15 Jun Behind the Scenes – Album Photography for Local Artist Karatesyd
Recently, we had the pleasure of working with the local artist Karatesyd!
Karatesyd, aka Syd, came to us looking for some photographs for his album cover for his upcoming album release, “The Ruthless King”. He worked with our photographer Nicole and together they came up with a concept that played on the idea of putting a modern spin on medieval royalty. We ran with the idea and secured props (including an awesome sword and crown), our Lady of the Lake model, and constructed a shallow “lake” here in our studio lobby. We also had the help of Jenifer Haupt from I Make Beautiful for hair and makeup. We don’t want to give too much away about the finished photos, but we will say that Jen knows how to work with gold paint!
We knew we couldn’t do a photo shoot of a king without a throne, so we started the day of the shoot at the Masonic Temple where they had a great old wooden chair we were able to use as a throne. We used our Jerry Ghionis Icelight in almost every setup as well as our Kino Flo Diva-Lite to achieve some dramatic directional lighting. We also couldn’t resist using a fog machine in the background to exaggerate that feel.
We also got some great detail shots in our studio of Syd holding a golden goblet, as well as some close ups with him rapping one of his new songs from the upcoming album.
We knew we wanted to incorporate a Lady of the Lake (either as part of the album artwork or as extra content for marketing the album), so we used one of our favorite models in our DIY “lake”. We’re always impressed with Nicole’s creativity and ability to set up her shots so they don’t look staged, and she definitely did it again with this one. Again, we don’t want to spoil the end result of all her hard work before we’re ready to show it off, but she definitely was able to achieve a look of a deep murky black lake with just a few inches of water in a shallow pool setup in our lobby. We know the final photos are going to be great!
Syd did a great job not only on the shoot, but the album as well! We look forward to hearing more of it, and you can keep an eye out for it here.
Be sure to check back for the finished photos for “The Ruthless King” by Karatesyd.