Bavu Blakes appeared on both the Austin Hip-Hop stations, Hot 93.3 and the Beat 104.3, earlier this week to discuss his recent Austin Chronicle cover story that I shot. I joined Bavu early Monday morning at Hot 93.3 for his morning show interview with Boogie and Mimi. Duece of Hot 93.3 was also in attendance as they interviewed Bavu about his most recent press coverage and how it all came about. Bavu was gracious enough to show me plently of love on both station interviews which is appreciated very much. Audio from both station interviews can be heard below.
Thanks to Bavu Blakes and Robert Gabriel for choosing me to shoot the latest cover of The Austin Chronicle. The cover story was written by Robert Gabriel on Austin MC Bavu Blakes. For who may not be aware, Bavu is a highly respected and talented artist in the Austin community.
The subject of the article was about how Bavu has collaborated with many artists and how he has ended up in the position he is in now. The creative direction we decided on involved Bavu holding out a microphone with a bit of attitude, as to portray him sharing the instrument with others. We shot on the roof-top of ME-TV, which is where he is also the full-time Urban Music Director, and also in Bavu’s office workspace.
Before I had even turned in the proofs from the Bavu shoot, I recieved another assignment from the Chronicle. They were doing a side-piece to the Bavu story on KJ Hines, another Austin MC, and needed some photos to go along. My team and I met up with KJ the following day and shot him in front of his wrapped promotional vehical.
Ozone Magazine has added Austin’s own SXSW to its list of events, in which they produce special edition magazine taylored to the event and its surrounding area and talent. For those who are un-familiar with the Hip-Hop magazine, Ozone is full of great interviews, articles, and especially photographs. Each issue contains a number of photo gallery pages which holds photos from various Ozone covered concerts, video shoots, parties, and more. The just released 2007 SXSW Edition contains over 50 of my event and concert photographs from over the past six months.
The special eddition magazine also contains a new ad I designed for Rob G’s, The State of the Street project and a Rest In Peace photo montage I designed for late Houston rapper, HAWK.
I have photographed a number of Grit Boy performances and knew this was an assignment I would enjoy. The assignment required me to shoot some promotional images and also some images for the new Grit Boys Myspace page that I would also be designing.
Scooby, Poppy, and Unique, the Grit Boys, came down to Austin from Houston during the 07′ SXSW week for the shoot. My team and I had done our location scouting a few days prior and we choose an abandoned building downtown. The Grit Boys left town soon after the soon only to return a few days later for their performance at TheScrewShop.com’s 10th Year Aniversary SXSW show. Their album “Ghetto Reality in Texas” is set to drop this summer on TVT Records.
I was contacted by Rob G’s manager, Charles Chavez of Latium Entertainment, for this assignment. He let me know that they were getting ready for some big project releases for Rob G and would be needing some photographs and designs. I have been able to photograph many Rob G concert performances at various concerts I cover and was glad to be able to use this assignment to photograph Rob in more of a controlled lighting environment.
Rob came down to Austin from Houston for the shoot. My team and I set up just behind a recently burned down bar located on downtown 6th Street. The resulting images were to be used for Rob G’s “The State of The Streets” mixtape, which I was also also hired to design, and for a press image to be used for an upcoming Ozone magazine write-up.
Rob G’s debut album “The Inaguration” is set for release in the fall of 07′ on Latium / Universal Records.
The State of The Streets can be downloaded for FREE at RobGMusic.com.
