’s so sweet and amazing, thank you Jsun for making my rainbow brighter.xo

She & Him, Austin Texas

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:30:52 +0000

This was a lot of fun but I literally had about 10 minutes to shoot She And Him. (which was meant to be a few hours with styling and everything). It was right before they were doing an MTV performance at a Power Plant in Austin, Texas during SXSW…The publication wanted something “festivaly” looking, which wasn’t easy at a power plant? So we did the best we could and got some interesting images of Zooey and M. Ward. I love M. Ward’s music a lot and have been a fan for a bit now. I listen to Sirius XMU (Josiah) while retouching and editing for hours and hours and hours so I’ve become very familiar with She And Him when they did a week on Sirius as hosts, plus Sirius play them a lot. Both were incredibly gracious and easy breezy to be around which made the quick draw shoot much more enjoyable.

On tour with Iron & Wine

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:00:05 +0000

I shot Sam from Iron and Wine at his ranch in Dripping Springs Texas a couple years ago for Mojo (The Worlds Best Music Magazine, haha! i love that they call it that!). We did a lot of amazing set ups you can see on my website in the 1st gallery. We had a lot of fun, I love working with Sam because he is also a film maker. He taught film at a school in Florida before doing Iron and Wine. He also directed the video for The Swell Season’s “Low Rising” video you can see here. I took many photos that came out amazing that day from the video shoot I will put up later. Anyways, Sam is so patient and into creating “a mood” as he called it, with lighting, idea, texture, everything that is involved in putting together a shot that evokes some kind of feeling when you look at it, he really taught me that. I’m so lucky I learn so much from my subjects on how to do it better.

SXSW 2010 Mojo Bootleg BBQ & Folk Fest

piperferguson — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:29:20 +0000

I’m fortunate enough to get to work with Mojo Magazine for almost 10 years now! Actually, maybe it has been more than 10? Crazy man…anyways, they rule, duh, we all know it. These photos were taken during the Bootleg BBQ at The Mean Eyed Cat and The Folk Review Will Hodgkinson put together at the Davidian Church on 8th St.
This first photo is amazing to me, one of my fav’s i think I’ve ever taken, when was this? 1940′s Reykjavik?
This is the lovely Ólöf Arnalds – Her music is not to be missed on a misty Sunday morning with some coffee and in my case, 2 cuddly Chihuahua’s.

Next we have this awesome Skiffle band busking on 6th street during the dense melee which never let up this year for a second. SXSW in between venues that only allow wristbands is like a game of drunken flunkie frat frogger, yeech.

Who’s this guy? Oh! Lemmy! yes, there is a movie coming out on Motorhead, or is it just about Lemmy? I never thought I’d say this since I have a photo of me and Lemmy and his finger is yellow from holding a cigarette for 40 years in the same place, but, he was so cute..! The movie looks like The Osbourne’s still on the road and on drugs…should be a laff! Lemmy and Ozzy should totally have their own talk show! that would be AMAZING and Hilarious as hell.

What can I say about Gemma Ray, She’s gorgeous, sexy, retro and rips the strings of her guitar to shreds with a knife at the end of her set. Or did I just imagine that because i thought it’d be cool? No, yea, she did that…it was cool, I have it on video, I will put it up. Loved her style, sound, styling, effort she put into having flowers on her little ampie thing. Her ruby red mary janes on the pedals was like dorothy getting down and dirty. Thumbs up for Gemma Ray.

Now these girls, this band The Unthanks, was honestly quite the shocker. I mean, I ain’t one to judge, but I didn’t know what to expect quite honestly. These sweet little English roses went to town with their beautiful vocal harmonies and traditional folk dancing in little wooden shoes on a long strip of oak for extra clacking enhancement. The Unthanks and Trembling Bells were definitely the Queens that have the strong hold on the court in a scene that seems to be taking on a pretty big life in England at the moment.

SHIT! I can’t remember this girls name and she Riiips! She was sooo Funny and amazing. If Anyone can hook me up with her name I will put a better section here. I know she joked a lot about making sure not to smoke a joint before playing next time..haha! She is such a star as you can see from these photos, at least that’s what i see and remember.

Mr. Pete Molinari was easily one of my favorite things I saw (twice) at SXSW this year (next to stone temple pilots…shh!). I took SO many photos of him

Dengue Fever Killed it that day, I forgot to mention it was 40 DEGREES and windy outside which is why everyone looks all wrapped up and sniffly. It was also the last day of south by so everyone was is always burnt, But we all rallied and it was still fun. I have some Dengue Fever records and have seen them around LA here and there, what incredible spirit emanates from them, they make such powerful beautiful sounds, especially the little one with the Gigantic voice from the east.

Smoke Fairies are these pretty little pixies, I could have put up many more photos of them as you can see why, but i’m trying to ration the passion on how man shots my blog can hold. Their music was as enchanting as they are. I’d love to do a proper photo shoot with them, something fun and sexy, but then again, who wouldn’t.

Okay, now this band Zun Zun Egui were just fierce. This kid was channeling one of those ancient animals in statues that looks all crazy and has their tongue sticking out. It seriously was like he had musical turrets and couldn’t control the movements he made or what was coming out of his mouth, he was like the Bootleg BBQ’s 2010 version of Rolo Tomassi, another band with incredible musical turrets I love. They look like sweet school kids, but when you plug em in, electricity shoots through their souls and you don’t know what’s going to happen next.

