OWNER/OPERATORS

The Donnelly Shoot

Todd —

Remember OWNER/OPERATORS? It’s not a dorm-room bit anymore. There’s a single out, an album (LOSS LEADER LP) coming, vinyl already quoted — the whole apparatus, for real this time. I want you up at a lake in the mountains to shoot the chapter that proves v1 wasn’t a phase.

OWNER/OPERATORS in denim work shirts in front of the DEVO Suburban, a snare drum reading DEVO between them
The aesthetic, roughly. You'd make it real.

The gig

OWNER/OPERATORS is doing a week-long writing + recording retreat in the Idaho mountains. I want a real photographer there for a couple of days so we come home with the band’s whole visual identity — press kit, album rollout, socials — instead of phone snapshots.

When + where

  • June 16–23, 2026 — you’d come up for ~2 days inside that window (let’s pick the days that work).
  • Donnelly, ID — Lake Cascade / Tamarack / West Mountain. Mountain house, loft turned tracking room, lake out the door.
  • Crash at the house — there’s a bed and food covered; you’re not paying for a thing up there.
Kayaks and a paddleboard on a calm alpine lake at golden hour, forested mountains behind
Lake Cascade. This is the office for two days.

The look

Retro-futuristic cowboy meets Devo post-punk. Analog imperfection, digital precision. The DEVO Suburban, golden hour on the water, denim work shirts, and the band actually making the record — not posing about it.

What you’d shoot

  • The band — group lineup + individual portraits (performance + character).
  • The truck — the DEVO Suburban on a frontage road, band leaning on the rig, long-lens golden hour.
  • The loft studio — candids of the record getting made. The real thing.
  • Lakeside / environmental — Cascade, the mountains, the drive up ID-55.
  • Detail + B-roll — hands on instruments, gear, loading out, the in-between moments.
  • The keepers — one EPK press frame + a stack of social content (vertical and horizontal).
A loft recording setup at dusk: a microphone on a stand, a glowing laptop, cables, a big window with a mountain sunset
The loft becomes the studio — you'd shoot the record getting made.

The deliverables

Edited selects, RAW + JPEG, high-res for print and web-optimized for socials: a press-kit set (group + portraits), social content, and a few hero frames for the album rollout and the website.

The deal

$1,000 + travel expenses. ~2 days. Bed and food at the house on me.

Yeah — it’s not your 10k. It’s a friend rate for a friend gig. But you get a lake, a band making a record, and your name on the visuals of a thing you helped start.

Why you

You were there for v1. Nobody else gets to shoot this with that in their back pocket. Let’s close the circle.

— Eric