I first met Liz when she and Hannah Sanders were in town for a Studio 99 concert. They came by the studio and we come some pretty excellent photographs in the studio and out on location.

I’ve worked with Hannah a few times since then, but it wasn’t until recently that I was contacted by Liz. Her new album, “10,000 Days Like These” with her band Low Lily was about to happen, and she wanted to know if we could work together and make some images for the album and for promotion.

I had just moved into my new studio at 3 Pine Street and was still sharing the studio with a painter and space was limited, but I wanted to freestyle it a bit in the studio for this session. My idea was to attached a digital projector I had to a ceiling beam and project images on to the band members to create some layers and a graphic design element in the camera frame.

I had downloaded some textures and hooked my studio computer up to the projector which was hanging from a wood beam about halfway down the length of the studio. I decided to not use studio strobes for this and instead jack my ISO up and shoot with long-ish shutter speeds to let the light from the projector “burn” in on the subjects.

projecting images on the members of Low Lily

We did images of the band as a group and I also did individual shots of each member for coverage.

Because I was using high ISO and longer shutter speeds, my focus got a little blurry in the images because I was hand holding my exposures at longer speeds, thus introducing some “camera shake” because my tubby butt isn’t as still as a tripod. But I was okay with that, because I really liked the feel that these images had, and that was in part to them not being super-sharp. These felt okay to me. I was okay with how they looked.

At one part during the session, I was getting a little pushback on having the projected patterns on their faces. So I turned on some LED panel lights I have and found a good balance that still left the projections on the backdrop paper I had them standing in front of, but the led panels eliminated the patterns and textures that were being projected on their faces.

I really liked these shots where I pulled back a bit to show corners of the lights and the studio, and I even did a little mock-up album cover for them when I was processing some of these to give them some visual ideas of what could be done with the images in regards to an album cover:

After the session was over and they had some time to go over the proofs, they decided they wanted to use the following image for promotion for posters and as an image for the inside of their cd packaging. Because it was originally an image that had some texture on their faces from the projector, they had their designer eliminate the patterns off their faces and we ended up with:

And they also took one of the pullback images I had taken of the group, and used some of that for the cover of their album:

The album cover for 10,000 Days Like These

Physical copy of the new cd. You can see the image they chosen for the interior photo as well

I really love the work we created here and I love the feeling that some of these images have to them.

I love the felling in this image. Slightly melancholic. The cool tones. It’s lovely.

I love the tones and color and feeling to this image. It’s probably far too blurry for most people, but I love that. It makes it feel otherworldly. It’s quiet and soft and dreamlike. The colors are fantastic.

I really dug this session. Liz tells me that she wants to use me again for her next solo album, and I’m hoping I get to work with her again.

If you are a musician or part of a band who is looking for updated or new photographs for promotional, publicity, press kit or cd/album artwork, consider hiring me. I love working with musicians.

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