This is Caitlin Rose, She got stuck playing the end of the day when everyone was kinda filing out, but I really dug her too.

Winter in New York with The Swell Season

piperferguson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:43:48 +0000

This was such a magical trip to New York in January with The Swell Season. When Marketa mentioned they were going to be doing Radio City Music hall and Late night with David Letterman, I had to join in by showing up and documenting the historical events in their career (not as historical as winning Oscars, but still..it was cool).
We all stayed in Time Square at the Hudson near both venues. The first day was a bit like Laurel and Hardy because every time I showed up to Letterman on 57th street, they were at Radio City at 51st Street. So I kept going back and forth between the 2 venues, missing them as everyone kept giving me misinformation as to who was on first! ha, it was funny.
But I got inside Radio City and was able to get these classic shots (if I do say so myself of the band rehearsing.

This is Colm, from The Swell Season and Glen Hansard‘s other amazing band called The Frames. Colm always wears Red Socks as he says it’s “more grounding”. This baffles me because red and pink socks were always such a Mod/Weller/60′s/Stones/Who thing, none of which seemed very grounded back when they were wearing them. The best part about this photo is the fiddle, guess how old it is? Guess, seriously…it’s from the 1770′S!!! WTF! how is that even possible..? It still works! Can you imagine having an iphone that long? Or even a car? Hopefully his red socks are not from 1770.

This is obviously backstage in the green room with Letterman. I’m trying to remember who the other guest was..Oh, a very noble philanthropist type woman with the national food bank or something. Glen is having everyone listen to a track on the ipod to get to know it as he is planning something, a cover for all of them to do during a special moment of the evening before the show you will find out later. I’m pretty sure it was a Springstein song knowing Glen, waiting on confirmation from Howard now. Ha! Howard literally JUST texted me back and said “I think you are referring to “Drive All Night” by Springsteen, which is good cause i just realized I can’t spell Springsteen. Thanks Howard!

I love this shot of Mar sitting back, looking, smiling, listening. She’s such a lovely little observer. When you are talking to her she listens as though you have the answer she’s been waiting to hear of the meaning of life and you’re just about to give it to her. She too makes you feel very special, like you belong. Her inquisitive nature makes her seem so much wiser than her 21 years of life. The book sitting next to her is the teaching of numerology. She shared her knowledge with everyone who asked about what she’d learned so far, but the best thing about her is, she’ll share if you ask, but is humble and won’t just give it away for attention. That’s not her, she’s too busy taking it all in, being in the moment and enjoying being in the company of her family.

This shot just HAD To be done! It just HAD to! it was so perfect and we both just felt it and went for it. I love shooting Glen, he’s so easy to want to keep the camera on at all times because of his glorious exaggerated expressions. Because he gesticulates and tells stories and uses words like “GLORIOUS” to explain a loaf of bread. He is also ever so gracious and makes me and everyone around feel like you are supposed to be there, you are one of the crew, the team, the moment. I wish everyone could be that way all the time, so everyone felt special and loved everywhere and never awkward or unwanted.

This was the part that was SOOO fun. Glen decided he wanted to grab the entire band, horns and all and play a few tunes (now’s the part about covering the Springsteen song:) outside for the crowd on the street as they waited to get into the gig. It was seriously magical! I was trying to shoot photos and video at the same time, but being the double fisted shooter I am, i got both pretty good! I will put the video up here as soon as i upload it. They totally killed it and everyone was so stoked they came out and played for them in the cold. What a way to warm up the band and the crowd for what would be a beautiful and memorable show.

There are SO many great shots of the band from this trip and all the other shoots I’ve done with them, I will one day make a book to share them with their fans who deserve to see them and have them. I love this shot of Mar and John Tosch, Howard Greynolds partner at Overcoat Management. Those men take such good care of their artists and me

New Black Mountain Photos

piperferguson — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:40:54 +0000

My friend Ray McCarville and Marcus Russel at Ignition Management (Oasis), Asked me to come to Sunset Sound in Hollywood to shoot a quick 1 hour session with Black Mountain while they were in their first day of recording in the studio with Super Producer David Sardy
I met Dave a while back having lunch with The Hot Hot Heat who are friends for a long time now.
The day before the shoot I drove and walked around the area, trying to figure out something interesting to do with them. It had to be within walking distance to the studio and also FAST! I spent about half the day at the church across the street waiting to see if they would let me shoot some stuff in and around it, as it’s lovely! The church folk led on that I would be able to shoot there, then by about 5 or 6 pm, they said NO! I waited there for about 3 hours to get that no…But i guess, that’s the nature of the beast and now I know a lot about that historical landmark on Sunset blvd ( I try to see the bright side as much as possible).
Here are some of the shots from the shoot….Alex Bond and I did all kinds of comps with the individual shots, but they ended up liking the top shot the best, which was actually a very happy accident. Thanks Alex for assisting me on the shoot and for all the hours of photo shop comp ideas we did together, it was a lot of fun and I think we both learned a lot…;)