Playing with the light
— Musicians Paul Kinsman and Chris LeDrew swap their instruments for cameras:
Paul Kinsman has long had a love affair with the early morning hours. As a longtime radio morning show host, his days generally started before the sun, and as a longtime musician, other days ended after the sun had risen.
These days, the “golden hours,” as he calls them, are important to Kinsman for a different reason, and it’s all about the light.
Chris Ledrew’s newest projects are about light, as well — catch-lights caught in the eyes of a grinning child, or stage lights set for concerts.
Also a musician, Ledrew has long been aware of how important lights are to performance, and he’s been using this knowledge in a different capacity.
While you’ll no doubt recognize Ledrew from his musical work as part of Brothers in Stereo or as a solo artist, and Kinsman from his time on OZ FM or as a collaborator with Ron Hynes, Barry Canning or a plethora of other musicians, you may be seeing less of them these days, since they’ve been spending a good portion of their time behind camera lenses.
Kinsman’s tool of choice is a Nikon while Ledrew prefers a Canon. Kinsman’s focus is on stunning landscape photography while Ledrew enjoys capturing personalities in portraits.
Like music, they say, there are many different genres of photography and it’s up to each artist to find their own way.
Kinsman has been taking pictures since he was a teenager with a darkroom set up in his mother’s pantry. With the advent of social media, he’s been able to get his work out there pretty easily, and the feedback he’s been receiving has been fueling his interest.
“With Twitter, I’ve got a bit of a soapbox now,” he says, laughing. “Instead of tweeting my dumb opinions, I tweet pictures. When you start putting it out there and people start giving you a bit of love, it’s hard to stop.”
Kinsman’s photos have been published many times, most recently in Downhome magazine, and a picture he took at Beaumont Hamel last year was used by MUN as the cover of a book it published on the Great War.
He was part of a one-day group exhibit at the James Baird Gallery in Pouch Cove last month.
Ledrew’s work has also been shown in a group exhibit at the Baird Gallery, as well as on CD covers, show posters and artist publicity shots. Relatively new to photography, Ledrew — also an English instructor at MUN — was writing for online magazine On Stage, doing concert reviews, when his editor encouraged him to start taking his own shots.
“I had no idea how and no interest, to be honest,” Ledrew says.
He bought a camera anyway, and took his first shots at last year’s Salmon Festival in Grand Falls-Winsor.
“I got the results from that and started cropping them a bit and sort of trying to make them look presentable, and then started getting into it.”
Since then, he has photographed the likes of Ringo Starr, The Tragically Hip, Dr. Hook and the Waterboys. Locally, he has done publicity shots for The Once, Fortunate Ones and Craig Young, among others.
Neither musician has ever taken a photography lesson. Kinsman says his work is all instinctual, while Ledrew, tutored from afar in the beginning by his editor, has been figuring things out as he goes, taking tips from established photographers when he can.
“I just want to glean every bit of knowledge they have,” he says. “When you’re young and you’re starting out as a musician, you have all these people you look up to; musicians you really admire.
“It’s really interesting how it brings your youth back when you’re 40- or five-odd and you’re looking at other photographers that way. You’re the new kid on the block, but you’re probably the same age as they are.”
Both Kinsman and Ledrew say their work never stops with the click of the camera, and they admit to using Photoshop and Lightroom to get images they’re happy with. Photo manipulation isn’t a new thing, it just perhaps gets a bad rap now that it’s done digitally, they say, but it’s no less of an art.
“There isn’t a picture out there published that hasn’t gone through Photoshop or Lightroom,” Kinsman says. “It’s the same as making a record. You’re not going to record a vocal with no reverb on it, unless you’re Tom Petty.
“With the photography, you get as much right in the camera as you can, and sometimes you want to tweak it a bit. I don’t move pixels, but I will totally work with colour and with trying to draw detail out of shadows.
“Newfoundland is only so big and St. John’s, in particular, and we’ve all see it all. So it’s about trying to find ways to look at it somewhat differently. Post-production is a whole different skill, which is 50 per cent of photography.”
Ledrew and Kinsman chuckle when they say they could never do what each other is doing.
Ledrew’s interest lies in capturing the life and beauty and personality of people in his images, inspired by all the times he stood on the other side of the lens as a musician.
Kinsman likes the solitude of landscape photography, saying he’d rather deal with a seascape that doesn’t demand to see the picture right away.
His photos are serene and sometimes quirky; he loves sneaking inside long-abandoned buildings, like the dilapidated Superior Rubber Company in Holyrood, and capturing juxtapositions of growing grass amidst cracked concrete.
Both artists have a simple ultimate goal, and it’s one shared by many musicians: to have their work recognized as uniquely theirs, with a style and composition that’s their own.
“When you’re playing an instrument, first you learn the mechanical parts and then you start playing a few songs.
“Over time, you create your own voice with it and maybe photography is the same way,” Kinsman says.
Ledrew’s work can be seen online at his website, www.chrisledrewphotography.com and Kinsman’s can be found online at www.flickr.com/pho- tos/randomcurrents.
He can be reached at paulkinsmandartsmedia@gmail.com.