Lovett drawn to photography at an early age
enjoyed taking pictures as a kid growing up. When I was in high school, I didn’t carry a camera around like our yearbook guy did. One of our classmates, George Rowe, always had a camera with him. He and his sister, Barbara, were the official photographers out there. We really treated George poorly in those days, but now everybody’s all over him on Facebook thanking him for the great memories.
But when I was racing motocross around Houston, my mother was working as a secretary in the publications department at Exxon. I got to know the editors and writers there, and meet the photographers. They’d let my mom borrow some of their equipment. So Mom would come to the motocross and take pictures with their 35 mm cameras. I got interested in those, and when I went to school, I got into the journalism department at A&M. Photography was part of the curriculum, so I started learning how to work a 35 mm camera. We had to shoot and develop our own film.
Printing sessions were a lot like working in the recording studio. You look down and up and it’s four hours later. Trying to get the perfect print was like trying to get the perfect mix. The processes were analogous.
Q: Were the photos of Robert Earl Keen for class?
A: Yes, I had a great teacher, Howard Eilers. We’d meet once a week for a three-hour session. He’d give us a specific kind of assignment, and then he’d put up three or four photographs for the whole class to go over. If you made the cut and got your pictures projected, that was something. I just really enjoyed it. And I still do. Nothing makes me prouder than seeing a picture I’ve taken of somebody sitting in a frame.
Q: You’ve always played Bill Collings’ guitars. And your photographs caught him at two very different stages: When he was young and just getting started and then last year, just months before he died.
A: Yes, those last pictures of Collings were in January. I was dropping by his shop. That was the last time I saw him in person, though I’d talked to him on the phone since then. He’d just gotten back from having his (surgical) staples removed and was holding his shirt up for everybody. The scar looked like the flux capacitor from “Back to the Future,” from his sternum to his belly button. But he was in good humor. Those early shots were for my photo journalism class. I shot that with an A&M-owned Pentax. My first SLR was a Nikon FM, which I got in 1978. I shot with that until Christmas 2003 or 2004 when April (Kimble) gave me a Canon 5D, the first version with two telephoto lenses. I was a dyed in the wool Nikon guy, but I got to know the Canon and now I love it.
Q: How did you start shooting the theaters? Do you recall the first one?
A: I don’t remember the first one I took, but I remember why I took the first one. John Hagen (Lovett’s cellist) was at a sound check, and he sat his camera at the edge of the stage and set the timer and pushed click. Hagan had been taking those kind of shots, real quick shot of the stage. I liked his shots and thought I’d try doing that. The guys in the crew bought me a tripod for my birthday one year, so I started using that. Before I’d put it on the drum riser or on a road case to get some elevation. I’ve been shooting those with the sports camera, the 1DX.
Q: Your friend Guy Clark said building guitars gave him this pursuit that balanced the time and energy he spent songwriting. He made one sound crucial to his ability to do the other.
A: They don’t seem separate to me. It all seems like part of the same thing. And I think Guy would’ve said the same thing. He was so creative, he was a great painter and great at drawing. He was such a renaissance man. Expression can be in a different medium, but it’s the same expression. It’s like when I go show a horse and ride it in an arena. That feels similar to stepping on stage. You get the same sort of great charge that you get from performing. They don’t feel like diversions, just different parts of the same thing. It can be a struggle to keep up and do a good job with it. But social media has given me a reason to look around for pictures. Instead of taking a photograph and filing it away, it has given me a reason to keep my eyes open during the day.
Q: Shooting motocross is an interesting contrast to the theater shots. It’s full of motion, and the bikes and gear are full of primary colors.
It is very colorful, isn’t it? I love that about it. It’s fun to try to shoot different kinds of things. And the motorcycle magazine Racer X is always nice to get me a photo pass if I go to the races. I like meeting the other photographers. I love picking their brains. You learn different styles and techniques. With the equine photography, it’s the same way. The ideal photo of a horse involves certain leg placement. It’s fun to learn all about that.
Q: You shot photographer Mark Seliger recently and commented on his wealth of knowledge about lighting. Is it daunting to shoot a photographer?
A: (Laughs.) I’m not sure it’s daunting so much as I just felt ignorant. I did a shoot back in 1986 in Nashville. Annie Leibovitz was doing a country music thing, and I was one of the subjects. I have rolls from my Nikon FM from then. I met Seliger in the ’90s — he’s from Houston, too. And he plays music. So we had a lot in common. We’ve stayed in touch after all these years, so I’m pretty comfortable around Mark. I like working with people like Mark and Annie, and Martin Schoeller. He’s this German guy who I liked so much I asked if he ever directed videos. He said no, but he was willing to try. So he directed my “In My Own Mind” video. He said, “I was thinking maybe you’d ride a donkey.” I said, “Well, I have some really nice horses, Martin. Maybe I could ride a horse?” But all the underwater stuff in that video, that was Martin’s idea. It’s fun to trust someone as talented as those people and do what they have in mind. To be part of their vision.