Sonny McCartney

Tattoo You

Photo courtesy of Pat Graham

Just got back from London and we were thrilled to catch up with many of our photographers across the pond. Wanted to thank our photographers Sophie Jarry, Sonny McCartney, Pat Pope, Jamie Beeden and Pat Graham for meeting us and inspiring us. More to come about our trip later this week, but for now, here’s just one of the many things we discussed over lunch with the insanely awesome Pat Graham- tattoos- more specifically tattoos of one of your photos… We’ve seen plenty of band logo ink, but this is on another level.Talk about homage. Talk about complicated copyright! It’s pretty rad regardless.

Introducing Sonny McCartney

Dave Grohl by Sonny McCartney/The Hell Gate- image is copyrighted, not for use without permission

While there is no such thing as a Hell Gate photograph, we would like to think that there is something close to a Hell Gate DNA. Generally live music material falls some close to the sideline of that DNA – primarily because we want to be photography driven & primarily due to its ubiquity. Live has a tendency to fall under fodder entertainment feed or the twenty photographer mosh pit. Not, in short, great photography.

There is a craft to doing live well & that is a craft that many an accomplished rock or portraiture photographer may not necessarily master.

We are delighted to introduce some introductory work of Sonny McCartney. On this small forum & with this small sample I would suggest that we should all be looking forward to seeing much more.

Whatever “it” is, all we can say is that we see it with Sonny & “it” is not something we see everyday. You heard it here first.