1,000 Words: Taylor “Wally” Wallace

Name: Taylor “Wally” Wallace

Hometown: Atlanta, Georgia

Occupation: Photographer

On assignment at events in 2016, including:

Phish’s four-day festival at Riviera Maya in Mexico, Euphoria, Electric Forest, EDC Orlando, and Bassnectar’s Bass Center in Denver.

Reminiscing on:

Phish at Riviera Maya—it was the first festival they’d done in like 10 years, so that was really cool. I also loved the mix of bands and DJs and the mix of people at both Euphoria and Electric Forest.

Looking forward to:

Bass Center, Bassnectar’s event in Colorado. This is the first time he’s doing it as a festival, so I don’t know what to expect. I’ve been photographing his shows for the past four or five years, and I’ve seen his Red Rocks shows and others, but this is something new. I’m also really looking forward to EDC Orlando—that and EDC Mexico are my favorite EDCs. The people are all super energetic and eager to have their photos taken, and it’s not quite as hot or overwhelming as EDC Vegas.

First experience with electronic music:

Listening to Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9). Before them, I was just into normal bands. They were the first group I listened to that mixed in electronic elements. Every member—the guitarist, bassist, drummer, etc.—was hooked up to a laptop, too, and they’d be mixing in electronic beats and sounds in their tracks and sets. That’s the first time I gravitated to EDM, but I’ve always liked future-sounding music. STS9 also helped put on a bunch of DJs in the early 2000s. They would have Bassnectar play their set breaks back when he was no one.

I got into photography:

Right when I graduated college. I always knew I had an eye for it and the patience to wait for the right moment. I probably got it from my dad, who was a photographer in the ‘70s and ‘80s, actually, but he did mostly weddings and portraits. Around the same time that I was getting serious about taking pictures, a few of my friends started this venue called Terminal West Atlanta. I worked out a deal with them where I would bartend the shows five or six times a week, and they would let me shoot for 10–15 minutes.

So then:

I shot everything: acoustic performances, solo artists, DJs—in low light, with lots of light. I got so much experience shooting different types of shows, it really prepared me for any kind of music photography. In 2010, I fell into being Bassnectar’s photographer through a friend of mine who’s his light director.

And then:

Two years later, I met one of my photography company’s cofounders, Calder Wilson, at CounterPoint Festival in Atlanta. I was the local photographer, and he was the house photographer. We really hit it off. We both thought that having a team of photographers covering one event was much better than having the every-man-for-himself mentality that’s common in the photo business. Eventually we started our company, aLive Coverage, under that model.

Favorite shot:

I was at EDC Las Vegas in 2014, and Martin Garrix was playing the sunrise set on the mainstage. He was still in the process of getting really popular at the time. I was the only photographer there, and I got this shot facing the stage, right when a huge blast of confetti went off. It was the best stage I’ve ever shot in my life. The sun is rising in the background, there’s confetti everywhere, and the crowd was loving it—even at 5am.

Best festival Instagram tip:

Always be ready. Literally have your finger on the shutter, even when you’re walking—because these moments flash in front of you, and by the time you bring your camera (or your phone) up, frame the shot, and snap it, you’ve already missed it. You have to walk around with the idea you’re going to snap a photo in the next second to really get those hard-to-catch, candid moments.