The Devil Wears Prada came after the book and before the film. Last week I drove down to their home town, Dayton Ohio, and stayed with them for a few days.
The first night we just kicked it, watched movies, and ordered pizza, really good pizza from Cousin Vinny’s.
The next day we had to get to work. I met up with my assistants (Nick Brewer and Zac Fisher) for this shoot at a local coffee shop. We talked photo jargon for a few minutes before heading off for the shoot. For the record, these two saved my ass in this shoot, couldn’t thank them enough. My camera broke a few days before the shoot, so Nick let me borrow his. Somehow Zac managed to grab over 150 behind the scenes images, meter, and set up lights simultaneously – dude’s a machine.
Personally this shoot meant a lot to me because it was different than most. What set it apart was that I knew the guys personally, prior to photographing them. I have shot them and hung out with them on multiple occasions, and gotten a chance to get to know their personalities.
Basically, after you get all that technical junk figured out at a shoot, you are stuck with six tattooed guys standing in front of a big hunk-o-glass.
Challenge: capturing some kind of real/natural emotion in your photograph. People like to feel, people have emotions, we want to see emotions, it’s how we relate with eachother. I try my best to pack emotion into my shots – but there is no quick “just bump it up one stop” fix for this one.
Comfortable – everyone needs to feels comfortable. And by everyone I mean not just the guys you are shooting, but you as well. Ideally, you should be more comfortable than anyone else, I’m talking Tempur-Pedic mattress comfortable…. I’ll elaborate on this more some other time…back to the shoot.
The location for the shoot was at their practice space- a huge four story warehouse that they only practice in, a.k.a. a dream come true for me. I had never been there before, so everything related to this shoot had to be done on spot. Here is what I had to get done in 7 hours.
1. Cover story for HM magazine
2. Promotional images for band/label
3. Images of the band writing music in there practice space
4. Head-shots for some toys (don’t worry, I don’t get it either)
5. Promotional image of the guys in there practice space
We scoped out the locations, and set up the lights, shot the guys, and had a good time well doing it. I’ll have the final images from this shoot up once they are released.
You can see the shots of the guys writing/practicing on their MySpace page.
All images taken by Zac Fisher.
After the shoot was over, basically just crashed on a couch and hung out with Taylor the next day. We hit up Steak ‘n Shake and talked photo jargon. Steak ‘n Shake is better than In-n-Out Burger, sorry California.
