Our Tour with BoyWithUke

Hi, I’m Connor Gaskey. I’m a photographer based out of Los Angeles. I specialize in music, portrait, and editorial photography. I recently was on the road with the artist BoyWithUke, and these 10 images are the product of two months of touring.

The Green Room

This was taken in a really cool airstream on the last US date of the tour. The venue made the interior into a very cool “chill” green room area that I thought would be a sick place to take a couple of snaps. I showed Uke this area, and he agreed. I think I only took three frames on my Pentax 67, and this one stood out the most.

Lights. Mirror. Capture

I remember this Vancouver venue very well—it was such a cold, wet day outside. Uke had been practicing the guitar throughout the tour, and when I saw him sitting on the table strumming, I knew I had to snag a shot. It could be the framing of him between the lights, the mirror, or maybe a little of everything. I don’t know; I think he just looks cool.

Xpan

Throughout the tour I was trying to use my new panoramic kit for my Pentax, it gives this super cool xpan style crop ratio that I love. Sadly, the lens I used to take this isn’t that fast, so shooting a moment during the show is a little tricky. I’m not sure where this was taken but I love that you can see all the phone lights, Uke has his guitar out and is shirtless - some real rock star stuff right there.

Spice

I got really lucky with this shot. I had just purchased this cool, cheap tilt-shift lens and was playing around with the focusing. Touring can be hard because at a point, the show photos can look the same. It’s my job to add some spice to each show. I love the work of Brad Heaton and my friend Anna Lee, who both have used a tilt-shift lens during shows. Shooting with a screwed focal plane is tricky, shooting in a dark room is very tricky, and shooting at f1.8 manually focusing is incredibly hard. Thankfully, this is the one shot that came out well.

The Moments Between

There’s no color image In my mind that can beat a really good black-and-white image. The absence of color and its only shades of grey and lighting hits different. I love this image because it makes Uke look like a badass. He’s silhouetted, and he has his mic up in the air. It’s a moment. My favorite part of a show is the still moments between the controlled energy. This is one of those moments.

Smashed

I’m a sucker for black and white; I had to throw one more into this post. Every night, Uke would smash a ukulele in this super epic moment of the show. It always gets people excited, and it’s always fun to see something get smashed. I’ve shot this moment in so many ways. Sometimes, I like the moment but feel I could do better. I really love this frame because you can see part of the ukulele flying away, and it’s silhouetted by the light. Though this is a very loud moment during the show, this frame feels quiet to me.

The Climb

This image is very likely my favorite of the whole tour. Not many venues that we went to had any form of catwalks in them, so the moment Uke and I saw the ladder, we climbed out. It was so sketchy and didn’t look like anyone had been up there in ten years. It wasn’t even a catwalk but old, thin wood planks close enough together to walk on. During the show,
I climbed up the three stories to this spot and waited for this moment. It had to be close to 100 degrees up there, and I could hear certain planks crack as I shimmied over them. The image was worth every second.

Waves

Thank god for proper catwalks. This was a piece of cake to compare to the last image. Throughout the tour, I tried to find a cool way to show how massive these crowds were. Every single show, all twenty-five, was sold out; I had to show how crazy that it was. Thankfully, this catwalk was about ten feet away from the front of the stage, so I could get a better perspective of the crowd when I was overhead.

I put on my old fish-eye lens and snapped this. I really enjoy how the distortion makes it look like the fans are flowing in, like a wave of people from the back.

In The Moment

Uke bounces and moves around the stage a ton during his set; very few moments is he still. This moment is crazy because the lights are strobing at this beat drop, and Uke looks like he’s doing some stop-motion effect. His being lit frontally so well right now is so incredible, and it helps freeze him in time in the middle of him bouncing around. The blue color helped make this feel more intimate for me and show how much in the moment Uke really is.