Seriously, some of the nicest guys I’ve come across in the music industry. Always a pleasure to work with them!
I had a shoot a few weeks back for their label, Fearless Records. The photos were for promotional use, I’m assuming for the upcoming summer (warped tour and more). If you’re not a photographer, skip the following two paragraphs and go enjoy the photos!
I’m always attempting to figure out how to do something different in photos, I’m past the point of putting out the same drivel over and over. If you’re searching for inspiration, push yourself to photograph someone in a way they’ve never been captured before. I chose to shoot with gels and use multiple exposures on film to capture a unique look on some of these photos. Maybe for you this means lighting by using a mirror to reflect a light. It also might mean photographing without a face being shown at all.
Push yourself, find something else! It’s so difficult to separate yourself as an image maker in this industry. Would you rather be one of 500 people who put out a certain consistent look or one of one? Even if that image is one less sought for, you’ve put yourself ahead by having less competition. Strobist.com recently featured the work of Atton Conrad on a post about light painting. I highly doubt Atton is facing as much competition as most photographers.
anyway, photos from my Breathe Carolina shoot! The first four are film shots, the last one is digital.
Breathe Carolina
Breathe Carolina
Breathe Carolina
Breathe Carolina
Breathe Carolina
A video promoting the studio I’m a part of in Canton, Ohio. Enjoy 
All footage was shot and edited by Dave Shepherd with:
Canon 5d Mark ii
24-105mm f4
15mm f2.8
85mm f1.8
Occasionally using Alien Bee Modeling Lamps
5 Giants is:
Keaton Andrew (me!)
Dave Shepherd
Nick Brewer
Gino Locasico
Aaron Van Dike
Bands shown in the video:
By The Way
Attack Attack
Song:
Romeo A Go-Go by Every Time I Die
(and that’s me that falls crazily on the skateboard. haha. First time ever trying to skateboard!)
Quick sped-up video from earlier today, taken with Nick Brewer’s Canon 5D Mark II. With it just being recorded at 640×480 and being compressed for web, it’s not quite full quality or anything. It’s Nick and I building what you saw in the photo in the previous post.
There are changes I’m making this year in how I do my shoots, and one of them is prep work. How I prepare and what I do and plan to do will be much different.
For example, tomorrow I have a shoot with a band called Attack Attack. I figured out an idea a couple weeks back that I wanted to try, and I fine tuned it in my head until I knew what I wanted to do. Then I went to my studio and visualized the shot, I imagined how it would look like and how I’d light it. I researched online things I needed to obtain and purchase to pull this off correctly, and I ordered them. I then had to change my photo idea slightly to accommodate what I wanted to do.
It’s going to be like a skydiving shot. Initially, I wanted a parachute in the shot. Six band members, one parachute, and a plane flying off in the distance. I then discovered it was going to be difficult to obtain a parachute at a decent cost, and one that was both small enough and not too small. A shot was then pointed out to me that a photographer had recently done with a band that was enough to want me to keep from doing the same idea. So I’ve now tweaked my shot enough to where it should stand out even to someone who has seen the other shot.
I needed a way to hold up a person in the air, so I bought a fall-arrest harness for that. Then, thanks to the help of fellow Five Giants Studio photographer Nick Brewer, I built something to hang that harness from. You can see it (and Nick) below, we just finished building that a few hours ago. I also bought a pretty decent fan from Lowe’s so that I can get wind going on the band members and at least have the illusion of wind blowing them around.
Tonight I am building the shot that I will place them into. What I need to do is find shots with similar lighting, the sun needs to be at similar angles for it to work. I am going to have the sky and some ground in the shot. Once I piece that together, I can know how I need to light the band. I will need one light to simulate the sun, which means I will leave the standard reflector on it. I might throw a 1/2 or 1/4 CTO gel on it as well to warm the color temp up a little bit.
This is an example of some of the steps involved in preparing for a shoot. Not all my shoots are like this, but any that involve more complex ideas or building will usually need this and a decent amount of time.
I will be posting a behind the scenes video from the shoot hopefully within a week, or whenever I get it and the shoot edited. In that video, I will cover more on lighting and possibly editing as well
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