Saturday 28 September 2013

JAGZ Band competition final

Below are the entries for the Jagz band competition final, from the top are the winners-Baby Howl, followed by 'Martyrs and Kings', 'The Midnight Rambler' and finally 'Big Daddy'

 

 

I've covered most of the heats for this competition and have been impressed by all of the bands, so well done to everyone who took part.
 
My involvement with the competition is that I am one of the prizes, the winner (Baby Howl) gets a free days shoot with me to create images for promotional and artwork use.
 

Sha La La's CD cover shoot



 
 
Above are a few image that I produced for a new CD cover for the Sha La La's.
We all met up one evening at a disused garage near Ascot and spent about two hours creating images in and around the garage buildings.
 
I used one light for the second image, but in most cases used three to produce some rear/side lighting, the third image from top has three lights in use, one as a key light straight onto the band, one inside the building to light the side of John in the blue shirt standing and one from the rear right to rim light Darron in the red shirt.
In the top image I put a keylight onto the front of the band with another behind them to put some rim light onto them otherwise they would have blended into the darkness behind them.
I've mentioned before on this blog that I feel lighting makes the image, especially so as without lights on this shoot you would be looking at four black squares.............
 
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Below is a behind the scenes shot of the band being lit by one light, i've pulled back to show the band and light together as we were trying to get the white arrow that was painted on the floor into the shoot (see second image from top)
The blurriness around the band is a little trick I know, basically take the picture with a slow shutter and twist the camera at the same time, the ambient light blurs and anything hit by flash is 'frozen', simple but very effective......
We wrapped up about ten o'clock that night with lots of good varied images for a potential CD artwork, an enjoyable evening with a great bunch of blokes, see them live-you won't regret it!
 

 
 

PS.... I went back to the studio to do another shot of the band before their rehearsal, I had the idea in my mind for a while, just needed a dark room, 3 flashes and some card!
Basically I shone 2 flashes through a slit in a v large piece of card on camera right with a flash camera left behind and to one side of the band, see below for the final image...maybe one for the next album or a poster/flyer.
 
 

Sha La Las video shoot

 

I recently went to Powerhouse Studios in New Haw to take some behind the scenes images of
The Sha La La's latest video shoot.

Pictured above on Guitar is Darron, lead singer of the group, filming him is Robert Martin Kelly.
As you can see from the shadows on the floor, Rob had set up a couple of hotlights to illuminate the band but keeping the background black as they wanted a very contrasting look to the video.
My job was to get a few behind the scenes images, keep quite and keep out of the way which is always the best way to be on a video shoot!.

I sent in a selection of images from the night in black and white to fit in with the theme of the video and can be used for print purposes as well.

It was so hot in the studio that we had to take a few breaks outside as the hotlights live up to their name!

Btw, the Sha La La's latest cd is out very soon, I know I'm buying one-they are simply brilliant!

The Nevertones CD Artwork



 
 
The Nevertones.....
We recently got together for another shoot primarily for some forthcoming CD artwork.
The top image was at the end of the day, a very quick set up, a white background with one light aimed at it, and another light on each subject one at a time, then put together in Photoshop-simple but effective.
 
The bottom image was the complete opposite.... the group had an idea to have 4 different female characters taken from their songs to illustrate the CD cover, problem was we only had one girl!
Toni posed as all the characters with each member of the group which involved a change of clothes and makeup each time. I made sure there was enough space between each person so know one would overlap each other and took many frames.
In Photoshop I stripped the image together using layer masks.
It took a fair amount of time but looks effective.