Drew Ressler has captured electronic dance music for over two decades, long enough, he says, to watch the industry perfect the art of selling culture while gutting the creatives who preserve it.
The photographer known as Rukes occupies a strange perch in modern EDM: close enough to document the culture yet distant enough to see how much it’s mutated. While Instagram influencers angle for the perfect laser-beam shot, Ressler navigates a landscape where dangerous pyrotechnics matter more than the Clarendon filter, where artists ghost their longtime collaborators, and where the same people preaching fair wages for photographers are secretly slashing their own rates to undercut the competition.
His diagnosis of the industry’s current malaise cuts deeper than equipment debates or aesthetic trends. The real rot, Ressler argues, set in when production value started eclipsing authenticity and organizers started adopting a “visuals over music” approach. DJ booths climbed higher each year and pushed performers further from their audiences as haze machines spewed fog thick enough to ruin every shot.
The financial mechanics tell their own grim story. While his rates have remained steady, those of many others have flatlined as production costs multiply, with inflationary pressures twisting the knife into their livelihoods as festivals hemorrhage budgets. One former client, Ressler recalls, wanted him to work for free after years at half-rate, and another refused every creative suggestion he offered before implementing those exact ideas with cheaper replacements after he left.
When you strip away the politics, production excess and social media theater, you get mementos of genuine rave moments, preserved in a 23-year-old archive by someone who keeps showing up. We caught up with Rukes for an intimate Q&A to discuss his experiences in the industry and the shifting dynamics of EDM photography.
EDM.com: When you look at EDM photography from the 2010s vs. today, what’s been lost that nobody talks about? What made those early festival shots special that Instagram optimization has killed?
Rukes: Overkill of production and algorithms is a bit of a mess. Back in 2010, good quality photos were the standard. Production was fun but still a bit basic and not too showy. But nowadays, good quality photos are still the standard, although people have become too absorbed with the algorithm to know what to do with them and try to game the system instead.
I remember the big shift to video about a decade ago based on a fake Facebook study. When it came out, Facebook announced that videos do much better on social media than photos. It turns out that was a lie just so they could encourage people to post more videos on socials so they can get more money. In the end, both photos and videos performed completely equally.
The past few years, I have noticed a big shift. After COVID, there was a bunch of new photographers flooding the market when shows were coming back in full force. After most of them left, the next big influx has been social media marketing people. Generally, just people that have used social media, read a blog on best practices, and said, “Hey, I can do that job!”
That’s the current state of the industry now: a lot of marketing people have no clue what they are doing or are doing things completely wrong. I’ve been in situations where people would insist on dying on the hill of “everything on Instagram must be vertical or else!” Meanwhile, I post something horizontal on my own Instagram that does 10x better than theirs. It’s all about content in the end, what the photo shows. Something epic will always do better regardless of the photo crop.
EDM.com: You’ve watched the festival circuit become increasingly corporate and sanitized. When did you first feel like you were documenting a product rather than a culture?
Rukes: I think around the 2010s when artists started upping their own production and venues decided they should follow. It started to become “visuals over the music,” and more money started going towards excess production rather than quality-of-life improvements. Why add more bathrooms at a festival when you can use that money for another LED panel?
I kept noticing at festivals that they went from standard tables to raising the DJ booth higher and higher every year on top of more and more production. Seeing how close the DJ booth was to the ground and front of the stage in the past vs. how far DJs are nowadays, and how much harder they are to see, is pretty telling. Thankfully things are starting to change the past few years, as festivals are starting to realize the amenities at a festival matter to attendees.
EDM.com: Social media has made everyone a photographer with an iPhone in the crowd. Has that democratization helped or hurt the value of what you do?
Rukes: It’s a bit of a mix of both, actually. In the end, the equipment professionals have can do a lot more than what an iPhone can do, but at the same time, the automated iPhone quality gets better and easier. They will never overlap but will always work in parallel.
For example, when Instagram brought out 30-second videos and Stories, I noticed the huge opportunity for expansion there. At that time, a majority of the videos and content were professionally done after-movies that went up weeks after a tour was done. I tried to convince the artist I was working with at the time that they could also complement that by putting up raw clips in stories right after a gig, and they could keep the engagement going throughout the whole tour. I was, of course, told no. Of course, a year or two later, other people started coming up with that idea, and then it was a useful marketing tool.
EDM.com: What’s the most physically or mentally demanding aspect of your job that fans romanticize or don’t understand at all?
Rukes: There are a lot of aspects to my job that are difficult to deal with. Sometimes it’s the hours, such as a gig that runs late into the night, but then the next day, you have an early morning flight to another gig. As a content creator, I still must edit and provide content. I can’t just go to sleep immediately. So that ends up being both physically and mentally taxing.
Production issues hurt too, such as something that is just not conducive to good photography, and having to figure out the best way to capture something. Sometimes it could be just an overabundance of haze for lasers. It’s very tough to get a good balance. A majority of the time, it’s severely overdone. You don’t need that much haze to have lasers visible, and too much ruins photos and videos. I once did an artist’s show where the haze was so bad, you couldn’t see the crowd from the stage! So imagine how bad the people in the crowd had it.
Other issues, like security, are always difficult to deal with. There is a big habit of security not trusting other security. I have dealt with issues where internal security would give me problems after going through external security. It just never makes sense to me.
One recent festival I worked at for an artist had three layers of security just to go to the dressing room; one car and full metal detector search to get into the festival. One metal detector search to leave the parking garage. Then. third metal detector search to get into the dressing room area. I have been to clubs with an artist where they purposely do not give wristbands, but also hire poorly trained security for the stage, so the second I leave the stage, I have to fight my way back on because they don’t take the time to look at and see who is part of the artist’s crew.
