Morpher: Photoshoot

As a band they did not have any high wuality photos that could be used for their social media presence or promotion for events and upcoming releases etc. It was decided that a photoshoot would be good in order to get a large body of imagery that could be used on my behalf and also I could then provide them with a folder of edited photos so that there is consistency on their social media. 

Visual literacy

Prior to the photoshoot, Jasper sent me some visual literacy that could inspire the outcomes that I get in the studio session. It is a selection of photographs from bands that as a group they like or are visually drawn to. In order to shoot in a style that the band would like, I hired out a photogrpahy studio and with the use of the lighting I would be able to recreate the low saturated photos with a sense of mood in terms of lighting. I had also planned to use coloured gels over the lighting as a way of achieving the blue and red colour scheme that as a band they desired to have as part of their social media presence.  

As a group the photos were coming out best when they were just having some fun and getting comfortable in the studio environment. This allowed me to get comfortable with the camera settings that would achieve the results that as a band they desired. This also meant that as a band they would have lots of non-serious photos that they could use as part of event promotion and the build up to new releases (as shown below). These have been getting some good responses on the social media platforms and as a band they are able to shown their vibrant personalities that official photos may not portray. The studio photoshoot also allowed for them to capture some behind the scene photos which could be used as promotion and engagments, showing the target audience that new content is going to be released soon. 

I then organised a few shots that with a bit of artistic thought and playing around, could be achieved. 

Using the different coloured gels over the lighting created an outcome that we were excited by. This part of the process was the one we spent the most time on as the images were coming out really intersting and unique each time. One of the benefits of using a gel over the lighting is that it looks unique in comparison to the computer manipulated versions that could be created and looked as though it is forced upon the image. We also tried to incorporate their instruments into someof the photos, but quickly realised this looked cheesy and unnatural as they were just holding them and not playing them. Rather than aborting this whole idea, we took that fact that it was a bit ridiculous and had some fun with it so that once again they had some engaging content to use on social media platforms. 

The photoshoot resulted in over 1000 photos that needed to be checked and grouped into the ones that will be used. The band had decided that they wanted to choose the first large group of images that they all agreed would be ones that they liked. This isn't the way I would have normally done it, but it would ensure that they were happy with their appearance in them and would avoid any later problems after I spend a lot of time editing them. I then took that large folder of images and uploaded them to Adobe Lightroom so that I could see them as a collection and further narrow down the choices. I gradualy edited each photo and deleted mroe and more as better ones later cropped up. This process was useful because I had a large body of images that I could hand over to the band at the end of this project, but also lots of choice on which ones to develop for the Facebook profile picture and banner. 

As an example of the editing process, I took each photo individually and tried to optimise the lighting and overall appearance so that stand alone they worked. I then had to get the final group together in Adobe Lightroom so that I could see them all next to eachother and make sure that there was consistency throughout the whole collection. The unedited photo looked good, but by increasing the contrast the band members became clearer and the photo looked better. The same process was also carried out for the purple image.

I then began to experiment with the different ways in which the bands logo/name could be added to the images in a subtle, but effective way. The red image shows the photo with increased brightness to try and allow for the logo to show through better. The next approach was to have the name down the side of the photo. I don't like either of these, so this is something that needs to be revised. 

Edited
As part of the deliverables I provided a large selection of images that had been edited with a consistent visual style so that the band could upload images on their social media and it would continue to build up their identity as a band.