We recently connected with Trevor McGoldrick and have shared our conversation below.
Trevor, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I am definitely happiest when I’m working in my field. It’s a turbulent and uncertain field of work, it doesn’t have the certain stability of a regular job, but I’m happier doing this than when I am working a “normal” job at home. I do sometimes wonder what it’s like to be happy being at home with a regular job, it definitely brings a comfortable familiarity having the same schedule and doing the same thing every day. I bet I’d be a lot more financially stable. I’ve thought about doing it a few times, especially now having turned 30. However, every time I’m home for very long, I start becoming very unhappy and don’t really feel happy again until I’m back on the road again. So here I am, typing this from a cafe in Pensacola, with no idea what my next gig will be after this but still feeling much happier out here than when I was just home for 8 months.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Trevor McGoldrick, I am 30 years old and I currently reside in Scottsdale, Arizona. I grew up skateboarding and being heavily involved in the local music scene in North Carolina, specifically metalcore and hardcore. I picked up photography when I was a teenager, a friend and I were out skateboarding in Winston-Salem and a girl with a camera asked if she could take photos of us skating, and would send us the photos on myspace later. We said yes, exchanged info, and the next day she sent us the photos. I thought it was so cool, and I decided to mow lawns to save money to get a camera myself so I could take photos of my friends skating myself. That girl and I are still friends to this day, 15 years later!
Fast forward 5 years, being involved in the music scene eventually had me find myself on the road working with a band from Arizona called Farewell My Love. This snowballed into more jobs on tour, driving and doing merchandise and whatever other job I could do. I ended up becoming an inventory manager for artist merchandise at festivals like Coachella, Hangout and Stagecoach. I decided I wanted to get back to the individual artist touring part of the industry, and my friends in a band called I See Stars asked me to come out with them, and to bring my camera along since I did photography as a hobby already. This was my first time really doing any form of concert photography, I had photographed a few friends’ bands sets for fun before, but probably less than 10 shows total. I See Stars decided to let me learn with them on the road, which was a blessing I’m still so thankful to them for. They could’ve hired someone more experienced, and decided to take a chance with me instead. Kickstart to a new career path.
I now do photo/video/social media content for a venue in Arizona and touring bands. I did media and social media management for an artist called Fit For A King for a few years, I’ve done work with artists such as Silent Planet, Erra and Hollow Front, and I’m currently out with a group from Yorkshire called Caskets doing media for them. With Fit For A King I successfully started and ran a tiktok account for them which I got to 50,000 followers in less than a year and had multiple videos go viral with 1m+ views each, and was lucky enough to be able to travel to places like Australia and Europe/UK with them a few times. It was always a life goal of mine to make it to Australia before I turned 30, and I still can’t believe I was able to do that all because I found photography through skateboarding.
My main goal with live music photography is to try and capture the energy and surreal emotions music, specifically heavier/alternative genres can bring to us. I also just want to make live music photography look different. A lot of photographs I see in magazines are so clinically-perfect and void of energy and emotion as a result. It doesn’t make me feel anything. So I’d rather focus less on a clinically perfect close up, and more on capturing energy and light. Whether or not I achieve that is subjective I suppose, but overall I just want to capture moments.
How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?
Share their work, and interact with it. In today’s social media age, it kind of controls photographers exposure and income. On the same token, social media algorithms are fighting against so many different kinds of artists and making our jobs much harder and making it so much harder to reach people. I get less reach on instagram now than I did when I only had 1,000 followers, I’ve had friends tell me I no longer show up in their feeds period. I’ve experienced this with photographers I follow as well, where even when I’ve added them to my favorites, my feed will tell me I’m caught up and then I’ll go to their page to see posts I was never shown. The reason this is detrimental is because I’ve gotten more than one job because of instagram tags, so these kinds of things actually do directly effect my income and the incomes of other photographers/artists of all kinds. The best way to support us, is to not scroll past us when you see us, and simply interact with the art that you like so the corporate platform algorithms decide we’re worthy of being shown in our own followers and potential new followers/clients feeds again. It’s free and only takes seconds. Like, leave a comment, share in your stories, send it to a friend you think would enjoy it, lots of options. Financially, you can buy prints from local artists when you need artwork for your house instead of going to target, hire us when you need something captured, etc. I know it can be expensive, but I can promise that you’ll be so much happier that you hired a professional instead of doing an iPhone photo.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
Just capturing moments and memories for people. Fans of artists ecstatic, messaging me because they see themselves in a photo I took. Couples that have hired me for proposals or engagements telling me how happy they are with the moments I captured for them. The artists I work for themselves telling me how happy they are I got a certain moment of a set. It’s kind of surreal that I get to travel the world by just making fleeting seconds turn into permanent memories for people.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.trevormcgoldrickphotography.com
- Instagram: trmcgoldrick