Portrait sessions - Book Now!

Over the upcoming months, I’m offering a couple of new photography services including:

Cyanotype portraits
Wet plate portraits
Straight colour and black and white portraits

I’m mainly offering these services to bands and musicians but I’ll accept other commissions, such as family group sessions. However, no weddings; not my thing.

With the intention of drumming up some immediate business, I’m currently offering a simple portrait session at a place of your choice, for the incredible price of £80. Yes, you heard it - EIGHTY BRITISH POUNDS ONLY.

This portrait was taken in a session on Saturday with Mike Crawford.

The portrait session involves a 1 hour photo shoot and all post shoot editing. I’m sure you’ll agree this is a great price, but you'd better get in quick because prices won’t remain this low for long.

For this you will receive at least 20 professional portrait shots. That's only £4 per photo. How good is that? I can also offer studio portrait sessions as well from a studio in St Werburghs, Bristol. Prices for this type of session are available on request.

Group and individual portraits can be used for many purposes, as I’m sure you’re aware, including album covers/inserts, gig and tour posters, web site images, social media profiles, etc.

Previous customers include:

Jane Allison
Billy Shinbone
The Rosellys
The Montgomerys
Husky Tones
John Fairhurst Band
Lewis Creaven & Patrick Farrell
Mike Crawford
Katey Brooks
Jim Evans

Please contact me to discuss your requirements at: info@johnnycajon.com

Linger for Longer

Five prints per month challenge for 2016

Printing my music photographs is the way forward. Pulling out my photo enlargements from my portfolio case a couple of days ago, resulted in that familiar warm, excited feeling. It’s that sensation you can only get when you are holding artwork that you had the greater hand in producing.

It’s a weird feeling though because it gets stronger over time. What do I mean by that? If I print a photograph that I took a week ago, I’m too close to the moment of the event to really appreciate it; it was too recent. If I leave the image for an amount of time (I’m not talking years here, maybe only a couple of months), and then I open up Pandora’s box, it feels like the treasure inside is not my own. And that elevates my senses. I start to see things that I never saw before and my eye lingers longer.

With this in mind, I've set myself a challenge for the year: to print five photographs per month over 2016. That may not sound like many, but at £10 a shot for a 12"X18" print, it ain't a cheap endeavour.

But the alternative is to print smaller or not to print at all. Large prints are more satisfying to me. And photographs don't belong on computers, they need to be printed so that we all get a chance to experience our own warm feeling.

Prints will be available for sale and I'm currently looking at ways to make them available through various channels. Also, a photobook idea is developing well; watch this space.

Please get in touch if you're interested in purchasing any of my photographs or commissioning me for a private or live shoot.

A Treasure Trove in Tuscany

I used to be so much more into cars and such when I was a younger man than I am now. Although I've lost that lust to a large extent, I've become more and more interested in classic cars and motorbikes as I've got older. So yesterday was a real treat when I visited Steff's several workshops near Borgo Val di Taro in Italy.

The workshops hide quite a substantial collection of vehicular treasures at various stages of restoration including a Mercedes 300 Automatic, Lancia Flamina, Alpha Romeo GT, Austin Healey, and Mercedes SL. There are also numerous classic British motorbikes including Nortons, Triumphs, BSA, Royal Enfield. Sunbeam, Velocettes and Matchless.

My favourite motorbike has to be one one of the old BSA bikes with their distinctive sunburst tank badges.

In terms of favourite car, it has to be the Mercedes 300 Automatic, with its blood red interior; a proper mobsters car with a rich history that Steff was all to eager to share. I was later to find out that James Gandolfini Snr, father of the Italian/American actor who brought us the famous dramatised Mafia boss Tony Soprano, was born in Borgo Val di Taro. The car would have been a worthy chariot for Tony driving around New Jersey or maybe one of his ancestors.

Katey Brooks in the Photo Studio

Artist: Katey Brooks

Location: Eyebox studio in St Werburghs, Bristol

Event: 3 hour photo studio session

Recently I did a fantastic photo session in the studio with the talented Indie Nominee singer and musician - Katey Brooks. Katey, who’s just back from a tour of Australia, has a new album in the making and she wanted some portraits taken for promotion purposes. I’ve only previously taken some live photos of Katey, so I was really excited to be collaborating on a studio venture.

Katey is a big fan of my signature style of photography with its filmic, grainy and traditional black and white qualities. Her brief was to capture that gritty, old-school style in the studio. Katey wanted darkness, ambiguity and a mysterious feel to the images to reflect elements of her character and style of music. The grittiness of the photographs needed to reflect the themes and texture of her art, and the black and white treatments had to strip the image to an emotional core. And she didn't want a guitar in the pictures, definitely no guitars.

Take a listen to some of Katey’s music on Soundcloud here.

Over the preceding weeks before the shoot, Katey and I shared a pinterest album of images that have inspired her. This is a great idea and one that I thoroughly recommend. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that the collection included some classic old photos of Brigitte Bardot, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith and Jeff Buckley and some more contemporary images of Kate Moss.

Katey knew exactly the kind of images she wanted to get down and she knew that my camera could help her capture that look.

Katey was a joy to work with and I wish her every success with her new album and future music career. Feedback from her management team has been very positive and her plans for using the images are underway.

Here is a sample of the work from the day.

If you are interested in a studio photo shoot, please contact me with your requirements. Prices start at £250 and for that you get a 3 hour slot with me in a studio and a set block of post-production time. This will get you a minimum of 20 professional photos which I will deliver as hi-resolution Jpeg images. I can adapt the session to your requirements, so please drop me an email: john@johnnycajon.com

Other bands and musicians have used my photographs as album artwork and promotion, including:

The Montgomerys - Album liner artwork
The Rosellys - USA and UK tour posters
Jim Evans - Album liner artwork
Lewis Creven - Album front cover
John Fairhurst Band - Album booklet and artwork
Paul McClure - UK tour poster and album artwork
Jane Allison - Album front cover

This is not to mention the numerous bands that have used my live photography work for promotion purposes on social media sites.

Another New Opportunity

From October I’ll be teaming up with Jonathon Kardasz (AKA Jerry Kornelius), to add photographs to his music critiques. Catch his reviews on the Bristol 24/7 website.

We did a trial run at Friday’s John E Vistic gig at the Thunderbolt which went rather well.

You can read Jonathon’s review by clicking this link.

There are lots of upcoming gigs to review and photograph over the Autumn at the Tunnels, Exchange, Louisiana, Thunderbolt and Fleece.

Exciting times.

See you there.