In her own words, when Courtney Monaco wants something, she’s going to find a way to make it happen.
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It’s an attitude that saw the aspiring concert photographer’s business take off, earning plaudits and a commission from one of her favourite bands on the first day the Echuca creative shared her work.
A nurse at Echuca Regional Health by day, Courtney’s story starts, as many good stories do, with a little gentle encouragement from her parents.
They gifted her a camera, which she quickly started exploring, capturing many a family holiday, school camp memory and afternoon with friends.
The interest inspired her to study photography during high school, a subject that ended up being one of her favourites alongside her other great love, music.
As it turns out, the passion Courtney was nurturing ran in the family, with the teen unknowingly following in the footsteps of her late grandfather, who had been an avid travel photographer, as her love for the hobby grew.
When the time came to pick a path for after high school, Courtney decided to focus on her interest in music, enrolling in a music industry course at TAFE.
It was there she met her boyfriend, who shared her love for music and offered her a band to start practising her photography with.
After a number of shoots just for fun, Courtney was finally ready to take arguably the scariest step any creative can take and start advertising herself.
Armed with a camera and a dream, she battled through throngs of punters to capture as many bands as she could at this year’s Winter Blues Fest.
She planned to cold-email the photos to the artists, but what happened next was something beyond even her wildest dreams.
“I had an opportunity to take photos for 19 Twenty at the Beechworth Bakery,” she said.
“They’re one of my favourite bands ever, and I was just planning on contacting them later, but I ended up meeting them after the show.
“They asked if I was sticking around for their Saturday show at the Echuca Hotel and when I said yes, they said, ‘Great, we’d love you to take photos for us, jump on stage and get among it!’
“I just couldn’t stop thinking, ‘This is the best time of my life, no way this has just happened.’”
It wasn’t just 19 Twenty who were impressed, with several bands purchasing her pictures and commissioning her services for future gigs.
“It kind of just fell into my lap and exploded,” Courtney said.
“It’s literally all just snowballed from there.”
Through her work and determination, Courtney’s stock rose, with her taking every opportunity she could to put her hand up and snagging gig after gig.
Among the groups she captured were veteran Aussie rockers Chocolate Starfish, after she travelled to Albury in the hope of having her work commissioned.
“I saw they had a gig in Albury and emailed their publisher, who put me on to their drummer,” she said.
“He was keen to have me come along, and even though they didn’t end up buying any of my photos, it was so, so beneficial.
“It helps me show I can do those bigger artists as well as the amazing musicians from the smaller towns I love to shoot so much.”
Courtney describes music photography as the perfect creative outlet for her, allowing her to combine two of her biggest interests and do something completely different from her role as a nurse.
It even has the added bonus of letting her enjoy the social aspect of being a musician without having to perform.
Then there’s the work itself, which Courtney loves so much it makes the hours sitting in front of a computer editing her shots fly by.
“My approach to shooting is thinking, ‘If I was performing, how would I want to look, how would I want the energy in the room to come across?’ Then I go and try to capture it,” she said.
“One of my friends in a band I took photos for said, ‘I want to look like a rock star,’ so I’m constantly looking for the moment when the lighting’s just right, the energy is high, and the colours and facial expressions look the best.
“When you get it right, it makes you smile when you’re sitting there fighting the battle, which editing photos sometimes can be.”
The next few months will be more of the same for Courtney.
“I want to take every opportunity I possibly can,” she said.
“I’m young, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a house, so I can take a weekend to go down to Melbourne and shoot some bands here or there.
“I’ve bought some new equipment, and I’m focused on being really good at the niche I’ve found.
“I’d rather be really good at something than pretty good at everything.”
To find out more about Courtney’s work, visit the Cmonaco Photography website at cmonacophotography.com