Photobat Article

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Taking happy snaps

March 23, 2005





Dave Callan, by Alan Moyle.




Alan Moyle laughs all day long - and calls it working, writes Rachel Wells.

For Tasmanian photographer Alan Moyle, work is one big joke. Well, most of the time.

For the past four years, Moyle, who studied scientific photography at RMIT in Melbourne and enjoys nothing more than going along to a good comedy gig, has been snapping comedians for a living, mostly for publicity and advertising material.

"They're generally a lot of fun, which makes going to work pretty fun," he says.

Moyle recalls spending several weeks preparing to photograph British comedian Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame, but it took just 46 seconds to shoot.

"Apparently he doesn't like having his photo taken, so it was all over very quickly," he recalls.

Moyle, who also runs a wedding photography business in Tasmania, says he "kind of fell" into photographing comedians.

When he moved from Tasmania to Melbourne to study in 1998, he'd wanted to emulate another Tasmanian snapper, Peter Dombrovskis, and become a landscape photographer.

But just two days after arriving in Melbourne he went along to a comedy gig at a local pub and took some shots.

"It kind of kept going from there. I'd go along to a gig, take some shots and sell them to the comedians," says the 25-year-old, who says he copped some ribbing from a few stand-up acts in the early days.
Now he's a favourite among comedians for advertising and publicity shots.

"Ross Noble picked on me once during one of his live performances, and now I take his portraits," he says with a laugh.

Moyle recently brought together the best of his comedians' portraits for an exhibition that opens at Gold Street Studios in Collingwood tonight.

May Contain Traces of Nuts, which opened in Tasmania in January and was shown at the Big Laugh Comedy Festival in Sydney last week, will feature 30 portraits, including Dave Callan, Mikey Robbins, Rove McManus, Lenny Henry, the Goodies, Sarah Kendall and Danny Bhoy.

"I really enjoy this kind of work," says Moyle, who won the Tasmanian Premier's Dombrovskis Award for nature photography in 2001.

"I used to get excited doing landscapes, but now I get excited about shooting people. You never know what's going to happen," he says. "I don't like set-up shots - they often don't say anything about the person. I like to take photos that reveal something about their personality," he says.