Photo Shoots

[Ross]

In our band we had two people who went to the same college, one person who is known for his hectic social life with little time to spare and one person in a different town. This was due to be tricky from the outset but was also a problem that wouldn't be too greater obstacle. In my mock up task, I constructed a temporary band pose from Facebook images, and specific Google images when needed, i.e. some clothing. In total the mock up band pose consisted of 16 separate images, put together to create an extremely custom picture. Although it was tricky to obtain all the separate images, it was only because I hadn't got full character photos, and had to search for suitable images for bodies, legs and feet. Looking past these downsides, I saw that overcoming the issue of our actors varied time schedules and giving us a completely tailored band image could be resolved in having individual photo shoots for each member. In these individual photo shoots we would get the actor to model in a wide range of poses, both with and without props. After this, we would select the images we wanted to use, cut them out and photoshop them together into a complete band pose. This final step was laborious but resulted in high quality images, perfect for our digipak plan.

[Hannah]

To begin with we visited Hannah, as she was furthest away we photographed her on site. This gave us a realistic background location and set the lighting, so in latter shoots we could set up our lighting kit to mimic it. This shoot went extremely well, and produced some fantastic images. Next, I set up a makeshift photo studio in my unfurnished extension by using an old white bed sheet as a backdrop, and set the lights to a similar source and strength to that on Hannah's shoot. Our first shoot with Alex and Ross was good, but later proved to be unusable since the camera was in the wrong angle and height. This meant when stitching them in a scene with Hannah, the perspective was wrong and looked unrealistic. As they were closer to my house, it seemed more reasonable to call them and Rich back for a 2nd shoot. This one went much better and produced some fantastic images.

[Alex]

Below is a breakdown of two band images I made, and shows how edited aspects are. Here are points on some things I changed;

Hannah wore a denim jacket over the black hoodie, overall I felt the plain black hoodie suited the band style more as it reduced the colour scheme, therefore I photoshoped it to blend with the hoodie.

Hannah has a wide range of useful stances in her photoshoot, although my favourite bodily pose had a leg pose which wasn't as suitable, therefore I photoshopped a more suitable image of her legs in.

Hannah wore brightly coloured floral tights, again I thought this might have been too many colours in the image and therefore saturated them and blended them down with a semi transparent black layer.

Rich wore a black shirt originally, since Hannah and Alex were already wearing a black hoodie, I through that his shirt should be closer in colour to Ross's grey hoodie, therefore edited to a shade of grey ensuring it wasn't exactly like Ross's or it would have blended with his.

[Rich]

In the overall pose Alex's drumsticks couldn't be seen although I liked the stance, therefore I took the drumsticks from a different picture and photoshopped them in.

Ross and Rich had some great photos, and was torn between two stances. In the end I varied them between both band poses although kept the same head for each of them since it had an idea expression.

On all members I edited the contrast, brightness, lightness, saturation and used the burn tool in areas to increase the shadowing and spot mark higher contrast areas. These changes resulted in a highly tailored and ideal set of band images. 

[Band Images]

Other Photos;

The other elements I had to photograph for my design were; the "headlights" of a car and wide stance legs for the cover, the interior of the car for the back cover, as well as a range of headlights/break light images using a slow shutter speed creating the neon line/blurred effect.

Here is a small selection of the car headlight images. As this image was meant to be a rather intimidating and threatening, I took the photos from a low angle to connote power and authority, and used my friends Stag Triumph as the model. I decided this was the best car for the job because of its vintage muscle appearance and duel rally style headlights. This turned out to be perfect and lead to an extremely effective set of images, especially when edited.  

The next set of photographs was for the wide stance legs and interior, this small selection shows the main approaches I took. These photos turned out well, although in the end I photoshopped a more suitable car image in from a previous photo, and photoshopped a different hand in due to the light bleaching. I also decided for continuity it was best not to use a band member/actor as the man in front of the car, therefore put the camera on timer, and used an image of myself. Despite these changes, I was very happy with how well the photo shoot went, managing to collect a wide range of useful images in a relatively short amount of time.

My next challenge was to gather car headlight/break light images using the slow shutter setting. This was something I had never done before, and the only opportunities I had to go out were past peak road usage times. This left me with unpredictable waves of cars, yet still produced some impressive images. As shown in this selection of photos, I captured both headlights and break lights, corresponding with "Scarlet" in the band name, as well as the headlights to link with the featured track. To get these images, I visited several locations at various times to get a good selection and variation of images. I also took photos through the car windscreen when travelling to these locations, to get a more perspective based image as if the lights were all around (as required for the front and back cover). Despite this, I knew I would be able to use the perspective/skew/transform tools on photoshop to create a similar effect with my standard road images. Overall I feel these photos were extremely successful and were very good for a first attempt at the style.