[Wired]

So the same band I did some light painting photos for last year has hired me to do new photos for them this summer. They want some more light painting stuff, but they want to expand and get more of a post-apocalyptical theme going on for their album pages. The band has pretty much only one major rule...keep anonymity with their personas, ie no faces. While the band doesn't wear masks on stage, they do use controlled lighting to make sure their faces are in shadow as much as possible. This is to make it more about the music than the people behind the music. They want the photos to reflect that and whats going on with the music.

the album these are being done for is about the relationship between man and the machine, but in an evolution kind of way. The easiest they explained it to me is "As technology evolves, humanity steps backward until it implodes on itself". which is the main message of the album. It's one of them concept albums which tells a story, and really, without ruining their story or going to deep into it... I really like it and think its pretty cool. One of the songs in particular is what they want to center the album art around.

The song is based on the idea of the large particle collider in Switzerland is doing the big experiment where they try to recreate the big bang. Some people believe that this will either result in the destruction of earth via a big black hole, or would open a portal, or some other crazy thing. Well, in this case the experiment works and opens a portal to an alternate dimension which just came out of world war 3. So they want the photos to be kind of what its like on both sides of the portal.

We have a venue, and they saw it on my flickr and I think it would be awesome.




this is the photo that inspired them.

We're going to do this at dusk to sunset. and the photo above faces west into the sun set.

What your looking at is what is left of a sidewalk/roadway that was taken away by erosion. so really, it's a sidewalk to a straight down drop. not far to the front and right of me is a fairly sharp hill that also turns into a sharp drop. To the left of me is a slight grade upto the sidewalk. The sidewalk has about 15 feet from the edge you can see which is only sidewalk, then it joins up with whats left of the road. The brush you can see top left is the start of a tree line, and there are trees behind me. So it's a pretty cool area for "end of the world" kind of photos.

I got idea of having the guitarist with him holding the instrument by it's neck and the strap hanging down, facing the sun as it sets. use a flashgun camera left and low to get the illumination of the sidewalk.

I got another idea of the vocalist just kind of standing there proud, side profile to the camera, and hiding a flashgun just in front of her and shooting up at her to get some body detail there.

but thats really it so far... I'm sure I would get more ideas once I'm on sight with them, and these people are incredibly creative so I know the juices will flow once we get there....

but does anyone else have any ideas they would like to share and help me out with? I got a couple of weeks to plan this.


here are some from last shoot:













we are also gonna redo these as I have a nicer backdrop than a sheet now.