Jericho vs. Mankind
Last night I got together with local Vancouver, WA band ‘Jericho vs. Mankind’ to shoot some promotional material for them. The concept was left in my hands, and the band’s drummer has a new (old) house that is currently under renovation. The very unfinished interior and the rotting workshop/barn/shed thing in the back yard inspired me to go grungy with it, and I’m very happy with the results.
Alien Bees B800 through softbox camera left. B800 with 7″ reflector back camera right. B400 with reflector behind a wall in the background
This is the group shot from the basement. I rammed the clarity up to 100 in lightroom and added the same “rust” overlay I added in my NERF shoot a few months back. Those combined did a great job grunging up the far-too-clean straight from camera shot.
6 people in a basement is going to get hot fast, so we took the show to the backyard where an old dilapidated barn type thing was. The renovation crew had been using it as a place to dump all the stuff they’re pulling from the house, so there was a big pile of old cabinets and boards in the middle of the floor. The instant I saw it I knew what I wanted the band to do.
Alien Bees B800 with reflector front camera left. B800 with reflector back camera right. ABR800 Ring Flash on ground on lens axis, pointed up at band
This came out pretty damn close to how I envisioned it when I saw the pile of junk. I used the two B800s to cross light the group, and used the ring flash on the ground as some frontal fill. I set the ring flash about a full stop higher than it should have been in order to bring a bit of blown out detail to the image. I would never intentionally blow stuff out that much for a portrait, but in this case my mind was thinking album cover.
I’ve got another version where ‘guy on the right’s’ arm isn’t blocking his face, but I don’t like it nearly as much as this one. I gave both to the band, just in case.
I also took the chance to do 2 styles of headshots for either in-album material, or the band’s website. Once again, cleanliness was not the objective:
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