Dark horses cover shoot
May 18, 2011
Garage Studios, recently had a shoot with Brighton band DarkHorses for the cover of Source Magazine, photographer Kenny McCracken talks you through the shoot including a guide to lighting.
This is the cover shot for the Source. It was a hard decision to stick one member of the band on the front as there is 5 other members to be accounted for but in this case the cover had to stand out from the crowd as the Great Escape was just round the corner.
Lisa has a great look and her choice of make up, by Anna Inglis-Hall was perfect to jump out of the page along with her vibrint hair by Emma Hedges, it was originally to be black and white but the colour won in the end for obvious reasons. I used a very simple lighting set up, one light source with a fairly tight grid on it coming in from the right and two reflectors, one silver at the opposite side from the light and a poly board under her chin this gives just enough light to take the sting out of the shadows. I shot on f8 so as to blow the backdrop out of focus and isolate lisa making her stand out even more. The band are a dark mob as the name suggests so a certain amount of shadow was necessary as well as an almost sinister look in her eyes this was easy as she is well versed in being snapped.
This is the inside double page shot. This was a challenge to light as there are 6 people and a motor bike, I wanted to keep the darkness and the mystery in the image so i used a lot of grids to pick out each member of the band and one 2×1 metre soft box above them all. I was getting f8 off the soft box at head level and had f 11 off the grid’ed lights so i was shooting at f11 on camera. The soft box dusted them with a coating of soft light and the grids picked bits out so as to give the image texture and depth avoiding a flat lighting situation.
Composing 6 people is not an easy task and it takes time and participation from the sitters which is not easy when you are shooting on a friday night with a band who are notorious for getting drunk and fooling around. All in all i think we got there in the end. Till the next time.
