You would be hard pressed to guess from his lanky frame and quiet demeanour, but Maclay Heriot has spent the past six years getting up close and personal with some of the world’s biggest music stars.
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Since turning 20, the Austinmer native has dedicated his summers to rock‘n’roll as one of the touring photographers for the Big Day Out festival. Now 26, Heriot has filled his portfolio with shots of music icons from Iggy Pop to Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West to The Cure and Rage Against The Machine, criss-crossing the country with the touring festival.
Now, in a rare slice of downtime between jobs (he has just returned from photographing such iconic international festivals as Lollapalooza) Heriot is showing off his photographic treasures with a special exhibition at Howlin Wolf bar in Wollongong.
‘‘I’ve just got home from three months away, and thought it would be a good time to do a show,’’ the softly spoken photographer said.
Learning his craft under the wing of acclaimed photographers Sophie Howarth and Tony Mott, Heriot’s path to one of the more enviable jobs in Australian music began aged 20.
‘‘Sophie is the longest standing Big Day Out photographer. I started assisting her in her office and that’s how I got the job,’’ he said.
Heriot, who is also in high demand for promotional band photography after working with the likes of Bluejuice, 360 and Gypsy & The Cat, shoots entirely on film.
His exhibition, titled Digital Is Dead, pays homage to the labour-intensive process of analog photography, before the days of point-and-shoot DSLR cameras.
‘‘This is shot all on 35millimetre or polaroid film. I think it’s a more authentic way of capturing the image,’’ he said.
‘‘It gets the grit and grime of a music festival. Even the rare times someone asks me to shoot with digital, I’m still using film all through the day as well.’’
Digital Is Dead opened last night, and will run until December 12.