Mick Rock: Eye of the Storm
The photographer welcomes the digital photography promise. “At a friend’s garden party a couple of years ago, I pulled out my little friendly Fuji digital and I was immediately surrounded by a pack of kids, all of them under 10 years-old, with mobiles and digital cameras, all clicking away and showing me and the other kids the immediate results, and I thought: ‘the digital photography revolution is in full swing’. I didn’t pick up a camera until I was 18. This is a whole new realm of communication and image making. Everyone now can truly be a photographer. I love it, it’s fantastic. The more the merrier”.
Rock says he had resisted using shots taken with his beloved Hasselblad in a digital environment until recently, but now he’s ready to make the switch on the right occasions, and if he does, he will take his Mac into the studio and use Aperture there. “Even when I shoot digital instead of film, my approach to photography remains basically the same. The main thing of course, if I have a Mac and Aperture in the studio, is that I can get immediate feedback straight away and open up another area of communication with my subject”.
When you leave a photo session with hundreds or even thousands of images, it can be tortuous deciding which pictures to prioritise. Rock — who always keeps every single one of his frames — uses Aperture to alleviate this. “I go through the whole collection first”, he explains. “I assign star ratings — usually I just add a star to the images I think look interesting, then winnow the others out”. A few rounds of this, and he can focus on the exact images he wants to work with.
Digitising A Life’s Work
Rock says he is currently in the process of digitising the vast quantities of film in his archives and importing the photos into Aperture to organise them, although not all his archive is rock photography: “I’ve always had cats and they make really charming photo subjects. In fact I recently bought two Maine Coon kittens and have already photographed them every which way”, he smiles. “And I intend to make a cat photo book. With Aperture, I can archive my film quickly and efficiently, and create a photo collection without relying on a publisher”.
Despite his landmark reputation within music, Rock likes to find pictures wherever he is. “I’m an image scavenger, especially when I travel. I find powerful images everywhere. I have a ton of images of trees and old churches, for instance. I love stained-glass windows”.
Some of his iconic album covers were taken during live performances, but Rock finds inspiration everywhere. He admits he doesn’t do very much live work these days, but reflects: “With live performance photography, you learn pretty quickly to pick up on the movements of a performer. You have to absorb the way they project and the different band member’s body language. But it’s not really intellectual, it’s an intuitive thing, much more to do with being perceptive and open to the situation. I shot a lot [of live performance] back in the 70s, but now and again under sympathetic circumstances where I can have a lot of freedom I still do it occasionally and bag some good stuff. I recently shot the Manic Street Preachers in performance and I love the results”.
“My eye is a greedy eye, it’s always sucking up imagery”, Rock notes. “That’s what has always excited me. It all makes sense now. It was inevitable that photography would become the key to my life. As a much wiser man than me once told me: ‘Your destiny was written a long time ago. All you have to do in this life is embrace it’. And I did!”
“Digital technology is as important for young photographers as it is for aspiring musicians. Photographers are always looking for ‘the magic moment’ and of course they gravitate towards the latest technology to assist their creativity”.
Rock captures countless moments of dynamism and feeling in his work, and Aperture helps him hone and share these moments with the rest of the world. “I’m excited that Aperture’s come along; it’s opened up a bunch of new doors and enabled my creativity to move at a faster pace”.
