Chris Walter was born in 1946 and grew up in Surrey, just south of London. After leaving school and going to a Little Richard concert, where he was asked for a snap by a fellow concert goer, the idea of taking music pictures was set. Most photographers shooting pop music at that time worked for newspapers, but Chris joined the handful that specialized only in music and entertainment.It was the beginning of the greatest music era and shooting all the new and established acts available in the UK in the 1960's and 1970's gave Chris a huge variety of archival material, shooting all over the UK and regularly visiting Paris or Amsterdam and other European cities to shoot with British acts visiting there.
If possible Chris's way of shooting was always to use available light. "I loved taking available light photos. Flash even then never seemed real. If flash could not be avoided then I'd always try bounce, off a wall or ceiling, to still make it feel real."
It was also during this time that, while still shooting, he started the series of agencies specializing in music including London Features in 1972 which is still around and Photofeatures in 1975 which is still his current operation. London in the 1960's was the birthplace of syndication agencies specializing in music and entertainment.
On moving to California in 1977 he continued shooting all kinds of music material for a variety of UK and European publications. In the eighties when Metal became huge business his UK colleagues persuaded him to use Photofeatures to represent them in the US and the business became the biggest supplier to US publications in that genre, and also to European publications from US photographers.
By the late 1990's the music industry changed and it's dependant publications had shrunk, and Chris started the digital archiving of all the years of material, a process which is still ongoing. Chris still shoots the occasional concert and regular music and entertainment award shows.
Chris continues to be one of the most published music photographers world wide, with many album covers, magazines, newspapers, books, documentaries, television and motion pictures utilizing his classic music material. This includes recent Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix and Who CD/DVD covers to an upcoming Doors CD to the current UK Scott Walker movie.