Fredericton Photographer Combines Business With His Music Passion In A New Space
FREDERICTON – A photographer during the day, a musician during the night, Chris Griffiths opened a new photography space in downtown Fredericton that allows him to combine his Monday to Friday business with his passion for live music.
The owner of Bang-On Photography has been in the photography industry since 2007, when he travelled with the Canadian National Motorcross Series doing commercial video work for the race teams and athletes for two years.
“I was on the road travelling all over the country,” he said.
He came back to Fredericton and opened Bang-On Photography with his friend Chantal Arseneau. In 2014, they took different paths, as Arsenault got burnt out with the business. Griffiths took the lead and started doing more advertisement and campaign photography.
Now, five years later, Griffiths is based in Atlantic Canada and works with companies such as Canadian Geographic, VICE Magazine, Maclean’s Magazine, The Maritime Edit, Rogers, Stantec, and Opportunities NB.
“People ask me what kind of work it is that I do, but it’s almost that I have to direct them to my website to be able to explain it. Commercial work is a broad umbrella…It’s kind of cool all the different things that I’ve done,” he said.
Griffiths says he does a lot of corporate work, and his old studio couldn’t accommodate that anymore.
“The space itself didn’t allow me to grow into what I needed it to be,” he said.
Griffiths was on the hunt for a new space for about a year and a half. When he found the new place out of luck, he knew it was ideal to host live music, something he’s always wanted to do.
“I always wanted to have a space that we could host music events, and art shows and things like that, just to have a bit more community-based space to work out of, rather than it just being my business Monday to Friday kind of thing,” he said.
Griffiths grew up surrounded by music because of his father, who does sound work for bands.
“I grew up in rock n’ roll. It’s always been part of my life since I was born. It’s my dream ever since I was young to open some sort of venue and be involved in music in some way. Now I get to finally explore those avenues,” he said.
The place served as the audio and engineering departments for the Centre of Arts and Technology and was broken up into little offices. It’s under renovations now. Griffiths says the bonus of the place is that it already had a two-room recording studio built into it.
“It’s kind of helped blend my two worlds,” said Griffiths, who plays drums and guitar.
Griffiths has an arrangement with the band Motherhood where he allows them to use part of the space, which is completely soundproof, as their home base.
“It’s their space to work from whenever they want,” he said.
He’s not looking to rent out the space for band rehearsals. Rather, it’s a space that he’s working on to host live shows for the music community and explore sound in the studio for band recordings. The place hosted its first show on July 31.
“It went amazing, incredible night, a community get-together kind of thing,” he said. “It was a great way to kick things off here and show people what we can actually do here.”
He plans music events with Penelope Stevens, president of Music NB and member of Motherhood. She takes the lead role in bookings and organizing the shows. Griffiths says they are looking at hosting music events every month and a half because both of their schedules are busy.
In the meantime, Griffiths plans to focus on his photography career and hopes more people in Fredericton find out about what he does.
“Now that I have the studio, I’m able to bring it back, in a way, to where I came from. I have been doing all the big [photo] work, I have been on the road on a regional basis doing work with all the big companies. Now I get to bring it back and to show people what I have accomplished until this point, so I’m excited for that,” he said.