Elle Jaye - Photos, Drums, and Sunshine.

     It’s another beautiful Saturday morning when I find myself wandering down Sutter Street in Old Town Folsom. On this particular day, I am meeting with esteemed local photographer, Lauren Jenkins, also known as Elle Jaye. She is well known locally for her stunningly sharp wedding and personal portraits, as well as her unique spin on band photos. More broadly, she is well known as one of the foremost authorities on drum photos, which has gotten her work in magazines like Modern Drummer, among many other dynamite productions.

     As she arrives to her shared space studio, she greets me with her trademark bubbly smile and sunny disposition. Catching up as we enter the building, we climb the stairs to the main studio space, and I am taken aback for a second.

     There is a room directly in front of me, where a couch sits across from two chairs in the opposite corners. A small chest of drawers is between the chairs, and there is a coffee table in front of the couch. The drawers are covered in a shag carpet of some kind, and the walls are white and warm. My first instinct was that I really wanted to take a nap here. I loved it.

     Once that first thought came and went, I looked into the next room, decked out in hardwood floors. It was easily three times as long, and twice as wide, complete with its own compliment of furniture, too. The thin white curtain in the window wafted slightly in the breeze, and the room was bathed in natural light in a way that I had never really thought I could see in a building this old.
     Maybe being on the second story, helped? I digress.

     After the brief, but illuminating tour, we took our seats in the first room and delved into how photography has been for Lauren.

     Lauren tells me that she has been doing photography as a full time job for about 12 years, which  stems back to the early days of the local music scene for people of our generation. She started out taking nightlife photos at places like The Underground, Club Retro, and The Boardwalk, all of which are institutions of nostalgia in the Sacramento area. She explains that experience as,

     “It was always just nerdy-ass screamo, emo bands, and stuff [laughs]…everybody was under the age of 20, and we all had swoopy hair, heavy eyeliner, and skinny jeans, so yeah (laughs). But when I got married, I moved up to a rural area, and there are no venues like that…so from there I established the portrait and wedding thing. I did that for 8 years, and I did well.”

(Lauren Jenkins, © Elle Jaye 

http://www.ellejaye.us/)

     Establishing a solid base as a wedding and portrait photographer was a very formative part of her experience, but things changed, as life tends do to sometimes. After working at this for as long as she did, Lauren got divorced and realized, as she put it,

     “This [wedding photography] is not my heart, and I need to move on.”

     From this formative decision, Lauren soldiered on, as any artist worth their salt would do.

     “I started doing more portraiture, and more band stuff…then I was over at the Powerhouse [Pub] down here [Folsom, CA], doing some shooting they needed for their website. I had my lights and everything out, while they were making crazy drinks, and fire, and stuff. There were a couple of guys who were laughing…so I went over and, turns out, they were laughing at something else, so we got into conversation and turns out they were [Mike Johnston's] Drum Camp people. So, Mike Johnston [who works locally in Folsom], is a drummer here in town…and the guys were just out and about after a day at Drum Camp…so the guys from the bar went back to Mike and were like, ‘Yo, this girl’s a little bit crazy, and her work is great, you should check her out’”

     And from there, a very interesting working relationship formed. Lauren goes on to tell me that Mike walked through Old Folsom, found her studio, and took a picture in front of it. After he sent it to her on Facebook, they met and he hired her for some work. It was here, that she began her shift to drum photography, and in a very interesting way. You see, Mike is an immensely popular drum clinician, and Lauren was shooting all of his drum camps, magazine shoots, and ads. This tapped into something unique, versus taking pictures of live bands. She explains,

     “I think that market was so under-served, as far as media is concerned. So, when I showed up…I do have floaty, flighty mannerisms, and a way about me. So, it was just, for them, new. I gave them an opportunity at the time to look cool, in an industry that wasn’t traditionally cool looking.”

     Not that being a clinic drummer is uncool or anything, it’s just a different group of people her media was reaching. Being confused, I asked her to elaborate. She said,

     “I mean, there were rock star people who were all like, ‘RRAAAH’, and crossing their sticks at the camera, which I hate with a burning passion…So, here’s the thing with clinicians, they have a huge audience. It’s like, people will go to a rock show, and they’ll be, like, ‘Yeah, the drummer’s dope’, but they don’t play drums. They might be like ‘Oh he’s super cool, look at him hit all the things. He hits all the things all at once’…versus the drum nerds, who are paying attention to the clinicians. So, the people who will show up to clinics, paying attention to online lessons, or YouTube-ing, or whatever, that’s hundreds, potentially thousands of people who are then exposed to what I do.”

