‘Shooting Energy’

Written and photographed by Josiah Persad

Sir Donald McCullin, a great British photojournalist once said, “Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”

“Shooting Energy” is a collection of ten live performance images that portrays the raw energy of my subjects.

I am a first-year film and television student with a passion for visual storytelling. I specialize in live-performance, commercial, fashion videography and photography. As a live-performance photographer, I aim to accomplish this feeling of energy in all my shots, both for myself and for the people who view them.

Yes, you can take hundreds of good photographs when you have a famous musician just a few feet away from your camera, with spectacular lights and fog in the background; but I believe that getting a great photo requires greater concern for detail. When shooting, I focus on elements such as facial expression, body language, emotion in the eyes or even camera angles to capture this energy from my subject. Detail changes the entire game, and separates amateurs from the professionals.

Whether my subjects look fierce, excited or lost in their music, I aim to shoot them at the climax of their performance. When someone looks at my images, I intend to evoke the thrill of these captured moments.