Bobbie Knopp, a Milwaukee-based photographer, has a knack for editing her photos to look surreal, and local bands are flocking to have their likeness fantastically depicted on-and-off the stage. Bizarre ideas, including concepts such as standing on fried eggs or being abducted by aliens and puppeteers, are the subject’s suggestions. Knopp takes these ideas and makes them real through photoshopping the finished pictures.
Milwaukee Magazine joined Knopp on Bradford Beach for one of her photoshoots – where she took photos that will eventually be edited to look like Fruit Ninja with giant fruit. Between shots, she gives us an insider look into the process behind the pieces.
Tell us who you’d pick to be a Betty this year!
Would you say photography is more of a hobby or a job for you?
Well, I graduated college about two weeks ago; up until then, it was my extreme hobby. But recently it has become a job just because I no longer have school and can do freelancing full-time. I didn’t know it would, but it just kind of crept up on me because so many people kept asking me for commissions.
Can you recall when photography piqued your interest?
I first picked up a camera when I was fourteen. It was my mom’s old, crappy Canon-Rebel-whatever-it-was. Then, I would just take it on family trips and take pictures of flowers and sunsets, whatever I saw that was pretty. Eventually, in high school, I found a very creative group of friends and we would all go out on the weekends, especially to Milwaukee, we would go on the top of parking garages or shoot downtown in the streets. We would just call ourselves photographers, even though we weren’t. We were just a few creative minds with a camera.
How did you get into photographing local music?
People saw my work and started asking me to do paid work. Then, I started to take myself more seriously – bought the lights, bought the camera – and started doing portraiture work.
In terms of concert photography, one of my friends, Denzel, who’s in the band Scam Likely, said ‘Hey Bobbie, you should come take pictures at our show sometime’. And I said ‘Denzel, I don’t know how to do concert photography’. He said ‘Just come, just come to the show.’ And I did. Pictures turned out pretty average, but then the same thing – people saw my work and kept asking me to come back.
What is your editing process like?
I spend more time editing than I do actually taking pictures. I thought I liked photography more at first, but it’s fun taking what’s real and making it so much more unrealistic through editing. It just gets me to the vision I have inside my head, which I can’t always create just photos. But with Photoshop and Illustrator and the whole Adobe suite, I can.
Someone called my work ‘corny’ the other day, and they didn’t mean it in a negative way. But it’s fun, it’s silly, goofy, quirky, if you will. When they said it was corny I hated it at first, but now I’m leaning into it. I get a lot of inspiration from comic books, you know the ones that say ‘pow,’ ‘bang,’ ‘boom.’ All the colors in your face, stuff like that.
Tell me about the work you recently did for Summerfest.
Summerfest was a blast because I applied there as a concert photographer, which I did get. They ended up looking at my portfolio and saw a lot of my portraiture work. In the past, they had really boring advertisements for their merchandise, so they wanted to spice it up this year. That was super fun. I’m still editing the pictures, but that’s probably been one of my favorite commissions of the year so far.
Do you have advice for photographers who want to take the next step in editing?
I would say, in general, keep making art. You will have ups and lows, you will have shoots that aren’t your best, and then you will have a good shoot after that and then a not-so-good one. The progression is not linear, but you have to go through that route. Just keep on pushing through, don’t stop, don’t feel rejected if someone doesn’t want to work with you, keep pushing and never stop creating. It sounds so ‘duh,’but just keep creating art.
