first album cover shoot in 2 days. advice?

nicolemaree · Nov 9, 2010

most of the the work i have done are for teen/young women modeling/ senior portraits. i dont have alot of experience working with men. i was asked to help a guy with his album cover. it is a hip hop album and a guy, both i do not have a lot of experience with. It will be an outdoor shoot most likely downtown. im just asking for any kind of advice to help me with this at all. Its one of my first shoots that will be widely distributed and i just want it to come out perfectly. thank you!

gsgary · Nov 9, 2010

Very busy street, shoot down the lanes of traffic you will have to be quick because it is probably an offence over your way
Can you get on a rooftop ?

12sndsgood · Nov 9, 2010

has the artist or his label or anyone given you any direction on what they want on their album cover. or are they just leaving it up to you to know what they want? id try to get some info out of them and find out what they are thinking about and then work off of that to come up with what is right.

Studio7Four · Nov 9, 2010

People are people; light is light.

The point is, technically there's no difference shooting him than the women you've already shot. If you're confident in your lighting and composition skills, that's a huge chunk of this shot too. Yes, there is a difference in posing and possibly in location. As has been mentioned, I'd communicate with the artist and/or his label to see if they have any preferences. You can also look at other albums or promotional images of this artist to get a feel for what he tends to like. I wouldn't worry overly much about the posing..you want the image to come across as the artist being true to himself and not come across as overly posed. You can put him in situations (lean against that wall, go stand in the middle of that intersection, jump!) and let him do so as he feels is natural.