     I can safely say, I never in my life would have put that together. So, naturally, I asked where this path had taken her, through work and travel and the like. She gave me a pretty impressive list, with places like Germany and London, along with proposals for places like Singapore and Japan. In addition, she has gone up and down both coasts, along with hot-spots in places like Chicago, Nashville, and Texas.
     It’s amazing, really, how lucky this whole circumstance has come across, but our conversation shifts slightly towards talking to people in individual music scenes, as I am sure Lauren has done countless times over her eclectic journey. She offers a good piece of wisdom, in saying,

     “Have something to offer, in exchange. Like, ‘Hey, I’m really good at music marketing, I’m really good at branding, and photography, etc, can I have a few moments of your time, in exchange for X, Y, and Z?’”

     With a repertoire like Lauren’s it’s understandable how this kind of attitude can pay off dividends in the long run.

     Speaking of dividends, I turn our lovely chit chat to the inevitable 4 letter word that can prove to be a stumbling block for some photographers, as well as other artists.

     Gear. 

     And software, but that has more letters.

     Lauren has an undaunted attitude about it thought.

     “If you want to create art, you’ll do it. If you want to be a creator, you’ll do it. For people, who want to take pictures, if they can’t afford Lightroom or Photoshop, there are free options like, Gimp and Pixlr. I mean there’s like a million things that you have on app stores now, that are totally usable.”

     Having used Pixlr myself, I agree with this sentiment, very much. When it comes to hardware (AKA: cameras and lenses), though, Lauren has a very unorthodox answer for me, which is,

     “I honestly can’t say, because I don’t use great gear, because I do stupid shit, like walk in the river with my camera up here [holds her arms over her head] [Laughs]”

     Intrigued, I hustle for clarification of that statement.

     “I did a shoot last year with a drummer, who had just gotten off tour, had one day that we booked to shoot, and then was going back on tour with a different band. We had literally one day, and Modern Drummer wanted to do a 5-page piece on him…so I moved 3 things around. It happened to be the hottest effing day in the history of the universe. It was like 115 degrees, and this building is like a brick oven…I came in, and by 10 a.m. it was miserable and we had to shoot at 4 p.m.…We have to go outside, because we are all going to die. So, we went down to the river and we took his cymbals, and I’m, like, chest deep in water, holding my camera up here trying not to fall over [laughs]. My assistant was on the bank of the river, holding the light up and over, extending it as far as it could go. It was dope, and it turned out well, but I’m not going to take an $8000 camera out and do that kind of stuff.”

     Chuckling heartily, I listen as she explains that she does have a few older, but still solid cameras and lenses, and will bring out the nice stuff when it calls for it. She also has a tendency to work with water, flour, dirt, and other camera-hating elements in her photography, so utilitarian is the best option in those cases.

(Lauren's photo's with the band Lucid, for example, involved water getting chucked around, much to their delight, I'm sure.

© Elle Jaye, www.ellejaye.us)

     In the eternal debate of gear versus skill, though, Lauren did have some interesting insight into a subject I never really paid that much attention to as an outside observer. 

     Light. Plain and simple. She says,

     “If you can learn to read light…Light, ingenuity, and a creative mind. Because even if you have a baseline camera, if you know how to use light, it will look just as good as a really nice camera. But, you have to work inside your parameters and know what your limitations are, and know how you can work around those. It takes a lot of trial and error, and it’s not always a good use of time, but it’s not impossible if you don’t have great gear.”

     I take note of the shining light through the room we are sitting in, along with the big room out in the hall, and how evenly bathed in morning light they are. There isn’t a single light fixture on in the whole place, and they don’t even need them! It clicks in my head, that this place is built as a reflection of its users, and I can’t help but smile. This place was made to take all the pictures, and provides its own specific style of comfort that I still can't place. But it is there.

     Putting aside my personal revelation, I can’t help but ask her if she has any advice for upcoming photographers out there in the world, and she puts it in a very poignant way.

     “Know your time. Know what you’re worth. Burn out is very easy, especially when you’re doing stuff for free. And your setting the expectation from those people, that you will always do things for free…that’s my biggest thing. And just shoot. Just shoot the things and take all the pictures!”

     Practical, truthful, and supportive, all in the same sentence.

     I feel like that is Lauren, and this wonderful conversation has proven that. What further proves it, is when she sits me down for my own personal head-shots. Her cheery tone coaxes out smiles and relaxation from this writer that other photographers have had a hard time getting. Or at least the genuine forms of it. All while dragging couches around, playing with the curtains, and even shooting from the other side of a window. All to get the shots she needed. It was amazing, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

     What else can I say, except that we can expect many a great thing to continue to come from this vibrant and hard-working individual. Be sure to follow her on Instagram and Facebook, and check out the rest of her fine work on her website, ellejaye.us