Music Photographer Spotlight: Brendan Frost
Welcome back to Music Photographer Spotlight, a series where we pick a photographer we love, get to know them and highlight their work.
Following Eve Wickson, is fellow Melbournian, Brendan Frost, who moved to the city in 2022 from Newcastle. Always having his camera on him, his work naturally revolves around his interests and his day to day life, whether it be skateboarding, where his photos have been seen in ads and gracing the covers of magazines, a huge collection of street photographs from walking around the city day in day out, countless amazing intimate images of his friends and family, and of course live music. His work is always good, and not just good for someone who shoots everything, he’s a good skate photographer, a good street photographer, and a good music photographer, all separately. No matter the subject, his work is characterised by his insightful, curious eye. With his music work, he documents more than just the band playing, the atmosphere, and the excitement radiating from within the crowd. All the photos, black and white, are fast paced and capture the high energy from the stage, into the pit, and even sometimes above the pit, as seen in his POV crowd surfing photo. Brendan is great, and so are his photos.
How did you start taking photos?
I started shooting my brother's skating when I was about fifteen, then when I left school, I got a DSLR and gradually started getting more gear. All I did was shoot skating, it took me a long time before I shot anything else.
Yeah, over the last few years you’ve changed that up, going into shooting street and documentary photos, as well as live music. How did that progression happen?
Until 2020 I was only really shooting skateboarding, I would sometimes go take drives around rural and country New South Wales, where I would pick a spot on the map, drive there, and take photos on the way. During lockdown having the time alone I would go out for walks and take photos for four or five hours a day. That’s how I started shooting that type of photography, then when I moved to Melbourne I started going to gigs because there was so much live music and being from Newcastle there wasn’t that, so I was really excited by it. I quickly realised I could take photos of the shows and I just started doing it.
You also really got into studying the history of street and documentary photography during lockdown, right?
Yeah, I learnt so much about it. I was going back through the greats, and pioneers of street and documentary photography, the Bruce Gilden’s, Diane Arbus’, and Garry Winogrand’s. I was just looking at heaps of photography I hadn’t looked at before and seeing the importance of documenting. I’d wanted to change it up a bit and take different types of photos instead of just shooting skateboarding, so it was a perfect introduction into that world.
Did you find that shooting skate and street photographs inform your live music photography?
Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve been as satisfied with shooting live music if I hadn’t shot street photography first. When you’re walking around, what makes a photo is some kind of expression or emotion within it, whether it be on someone’s face or the way it's taken. I feel like shooting live music is the same, you can kind of just watch people. Everyone has a different performance or thing they do and there is so much expression happening within the crowd.
With skate photos too, there’s a pretty precise moment you want to get and if you miss that moment the photo is just nothing. That’s changing over time for sure, where there isn’t that one ideal moment for every trick, but when I was shooting skating I would always be looking for that one precise moment and if I missed that moment the photo was crap and I'd have to shoot it again. I feel like it’s the same with music. If I look at a photo I’ve taken that missed the moment and I knew what it would’ve looked like if I got it, the photo is just a dud, I don’t want to use it.
What excited you about shooting live music?
The atmosphere and energy. I’m not always focused on the band, I just want to shoot and portray the energy of the room and with live music, especially the gigs I'm going to, they’re usually high energy.
The crowd surf photo captures that high energy perfectly. How did that come up and how long did it take?
That was at a Stiff Richards show and I really like that photo. One day I was crowd surfing with my camera and tried to take a photo and didn’t like it, but I knew I could do it better. So, I started crowd surfing more at shows and trying to get the photo. I knew how I wanted the photo to look but I just couldn’t get it for ages. It probably took like four months before I got that one. I would be going to shows and trying so hard to get that photo.
Would you be looking through the viewfinder while you were crowd surfing?
Yeah, there are photos that other photographers have taken of me doing it with the camera up to my face.
That’s so gnarly. Did you have any sketchy experiences trying it?
I always ended up falling through but surprisingly nothing crazy which was cool. It was really fun.
Do you have any other photos of note that stand out to you?
A notable photo would be the cover of Christmas in Frankston where it's Wolfie facing the camera and he’s looking down, holding the microphone up above him, and the crowd is going crazy, there’s someone about to jump off the stacks. I really like that photo because Wolfie is like he has no idea what’s going on behind him.
Yeah, that photo captures everything going on, the crowd, atmosphere, and stage.
Totally, that’s how that whole set felt.
A lot of the bands you shoot you’ve shot and seen them more than once, what is there something you like about shooting bands more than once?
Their performances don’t usually change too much so you can get a gist of what they’re going to do at a certain point in a song. Frenzee are the best example of this, I saw them play seven times in two months, I knew what they were going to do the whole show, they would play the same set for each trip they did here.
You basically shoot everything film, all your street work and recent skateboarding photographs are on film. Why do you shoot digital at shows?
It gives me room to take more photos, I was shooting film originally and you’d shoot two rolls in a set, it would be so expensive. Once I started using digital, I worked out how I wanted it to look, and I can kind of do more with digital with editing.
What’s your favourite venue to shoot at?
The Gem. I like the small intimate room, I liked it more before they put a stage in. But gigs are always free and all the posters are on the wall behind them. When shooting digital you have enough resolution you can see the date, they’re all that month’s posters, you can see when they’re playing. It’s just a photogenic room, fill it up with people and it can be crazy too.
Who are some bands people should look out for in Melbourne?
Some of my favourites are CIVIC, Milly Strange, W.O.M.B.A.T, Screensaver, Bitumen, Billiam and the Split Bills, Dr Sure’s Unusual Practice, The Belair Lipbombs, Public House, and It Thing.
