Portraits For Musicians: The Jacob Philip Benning Trio

Portraits play a hug role in my background as a photographer. From when I was 15 years old, I have been taking natural light portraits like these, and as I studied commercial photography at Brooks Institute, I had a heavy focus on Commercial Portraiture for Advertising. If you could have a major within photography at Brooks Institute, that would have been mine.

Jacob Philip Benning has become a friend of mine since I met him at Region at The Barlow in Sebastopol. I watched him play music for the guests that were wine tasting there and we hit it off. As our friendship progressed, we worked on portrait projects like these that you see here, produced a three song music video set, and he as also been a guest on The Pine Podcast LISTEN HERE.

For these portraits, we embraced the natural light out in Sebastopol. Our approach was to gather a collection of diverse images rather that create very specific ones. We needed to build an archive for their promotional materials such as upcoming dates, new song releases, etc., which is why you will see the composition in many of these images is a little loose…providing the Trio’s marketing team with the freedom to use the photos in many different ways without compositional constraints.

We were totally “run and gun” style. In a 1.5 hour shoot, we were able to hit almost 5 locations. Again, diversity in the images was a main priority. Lurking on the edges of the shadows in the early morning light while hunting for the most interesting, yet non distracting backgrounds and managing the sunlight bounces from the metal buildings and glass windows. Natural light provides a photography with so many challenges to work around, but if you know the rules, it can reward you in the final edits.

To learn more about how to book a professional portrait session for you and an individual, or for your team, or Trio band, contact me using the form below.