SO! as you all know, I am deeply rooted and brought up by the way of raw black metal (Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum, Immortal, etc.) and as you have seen - that has surfaced in my corpse paint, fine art project.
From seeing those images, and knowing our mutual affinity for black metal, steven and I said "we should do a corpse paint shoot... why the hell not!" and of course I am always down for some black metal imagery.
This quickly evolved from a "for the hell of it" shoot to a full "IWABO HAS GONE BLACK METAL!" campaign. Together we mapped out a pretty solid plan... but I'll put more details on that as we go on - for now - heres some prep photos in studio.
My buddy Laura helped with some of the corpse paint, I was very specific as to what their corpse paint should look like to keep it as true to the legendary black metal imagery as possible. I also brought a bunch of my own band shirts for them to wear as I figured they wouldnt exactly have Isenguard or Darkthrone shirts on hand.
I started with some solo shots - shooting with a single dish above the guys - shooting at F13 at a 125th at ISO100 using the 70-200 on the Mark 2 1ds. Rather than resetting the light lower, and higher as steven is about 35 feet taller than everyone else in the band, I simply had him bend at his knees a bit so his head wasnt being cut off the background paper and so he would have lighting even to what the other members of the band would have. - keep this trick in mind if you have one tall dude in any band - its an easy fix and looks completely natural if shooting above the knee.
Next up were the "clean" group photos - where we were going for a very simple, less expressive, more so of them posing with out using gestures or making metal faces - then I had them do a couple clean shots doing a more metal - scream at the camera - type of pose - same camera settings as before - except now im using the 24-70 2.8 L lens
Now it was time to get dirty - I got a box of corn starch - which is heavily used to give clothing an older look, or just a more dusty contrast - used often by bands like dimmu, satyricon, immortal, etc. So I had them one by one step outside onto the fire escape while i nolan ryan'd them with some corn starch - because it was my first time doing this, some of it came out a bit blotchy while some others came out perfect - soooo there was a little evening out to do with two of the shirts but the rest were golden.
We went back into the studio under the same settings to get some more animated shots of the band - we did some with and with out props - i made sure all props used in the images were condusive to black metal - such as - swords - spiked gauntlets - no guns - no samurai swords - etc.
After finishing up in studio we went outside to get some natural light shots - which are pretty standard for black metal - I was shooting at 2.8 to get a very strong depth of field in the first set of shots - the idea was to have a shot with her hand in focus - and that to be a teaser image to post prior to the announcement - then post the next shot where they are in focus - but alas - it didnt happen - but heres a teaser i did up for it!
We went over to the hill where I actually had first shot IWABO years ago - you may have seen the image in a few magazines and their its all happening ads - with ricky photoshopped into the shot haha - but I figured it was a good spot to get brighter photos - get some sky and some greens in there - these were at F4.
Lastly we found a spot with alot of dead trees - the prima black metal locale aside from going into a forest or burnt church in norway. - I shot these at F4 - at this point we were all shivering - it was very windy - so we finished up with these shots - going for both a serious and more animated look - then called it a shoot!
I shot all the outdoor stuff natural light because you wont really see a classic black metal image shot outdoors with lighting - ever, and I was trying to keep it as true to black metal as possible within our limitations. although it would have been cool to burn down a church and have them all peeing blood on it - I dont have that kind of clout! haha.
So as the weeks rolled on, Steven and I went back and fourth brainstorming exactly how this would play out - how we would elude to it - post about it - etc.
Basically the idea was to say they are sick of being called scene, and hated by internet shit talkers - so they will listen to reason, an stop playing all the "gay jazz and dance shit" and have decided to do a true kvlt black metal record. then post a song a few days later with a - hahahaha gotttcchaaaa! type of thing.
On top of this idea, IWABO got an epic black metal logo done and used it as "unreadable logo of the week" on the metal sucks page a few days before the announcement - check it out here - http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/05/10/completely-unreadable-band-logo-of-the-week-win-a-century-media-prize-pack/
and here is the announcement that they have gone black metal - http://www.metalsucks.net/2011/05/17/exclusive-black-metal-just-got-gay-iwrestledabear-once-change-genres/
needless to say - the comments alone - the THOUSANDS! of comments alone - were amaaaaazing to watch flood in - there were so many who believed it and were SO pissed.
this was probably the most fun I have had doing a campaign = even if it was just a short one and was a joke - it worked!
I cant wait for the new record - which i can say - although it isnt black metal - it is fucking incredible!
-l- HAIL IWABO! -l-
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