Slash | Portraits of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Icon

The above image is one of my favourites from my shoot with Slash.  Justin and Slash are both huge Rolling Stones fans, and I was going for a ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus’ theme in this shot with the red curtains and dramatic lighting.

The past two weeks have been a total whirlwind!  As of March 5th, 2010 I had flown to Las Vegas, Nevada (my first time in Sin City) for the annual WPPI Conference.  For those of you who don’t understand photographer-speak, that’s the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International conference.  WPPI is the biggest conference for wedding and portrait photographers around the world, and it was held this year at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino.  I attended with my friend Milena of MKG Photography (we actually went to Humber College together) and we took a LOT of classes and saw many inspirational speakers.  By the second day my head felt as if it might explode from all the fabulous information!

I even arranged a couple photoshoots while I was visiting Las Vegas to take advantage of the amazing location.  But more on WPPI later.  I promise a 2 or even 3 part blog post detailing my adventures in Las Vegas.  But while I’m putting those posts together, I wanted to share something even cooler with you…

Before I left for the WPPI conference, I had booked my travel to return to Toronto on March 11th.  Of course shortly after I scheduled my flights, I was contacted by Access Magazine asking if I would be interested in shooting Canadian Music Week again this year (I did a lot of work on CMW 2009 – check out those posts with images here:  http://www.lisamarkphotography.com/?s=cmw&searchsubmit-top=search )  I really wanted to shoot CMW again this year, especially when I found out that the keynote speaker this year was Slash!  Yes the rock icon (formerly of Guns ‘n’ Roses and currently guitarist for Velvet Revolver, and star of his very own Guitar Hero game!)  Amazing.  To be honest one of my favourite music video memories is the November Rain music video when Slash comes out of the church to play an epic guitar solo.

That’s when my editor at Access emailed me again, asking if I want to do a private photoshoot with Slash for an article that will be printed in Access Magazine…. !   Of course, this interview fell on the day I was scheduled to fly back from Las Vegas in the evening.  So after being at WPPI for almost a week, and having learned so much my head was hurting, I made the decision to pay a little extra, grab a flight back from the conference a day early so I could shoot Slash.  And boy am I glad I did!

Justin and I arrived at the Royal York Hotel (headquarters for Canadian Music Week 2010 and Slash’s hotel for the duration of the festival).  As soon as we walked into the lobby, we realized how crazy busy it was.  Media, musicians and fans were everywhere.

We were then taken up to Slash’s room where all the media was being done for the day (Entertainment Tonight with Rick Campanelli came in right after I finished shooting to film their segment with Slash).  We waited while Access finished their interview and then I had 5 minutes to do some photos with Slash.

Slash (and his whole team) were very cool and accommodating.  I shook his hand, chatted a bit with him and I asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to do a few shots with his guitar.  He said sure and I’m thrilled with the results.  Here are a few of my favourite shots:

Slash is currently promoting his new self-titled solo album Slash which will be released on April 6th, 2010.  The album features collaborations with Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Dave Grohl, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, Steven Adler, Lemmy from Motorhead and Fergie.  The lead single is called ‘By the Sword’ with Andrew Stockdale of Wolfmother, and can be heard on the radio now.  For the latest details on Slash, please visit his website:  http://www.slashonline.com/ and you can follow him on Twitter here:  http://twitter.com/Slash

A big thank you to Slash and his team for allowing me to create these images, and to my editor Sean from Access Magazine for arranging the session.  To see the rest of the shots, please pick up the April 2010 issue of Access Magazine.  You can also check out Access Magazine on-line here:  http://www.accessmag.com/