We were lucky to catch up with Mike Kurman recently and have shared our conversation below.
Mike, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
For several decades, private collectors, music fans, and galleries would see my photos on the photo sharing website, Flickr, and reach out about how to buy my images. I would ask them to copy and paste links of the shots that they were interested in buying and we would go from there. It was an inelegant solution to something that should have been much more streamlined. Fast forward to 2020 when the world shut down because of Covid. I was an Event Producer by trade and found myself with no events to produce. So I decided that it would be the perfect time to start my own website. I spent a significant amount of time researching various web building platforms but couldn’t find any that could help me accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. My idea was to build a website where people could view my entire portfolio broken down by artist. Because art is subjective, I wanted guests to have the ability to purchase any photo in my portfolio instead of just a few that I thought were great. After weeks of starting and stopping the initial build, I realized that I was getting nowhere; you can’t “wing” website building. I reached out to the platform to hire one of their consultants. A few weeks and several thousands of dollars later, the consultant ghosted me. I was left with a website that was about 10% completed. Not having additional money to find another consultant, I was left to figure out how to build a website on my own. I holed myself for close to a week without any outside distractions while I taught myself web design. It took two additional months but in November 2020, GoLiveImages.com finally launched. Although frustrating, time-consuming, and costly, the experience of creating the site was deeply profound and rewarding.
Mike, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I started taking photos when I was a small child. The idea that I could essentially freeze time and later have a physical record of a moment felt powerful. I took photos by the hundreds. Hundreds of terrible photos, that is. Underexposed, overexposed, blurry, awful composition. You name it, I nailed it. But those were my photos and they are an important part of my growth as a photographer. As a teen, my interest in photography grew exponentially. I sought out classes where I could learn the fundamentals of how to develop my own negatives and transform them into prints. I started taking my camera to every concert that I went to and realized that combining my love of photography with my love of music was a perfect recipe to do something special.
My goal when creating GoLiveImages.com was to spotlight my entire portfolio of concert photography broken down by artist and then by date. From the time that I began taking a camera to shows, my goal has always been the same – I want to make the viewer feel like they were standing right next to me on that particular night experiencing the same magic that I lived through. When I hear clients say, “I feel like I was there” or ask “were you on stage with the band?” I know that I’m doing it right. In my mind, there isn’t a greater souvenir, or a better way to immortalize an extraordinary evening than having a tangible image as a visual record of that night. A photo will never shrink and fade like an overpriced concert t-shirt.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Whenever I go to a concert, I feel a sense of responsibility to tell the story of that moment in time; to create a permanent record of the magic that took place on that particular day or night. It’s vital to any artist to develop, hone, and ultimately execute their art using their own style. I feel good about the fact that my concert photographs don’t look like anyone else’s. I would never say that I’m “the best” at anything but I can confidently say that my style allows me to separate myself from other concert photographers.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Very early on, one of my photography teachers gave me a piece of advise that resonated with me to great effect. It wasn’t about anything technical, gear-related, or locations to shoot; instead she told me that no matter what I shoot, to develop my own style so that when people see your photos, they know that they only could have come out of my camera.
I’ve spent years honing my style of concert photography that, I think, separates me from my peers. First, and most importantly, although we tend to put musicians up on a pedestal, they’re just people like us. Capturing faces are a big thing in my concert photos. I want my photos to have an emotional feel and by documenting faces, I achieve this goal. Secondly, unless colour adds something extraordinary, I am a black and white photographer. By stripping the colour out of my photos, it allows the musicians emotions to really shine through.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.GoLiveImages.com
- Instagram: @GoLiveImages
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoLiveImages