Jenny Jimenez arrived in Seattle in 1999 and started taking concert photos almost right away. She's played bass in The Catch, shot The Stranger 's "Club Directory" for five years, and is available to shoot your wedding or other photography. That's right: You can book the photographer for Sleater-Kinney's farewell show for your wedding. (I only wish we'd had that option.)
To mark 10 years of picture taking, Jimenez has a retrospective, "Show Me Your TIFFs," hanging at the Skylark in West Seattle right now through December 12. But tonight from 6-11:30 is the opening celebration: live music, a fortune teller, and an all-male wet T-shirt contest.
I talked with Jenny by phone about her career. (Apologetic aside: I used Recorder for iPhone to record our telephone interview, and it worked great for the first 10 minutes. After that, the conversation was half drowned by weird static, so some great stuff got cut because I couldn't make out what she said. I arbitrarily blame AT&T.)
What drew you to live music photography?
First and foremost I'm a fan. I love music, I love shooting music, and even when I'm shooting I'm dancing behind the camera and singing all the lyrics and bouncing about. So I want to be there for the show, and then to be able to shoot and produce something that people can take away with them is a bonus. To create art out of a particular moment lengthens its life and the life of the experience.
I noticed that a lot of your photos zero in on little details, like Neko Case's high heels or Sleater-Kinney's setlist.
You want to tell a story. There are so many ways to look at a given moment in time. If you're just shooting the performer and the microphone, everyone has that shot. It's the standard way of looking at the show. "Oh, I saw so-and-so take that photo."
You look for action, of course, but you want to remember what guitar Neko played, or how many guitars she had lined up, who sang backup with her. You try to cover everything.
It's like shooting a wedding or a portrait shoot. You try to not just shoot the bride and groom, but get the surroundings and their hands and their feet and their behinds and try to come up with a story.
How did your concert experience influence your approach to wedding photography?
Live music photography definitely gave me the experience to walk into a wedding and shoot the reception or the ceremony. It's really tough to shoot music live. The lighting's crap, it's constantly changing, you never know what the performer's going to do. You have so many uncontrolled variables, including the crowd, that can get in the way or influence how you can shoot.
A wedding is kind of a similar setup. There can be restrictions—you can't go past this row, or you can't go behind the couple, or you can only shoot during these times. And so many wedding reception places have horrible, horrible lighting, a mirror on every wall, and very, very low light.
Having had a job at crazy, small, and poorly lit venues for a few years, and coming into a dark, cavernous multipurpose room, I could say, "Hmm, I can work with this. I just have to approach it this way, or wait until the moment comes, anticipate the movements of the people."
When I shoot weddings, I like to get out on the dance floor. I dance with people. I find that people are comfortable around me when I'm being one of them. I'm not really a fly-on-the-wall photographer. I'll start talking to your relatives and your family and other people around. I don't like to ask my subjects to do anything I'm not willing to do myself, so if I'm taking a photo of them doing silly dancing on the dance floor, then I've got to be willing to do the silly dance, too.
It's really easy for a photographer to fall into the routine of "this is where we do this photo, this is where we do that photo," without just being in the moment.
How did you get into photography in the first place?
I took a photography class in high school, and it was one of the artistic disciplines I really connected with. I grew up in a very musical household—we always had pianos and bongos and guitars. Photography was something only I had access to. My father wasn't a photographer, my sister wasn't a photographer, my mother wasn't a photographer.
I moved to Seattle in 1999. When I first came here, I found it really hard to make friends with people. Everyone seemed to have their own little clique. So I went and bought a Nikon SLR camera—film—and started bringing it with me to shows.
It became a little bit of a conversation piece. Not everyone back then had a camera. I became "the girl with the camera." That led to conversations like, "Hey, if you give me prints, I'll let you have my front row space."
Eventually bands recognize you, and ask you to take their photos, booking agents start recognizing you and ask if you're going to the show, I'll put you on the list. It's in their interest to have good photos in the venues.
It's different now, with so many people owning DSLR cameras.
You really have to be good these days. The learning curve is so much shorter now. I'd have to keep a notebook with me, and for each frame I shot write down what my exposure and other information was. When I'd get my prints or negatives I'd go back and say, "Oh, I overexposed here" or "What was I thinking here so I don't do it next time?" Then I'd wait until I shot another roll of film and got that back to see if I improved. With digital photography, the whole process takes two minutes!
Does that put pressure on you as a professional?
It reminds me to always be improving, always learn, keep moving forward. I think it's exciting that everyone can approach a situation with their own perspective. I've seen a group of photographers go out and shoot the same thing and all come back with different photos.
Everyone brings a different perspective, a different eye to the moment. If they're an artist, they'll come back with something interesting.
"Show Me Your TIFFs: 10 Years of Music Photography by Jenny Jimenez" is at the Skylark through Dec. 12, but the opening party is TONIGHT from 6 to 11:30. See the awesome poster here.
