#nikon live

[wanderlandjournal]

soft summer wild flower aesthetics

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[honeyrosepetals]

[nfasth]

[thatrickmcginnis]

DAVID BOWIE live in Toronto, 1990

I downplay my concert photography mostly because I don't really care about it that much. I worked hard at it early in my career because it was a challenge, and because working for music magazines meant shooting a lot of gigs. But I learned pretty quickly that anyone with a decent camera and a photo pass would take pretty much the same pictures as I would if they were standing near me. But there were some subjects that I only got close to with a camera while shooting a show, and prime among them is David Bowie, who I photographed while on assignment for NOW magazine in March of 1990 at the cavernous Skydome (now the Rogers Centre), a baseball and football stadium.

David Bowie was in town for his Sound and Vision tour, promoting a greatest hits box set released by Rykodisc, and he was playing a selection of songs from across his whole career. There was a whole Canadian leg of the tour, performing in sports venues across the country, with two Toronto dates, of which this was the first. I was - and remain - an enormous fan, so I must have been pleased with the assignment even though it was your classic "three songs only" concert shoot for which I might have even rented a lens for my Nikon F3, even though NOW didn't really pay expenses for this sort of gig. The light was bright and by 1990 I was technically up to producing a range of printable shots over two rolls of Kodak's high-speed T-Max 3200 film.

By 1990 Bowie was on the critical outs after a big commercial peak in the early '80s with albums like Let's Dance and Tonight. He'd formed the band Tin Machine, though they could never fill a stadium, and while the Sound and Vision tour might have seemed like a cash grab, loyal fans appreciated him playing all the hits. (This was around the time he issued "Bowie Bonds" - securities backed by current and future earnings that earned Bowie $55 million.) On stage he appeared in the costume of his "Thin White Duke", the persona he toured with when he'd played here at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1976, a tour (like the one he did with Iggy Pop in 1977, and the one in 1978) that I wished I'd seen, then and now.

Which is probably why I actually forgot about shooting this show for many years, complaining with regret that I'd never taken Bowie's photo for twenty years until I rediscovered these negatives in my files while working on my old photo blog. They're OK live pics, probably among the best I ever shot, mostly because I was really engaged with a subject that was also a truly charismatic live performer. And perhaps because I suspected they were the closest I'd ever get to Bowie, though years later I did end up photographing his wife, the model Iman, who he met while on this tour later that year. David Bowie died of liver cancer in January of 2016 in his NYC apartment, a rare celebrity death that I found truly shocking and saddening.

[martyharrison]

Montana in black and white

[kkjzdanim]

[alexdrogers]

lucky daye photographed by @alexdrogers

[admiralgiggles]

I like the composition?

[nicholask-la]

From November, 2023

[unrulyknight]

happy secret samol!! this year drew sokrates/integrity for @cooltastrophe who had many good prompts but i simply couldnt resist the sokrates pull

[cameronhvrley]

PVRIS photographed for FM5

Full gallery here

[wanderlandjournal]

soft morning light

[lucyslenses]

setting off.

Shot with Nikon D800.

[nfasth]

[coolbugpics]

purple! 20203-2024

[israelcastillophoto]

City life…..

Israel Castillo