Or even rare times where I am given proper credentials, but later on, the credentials change. That actually happened at Coachella once, and by a miracle (and knowing the stage manager), I was able to get backstage later in the set.
EDM.com: You’ve seen photographers burn out or leave the industry. What’s the real reason most don’t make it? Is it financial, creative or something else entirely?
Rukes: It’s a little bit of both, but I would have to say a majority of it is financial. The creative aspect can only take you so far. If you don’t have a good eye for photography, you won’t make it long-term as a photographer.
But gear is expensive. Insurance is expensive. Gigs are not all over the place, and pay is competitive. There are specific months in the industry that are always slower than others, and those get balanced out by bigger months. I can get paid a lot of money in plentiful December gigs, but January is usually pretty slow, so they balance each other out.
EDM.com: When festivals or artists underpay or don’t pay photographers, is it exploitation or just market reality?
Rukes: Not paying photographers is full exploitation. If you can’t afford to hire someone to capture your content, you probably might want to rethink your business.
Underpaying photographers is, unfortunately, market reality. My rates have pretty much stayed the same for a very long time, and although I am always flexible with my rates, there are always cost or communication issues.
EDM.com: What’s a critical insight about content creation that most creators need to know?
Rukes: Just remember how powerful copyright is.
Unless you sign a “work for hire” agreement beforehand, you own the copyright of your content, and you can expressly state how things get used. This works out very well if you get taken advantage of.
Up until a few years ago, 98%+ of the photos I have taken I owned the copyright to, aside from a few festivals who wanted “work for hire” agreements. That is pretty rare, especially in the music industry. This has also allowed me to sell my full photo catalogs after the fact for those that wanted carte blanche to do what they wanted with the photos, as well as still allowing me to use them on my own website/social media.
EDM.com: What’s the darkest open secret in EDM photography that everyone knows but nobody talks about publicly?
Rukes: Many photographers that say they won’t work for free don’t, because they technically work close to free. One place I used to work with stopped having me shoot because they found replacements that would pay for their own flights (and sometimes accommodations) just to get the gig and say they did it.
So in the end, they get paid way less than they should, but the festival ends up paying way less than having someone else shoot, regardless of whether their quality is better or not. There are a lot of people that push for photographers to get paid fair wages, but behind the scenes are cutting their own rates so low at the same time.
EDM.com: What’s a red flag in how an artist or their team treats you during a shoot that tells you this won’t be a long-term working relationship?
Rukes: Poor communication is always the biggest red flag. To start, before even working with an artist or their team, if they are not willing to negotiate your fee to have you, it means they don’t respect you or want to work with you in the first place.
For example, if you have your set rate and tell them you have a set rate but are open to negotiate with a cost that works for them, 9 times out of 10 the last part will be completely ignored. It sucks, but in the end, that’s just the beginning of the problems that you would have if you worked with them. Any artist or team that really wants you will do what it takes to figure it out and not just make you a number.
Another example of poor communication is not stating what they want from you upfront. I have a great portfolio with a good variety of work, but a lot of that content is also due to many factors, such as being used to working with an artist or festival for years, production that works well, artist involvement, etc. I have done press shots with zero inspo shots ahead of time, and festivals told me, “Just do what you normally do,” which then sometimes I get told they wanted something else in the end.
Sometimes artists change the look they want, and often it’s a much easier type of shoot for me to do (like silhouettes vs. struggling to get a good bright picture in low-light), but I never get asked to change it up. It’s a bit depressing really, being a creative with a large variety of abilities and sometimes being pigeonholed into a specific look.
EDM.com: How many artists have you photographed who treated you like disposable hired help until they needed something from you? Does that ratio get better or worse as artists get bigger?
Rukes: It honestly gets worse as artists get bigger. I call it the “Vegas Curse” sometimes, as it usually happens to artists that get a huge Vegas residency contract. Basically, the first initial year for a residency, the artist gets paid a lot of money to go with that specific venue and not go with someone else. Often the artist celebrates the huge influx of money by overspending. Then when it’s renewal time, the money gets a little lower to keep going. This piles up each year until the point they realize how much they spent initially is not sustainable with what they are getting now, and start to panic. Usually, media is the first and cheapest area to put on the chopping block.
One artist I worked with, when I was already working at half my rate, decided that I should be working for them for free instead; I was even told that if we hung out and the artist covered the dinner, then that dinner cost should go to my photography fee. I left that pretty quickly once they found a videographer that was willing to shoot photos for free.
Another artist only let me do the most basic of work duties. They had a low-quality social media presence, and I asked for a while to help them with engagement posts, shoot some raw video to post, make edited raw recaps, create viral videos, etc., and was constantly denied every step of the way. After I stopped working with them, magically everything I was pushing to do was now being done with other people, albeit of much lower quality than I would have done. Being forced to do 50% but constantly offering to do 110% killed me creatively for a while, and actually made me consider just giving up.
EDM.com: Have you ever chosen not to publish photos from an event because of what they revealed about an artist’s state or the scene itself?
Rukes: Anytime I’m in a situation where it’s blatantly obvious I should not be taking photos (such as seeing artists overwork themselves to the point of getting sick, or severe injuries at festivals), I am not taking photos out of respect for the situation.
EDM.com: What’s a particularly amazing photo hidden in plain sight in your immense repository?
Rukes: Back in 2010, I was on a huge European bus tour with deadmau5, and one of the stops was the famous Bootshaus in Germany. About a decade later, while working with Zedd, I came to find out that the specific show was his first time at a club and was instrumental in him wanting to become a DJ. We looked through the gallery and actually found pics of him partying in the crowd.
He is in the turquoise flannel in the shadow of the monitor on the left. It’s one of those things that would never have been noticed by anyone unless everything aligned right with my job.
Credit: Rukes