John Sheeran
This impressive sequence of photos was taken by Christie during Taylor Swift’s The Red Tour in 2013 at the Scottrade Center, St Louis. They show close up the intense concentration and physicality of Ed’s stage performance. He appears completely immersed in the music he is creating, as if possessed by it, and oblivious to the huge audience that surrounds him. Ed’s battered Little Martin guitar takes further punishment as it is energetically plucked, strummed and beaten.
— ST LOUIS, 19 MARCH 2013 —
As an artist, you have to allow yourself to be inspired by the works of others. I have towers of photo books by the great photography legends like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus and many others. In my kitchen, I used to have this picture by Nan Goldin – it was actually a postcard – Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, NYC. I loved to just gaze at that picture while cooking dinner.
As I got into music photography, I regularly explored the works of music photographers who had set the path before me, like Baron Wolman, Jim Marshall and Terry O’Neill. Baron Wolman’s Woodstock images, especially, just tickled my imagination. I was spellbound by those shots where you would see the artist in the front of the frame and behind them an endless sea of people. I had dreams I wanted to follow. I dreamed big and wanted to achieve big things. I too wanted to shoot a performance with a sea of people just like Baron Wolman had done at Woodstock. I too wanted to shoot unassuming portraits like Terry O’Neill’s where you felt as if you were peeking into someone’s private world. I too wanted to become one with my camera just like Jim Marshall used to be merged into his. It’s these dreams that drive you to do better, to learn, to grow and constantly move the bar higher. Some of the goals I had ages ago seemed quite far-fetched and ridiculous back then, but I have achieved a lot of them and new goals have been set.
I can only imagine that when Ed first started out he probably had dreams, too. I have never asked him, but I am sure he must have had artists he looked up to and thought to himself, “I want to achieve that, too.” You dream, and you have to dream big, but I’m sure neither of us could have imagined that only five years after Camden we would both be standing together in an enormous 20,000-seater American sports arena, Ed performing and me capturing it all. But here we were, doing just that. And, although it wasn’t Woodstock, this one was very special to me. This was my opportunity to shoot Ed in an environment I hadn’t shot him in before: backstage. There is just no comparison between a stack of beer kegs in front of a barbed wire fence outside the Roundhouse and the avenue-wide backstage corridors of an American arena.
As always, Ed’s tour manager Mark was the one who helped me out, and a time and a place were arranged for a casual portrait shoot after the sound check on our last day on The Red Tour. I had suggested to Mark that he try to make sure that Ed would be wearing a plain unbranded T-shirt instead of a T-shirt with a company name or logo. Ed was getting to a level now where you just couldn’t take chances. You never know what the pictures would end up being used for, and you always have to be careful that you don’t run into any legal issues with trademarks and copyright when pictures are being used on a global platform. The morning of our shoot Mark and Ed popped into a local Walmart to buy some unbranded T-shirts. While passing through the checkout Ed had apparently clocked this step scooter, and he just had to have it. I have to admit that a step scooter is not such a bad idea to get around backstage in these huge American arenas. So, Ed bought the scooter – of course!
Later that afternoon, as soon as the sound check had been done, I went to meet up with Ed in his dressing room, which in this case was a gigantic room large enough for the St Louis Blues NHL ice hockey team, and Ed had it all to himself. When I walked in the room, Ed had just unpacked his brand-new scooter. I used the large space of the room to do a quick portrait of Ed sitting in his dressing room and then suggested we move to another location in the building. Since he was now a legit scooter owner he wasn’t going to walk, obviously. He grabbed his scooter and, like the Road Runner, he flew past me into the corridor. Mark just grinned at me. “Good luck catching him, Christie.” That’s when the chase began. I ran behind Ed like a madwoman with my camera, trying to get a decent shot. He passed me a couple of times, whizzing through the corridors. And despite me trying my best to catch up with him, he was just too fast for me. This running around lasted for a good five to ten minutes. By now I had seen half of the bowels of the arena and I was pretty much running out of steam. Ed whizzed past me one more time and shouted, “Come on, Christie, catch me!” Really, Ed? Mark met up with me somewhere along the way and said, “He’s had his fun and now it’s time for the shoot.”
Christie Goodwin
When shooting a portrait session on location you really have to make do with what you have at hand, in this case a loading bay under an American arena. Just to stir things up a bit, I asked Ed to walk away from me and every time I called out his name he’d turn his head and look back at me. This is one of the shots from that sequence. It’s very important to shoot in movement because the facial expression will be completely different from that in a still pose. Here, there is almost a wonder I can detect in Ed’s eyes, the wonder whether I had got the shot or not.
Ed got off his scooter, handed it to Mark, and we walked into the loading bay underneath the arena. All I needed was some plain walls, no frills, so the loading bay was the perfect setting. Ed is always very accommodating once I am alone with him. I give him very few directions, and everything just flows very smoothly and organically. There’s a picture that came from this shoot of him looking to the right that has been used quite a lot by Ed and his label. I can disclose to you in strict confidence that that wasn’t a posed picture. In fact, someone had just walked into the loading bay, passed behind me and walked to a door a bit further on. Ed just followed him with his eyes, and I took the shot. I got some close-ups, some full-length portraits, and to close off our little impromptu shoot I asked Ed to walk a couple of times up and down the ramp of the loading bay. That last one had probably less of a photographic purpose, but it felt good to make him work after making me run around like a lunatic earlier. We got through the whole shoot in under ten minutes. As soon as I said “It’s a wrap”, Ed grabbed his little scooter and disappeared as fast as he had arrived. But I got what I needed, and I have Mark Friend to thank for it. Again.