Finn O'Hara Photography | Blog

Back in October, the fine folks behind Supercreative, a contest that grants photographers with a hard working collective of capture, prop, location, and production specialists, awarded me one of their production extravaganzas. My winning creative pitch was based on recreating a night with a lousy 80′s rock band, which stemmed from my high school days in rural Ontario. Yes I was in a band in high school, and no, I never wore a cut-off mesh tank top.

We booked ourselves into the legendary 80′s rock club ‘The Big Bop’, which served as our principal location for the day, and we utilized every square foot of the sprawling venue. To my surprise, the club shut down for good last month, and these photos now help document, in a way, one of the last un-gentrified pockets of the Toronto concert scene.

Unfortunately, I was very busy shooting my big Canadian Tourism job when it came time to produce the shoot, and it just didn’t materialize into the creative gem that I had originally envisioned. A lot of the production elements that I initially conceived of never fully materialized as I hoped they would, and to make matters worse, my agent at the time dropped a bomb, notifying me the morning of the shoot that she was shutting down her business. Needless to say, the creative struggle I was having only got worse when it came time to shoot.

But this, in many ways, is indicative of the struggles that the job of making & taking photos can present. Some jobs go so very well, and others, well, they never really launch properly; they just sort of fizzle on the launching pad. Often, a job can attract some degree of negativity, and it’s up to you as a photographer to access how to handle the adversity, and get things spinning quickly in your favour.

Anyway, I think I managed some nice shots out of the opportunity in the end. Many thanks to all involved, and who worked hard and donated what they could in getting this creative produced.