E.5: Dylan Overhouse | Photographer

Dylan Overhouse Productions

Photographer, Videographer Dylan Overhouse

Interviewer: Today, La Crosse Local is chatting with Dylan Overhouse, Dylan is the owner of Dylan Overhouse Productions a local photography and video production company in the area. Dylan got his start as a concert photographer as well as  being a documenter of places and events, he can be seen at festivals and events grabbing candid crowd shots to being invited to shoot major music acts including Shinedown, Atmosphere, the Cold War Kids and more. Dylan tells us how he got his start.

Dylan: My name is Dylan Overhouse, I was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I spent my teenage years on the east coast as well as northern Wisconsin and then I moved back to La Crosse where I went to college for visual communications

Interviewer: Seeing how prolific you are as a photographer in the area, especially for photography of musical artists and festivals in La Crosse and the surrounding communities, what drew you to being a concert photographer, a documentor of places and events in this region?

Dylan: I became really curious about how everybody sees things differently, as a kid I remember back in 5th grade we read the book Holes, and throughout the book I had imagined this environment and these characters and I thought that was just the way that they were. So after reading the book, we watched the movie, and it was completely different than I could have imagined. That is when I realized I was watching someone else’s vision. Every kid in that room had previously had a different imagination of how that was supposed to look. From then on, I really wanted to show people how I see the world.

So with music particularly, if you’re going to go to a show you’re going to build up this anticipation, sometimes months at a time. You show up and you’re nervous, anxious, finally your band goes on stage and “BOOM” it’s over. My Goal was really to capture these moments and the energy in the room and just document them so hopefully people can revisit the experience they just had, maybe months and years from now.

Interviewer: Your live music photography, everything from Artspire, to Country Boom, to Riverfest locally has led to music videos for many local artists, can you tell us a bit more about those projects and where do those ideas start?

Dylan: These ideas can come from anywhere, at the beginning I started reaching out to musicians that I was familiar with and ones that I liked and who I wanted to collaborate with. So my first big video came together after Andy Hughes had reached out to me with a couple songs and out of the three that he sent me, I chose this song “Little Miss America” because the deep message behind it really stood out to me. So we went with that and took his song and created a visual story to it.

More recently, I had an idea for a video I wanted to do. I reached out to the musician, Derek Ramnarace. He sent over a couple songs, and once again I chose one that we agreed on and literally a couple hours later we shot the video. Most often the artist has a loose idea of what they want and I try to take that idea to the drawing board and really just build from it, and try to create an entertaining story.

Interviewer: Your photography is all over the area, its up and down the Great River Road, I ‘ve seen shots of the concert photography, nature, the environment, around the area, the beautiful bluffs. What shots have you captured that you are most proud of and how did those come about?

Dylan: Any of my work that is printed, I’m super proud of. It’s just really rewarding, whether it’s people seeing something they like and they want it printed, or it is special if it is  printed in a magazine.

A particular piece I am super proud of is I made a 360 degree panorama of downtown La Crosse at 4th and Pearl which turned out pretty cool. I learned this process where you can wrap a panorama into a circle and kinda make it look like a little planet. So I took that idea and chose an iconic spot downtown that I thought would work, and it just came together. It eventually won an award from Artspire and it was hung up at City Hall for a year, so that felt really great to just be recognized for my work.

Interviewer: You have also done some collaborative work with videography, and I know you have a  new endeavour in the works on the video side of Dylan Overhouse Productions, can you tell us about it?

Dylan: I work with a small group of people capable of taking on large media projects. We are the middle of shooting a music video for Gregg Hall and The Wrecking Ball, which will be wrapping up pretty soon and then we are going to carry that energy over and continue to work on some commercial and tourism related content throughout the rest of the year while we continue to grow together as a team and hopefully continue to expand.

Interviewer: So you have done a lot of work in photography and videography, and you have your passion projects but also your professional work. Where can people find you, find out more, potentially hire you and things of that nature?

Dylan: You can find my work on www.dylanoverhouseproductions.com, Youtube and my Facebook.