Creative Portrait Session for Artist Cover Album

Working with artists and musicians is always a deep pleasure and privilege for me. For they have already worked so diligent creating music that speaks to them, the visual representation and imagery that comes with it- one of the final steps before release.

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to bring this vision to life- below is the inspiration for the shoot versus the results that came after. After listening to the song and understanding the overall direction of the cover art, I suggested we shoot Kleman Plaza Parking Garage. I’ve worked in Tallahassee for many years and spent a significant amount of time at this garage while I worked at Harry’s and the old Brogan museum, at INIE, at the FSU law school- this location was one I knew very well.

With that in mind, we got settled and shot for under 20 minutes and mixed some slow shutter along with some sharper images. The mood and vibe that I was going for was a more melancholy, reflective, a bit dark, and nostalgic note. This looks like darker colors, a higher black point, limited vibrance in colors, simple composition, etc.

INSPO INSPO INSPO INSPO INSPO

RESULT RESULT RESULT

Some of the the things I learned during this shoot:

1. An album cover is square: While this makes complete sense, I tend to crop my images as originally shot, so during post production, I gave multiple different crops of the best photos to give her different options

2. Parking Garages are DARK: There was a skylight that was 4 floors above that provided some light along with some fluorescent light in the garage- but this was particularly interesting when we got deeper in the garage and I only had the overhead light to work with.

3. One location can provide you MULTIPLE: When scouting locations, I always make a diligent effort to be able to find multiple locations in one location. For example- in one large, we got the stairs, the railing, the. Wall near the elevators, the center from below the parking spots themselves. For the sake of variety and promotional use, I wanted to make sure that there was a multitude of different options within one so that we found a spot that most aligned with the artist.

I also did edit these differently than most of my work because they required different coloring- each client I take depending on their type of project, I create a different coloring or utilize many different types of presets to tell the story of their art. Mostly with musicians and artists, each song is a different project most likely- so this is always a fun avenue for me to experiment with different colors and different locations that I don’t normally go to.

I hope you like this little breakdown! Check out her song here- and also check out some other artists I did their cover albums for!