In celebration of Hannah's new album hitting streets in a few weeks:
I've worked with Folk musician/ singer/songwriter Hannah Sanders a few times now. I enjoy being in Hannah's company; we have the same type of humor and I love laughing with her and listening to her British accent. She moved back to the U.K. a few years ago, but in August 2014 she came back to the States for come concert dates and she wanted to get together and create some new images for her forthcoming album and promotional images.
During our last session, Hannah used one of the images we took for the cover of one of her 2014 EP's
above: Head shot of Hannah, and copies of her EP "Warning Bells"
Nothing excites me more than seeing images I create used for album artwork and cd packaging. I LOVE album and cd packaging, and it has always been one of my hopes that my work is good enough to be used on artists' packaging.
Hannah was going to be in town for a week doing some US dates with her friend Liz Simmons, and she contacted me asking if she could hire me to take some new images that she could use for her upcoming full length debut album "Charms Against Sorrow". Absolutely!
In August she came by the studio for the day and we started shooting. First we started by having her lie down on the floor, spreading her hair out around her:
The newsprint you see her lying on was taken from an old Nashua Register from the late 1800's. I took some of the pages out of the back of the register and laid them down. I liked how the pages had this old, yellow color to them and added a little bit of a visual element.
Then we took the old news pages and taped them up to the wall and I had Hannah stand in front of them:
I was purposely centering Hannah in these images because I knew when I looked through the viewfinder and all the wonderful gold tones I was looking at, I wanted to do album mock-ups with these images when I was processing. Especially with that first image. There was something in my brain that screamed in joy when I took that shot - it was simple, elegant, classy and gorgeous.
Next, I moved Hannah away from the backdrop and wanted some simple shots on a black background:
The original versions of these are a deeper black & white, but I wanted to crush the blacks a little and add some grain. I don't usually crush the colors like this, but I thought these looked pretty nice and kinda film-like.
Once we were done with the studio shooting, I snuck in a quick location shoot outside near the studio before Hannah had to leave. Time to break out the Petzval lens!
When I got back to the studio, I started playing with the golden-hue images and kept coming back to that initial image that I kept thinking about. I posted it on Facebook as a sneak peek, and my wife Sara complimented me saying she was browsing Facebook and was looking at an article on a Hollywood actress. The very next thing in her feed with that image, but she didn't see who posted it, and thought it was another report about a Hollywood personality, and then saw it was from something I photographed that day! It's always good when you can surprise your wife with good work! :)
The last few months of 2014 saw me working closely with Hannah as she gave me the chance to design and layout her forthcoming debut album "Charms Against Sorrow". Here is the cover for her new album, featuring the image I initially saw as the album cover:
I've had a blast working with Hannah on this project. I have an extensive post coming up soon going through the whole process of designing her cd with all the steps involved. Stay tuned!
Hannah's new album will be released in February of 2015. Check out her list of concert dates. Check out her Facebook Musician page. She'll be touring a little in the US this year as well.