some friends want me to do their album cover- with pictures of them, black and white, any ideas or suggestions? thank you, oh and they're your average rock band if that helps. Thanks!

Originally Posted by rmann some friends want me to do their album cover- with pictures of them, black and white, any ideas or suggestions? thank you, oh and they're your average rock band if that helps. Thanks!

Few things to remember - that I wish I knew when shooting my husband's band a few years back... I did ONE shoot with them and that was all it took for me to vow never to do it again - nothing against the photography of course but the entire situation was handled wrong from the beginning.

YOU are the artist, the visual artist. They make their music, they make themselves <i>sound</i> great, you make them <i>look</i> great. They need to trust you 110% when you give them direction. A certain band member in my husband's band has been making music since the 80's, and of course thinks that if it's good enough in the 80's, it's good enough for the 2000's - he still sounds - and looks the part. He kept saying "Let's all run to you" (bad idea, hair goes everywhere and nobody will be in time with everybody else's strides) "Let's all hold our instruments" (which I don't recommend doing - at ALL. If for any reason, your drummer will look beyond dumb holding drum sticks anywhere but at a gig or in the studio). Also not-so-subtly added to the suggestions was "Let's all stand in a line" - which is great in theory, but my hubby's 6'2" and the smallest band member is just over 5" - there's no way to arrange them all in a line without my hubby looking like the Jolly Green Giant or them looking like they're in a dance kick line. They have got to trust you that you know what you're doing. Even if you don't know what you're doing, fake it - a little bit of confidence goes a LONG way.

Use dramatic lighting. If you're good enough with your flash/studio lights, light them up in an abandoned alleyway or on a boat dock, somewhere "grungy".

Even an abandoned vehicle will make a great prop - I'm thinking of them sitting in an Mater-style truck with some in the bed of the truck, some leaning against the hood and maybe the crazy one of the bunch sitting on top of the cab. Think outside the box. If you pose them right, they can all fit on a couch, too - two on the couch, one on each arm, one or two on the floor - especially if the couch/environment is really grungy.

Go for unconventional crops, too. My hubby's band went through a line up change and back again so the manager cropped what was a picture of the five of them against a barn wall (holding their instruments, yuck) and cropped them from just above the waist, showing pants/kilts and shoes - it made a great website banner and only if you *really* knew them, you'd know that it wasn't the five current members. I recently saw a website blog banner of three boys (it appeared to be two twins and another brother) leaning against a wall with one foot over the other, cropped at about the waist, maybe a bit higher. Propped on their shoes were candid Polaroid prints of their faces, from about shoulders up. It was really cute.

There's lots of great examples out there - the most recent great promo band shot I've seen is of 100 Monkeys (Any Twilight fans out there? It's Jasper's band!) -- There's a shot of them all on a dock or something and one of them is dressed up like a banana. They all have on their mod clothes, jeans, chucks, etc but just one of them is in a banana costume. Different, unique and totally memorable. Now that Halloween is over, your year-round costume shops are probably dying for business I'm sure they'd let you rent a costume for a shoot.

Just please, whatever you do, don't shoot them all individually, erase the background and compile them all back together. I won't name names on who did that, but it looked 10,000 kinds of awful.

Hope that helps!

Great advice...I've not much to add but stay open minded and get a feel for the style pertaining to their genre of music....