Construction Post 3: Photo Shoots

We dedicated this week to taking photos for our album and website as shots of our band are crucial to developing our star identity and allowing the audience to form personal relationships with our band members and therefore buy our products.

We booked three slots for our photo shoots;

- Monday 23rd, 9:30 - 10:50
- Wednesday 25th, 11:10 - 12:30
- Friday 4th, 16:00 - 18:30

We used the shoot on Monday as a test shoot where Alistair and I experimented with lighting and different shot types.

On our shoot on Wednesday we managed to get every members individual shots for the website and shots between Amber and I and between Luke and Seb. We found that this time was enough to get all our shots done and with time to spare.

We changed quite a few  aspects of our test shoot with Luke, including:

• Luke's outfit to fit our band image as a wool green jumper wasn't as edgy as we would like. 
• We used lots of hairspray on his hair to try and tame it but we kept the messy style as it was quite quirky and resembled that we weren't an artificial, obsessed-with-our-looks band.
• His position and the way he portrayed himself via his facial epression and pose. 

Although the boy's makeup did not take long I made sure that they were presentable and that they fit our band's image. Seb's hair needed retouching as it was a bit flat and kept getting in his eyes whereas Luke's hair needed flattening as it was incredibly messy. 

Amber getting her makeup
done.

Our makeup station.

Amber and I got help from the other girls in our class who did my eyeliner and Amber's foundation and eyeshadow.

We did not encounter many problems during our shoot aside from a communication problem which caused a mix-up of when everyone arrived but this was quickly sorted after a few phone calls.


On the Friday we got all of our profile shots and band shots but we were pressed for time however we were happy with our shots so did not feel the need to book another session.

One of our ideas was inspired by Sleeping with Sirens album Madness and tried to recreate the look using shadows. However I think this shadow effect looked much better on individual shots as using three-point lighting to eliminate four of us was very challenging. This meant that we had to fiddle around with lighting in order to achieve this shot but we discovered that changing the heights of the lights and placing them behind us would create drastic silhouettes or very bright shots.


For our album cover we decided to use heart balloons as props to contradict with our moody facial expressions and to match our potential album name 'The Honeymoon is Over'. We also got a shot without the balloons though so that we had a backup if we change our mind or decide it doesn't look right with our background.