Bands like Iwrestledabearonce who are either hated or loved by anyone who knows of them - who were in a situation where they were bashed or praised - ended up being one of my favorite bands to work with - and favorite bands to listen to.
As soon as I saw the equally polarized Vampires Everywhere were about to tour - I jumped at the chance to do a photo shoot with them. I love shooting image heavy bands - like black metal bands, slipknot, gwar, even 18visions and bleeding through were very image heavy at one point in their careers.
Anyway, So being that they have a very selective image, I knew how I wanted to shoot them.
It was a warm day with very few clouds in the sky, so they werent really too apt to shooting outdoors, which was the majority of what I wanted to do... I wont post the exact thing that was said to me but suffice to say the words "we are vampires" was in the sentence... which is cool, I totally understand, and was on the same page as them, and promised the images would portray that look. After showing them some of my images on the ol IPad - they were convinced - and outside we went!
We started against the concrete wall in the parking lot across from the palladium. I used one beauty dish - boomed up super high and pointed almost straight down but at a slight angle toward them - and powered that up to 70% - which is rare - i almost NEVER shoot at anywhere above 50%, but i really wanted to make it selective lighting. I shot all of the shots with the Canon Mark2 1ds and the 24-70 2.8L lens. The shots are at F20 - as there were 6 of them I wanted complete front to back sharp focus for this set. shot at ISO100 at a 160th
NOTE: these shots are NOT heavily edited - this is what you can get - outdoors - in broad daylight - against a concrete wall - if you know how to control lighting!
For the next set I wanted to get the sky in the shot - which was VERY blue and bright - so to counter that i turned my light up to 80% so i could really make them brighter than the daylight hitting them - again this is just a single beauty dish.
Next I decided to do something less dark and more - LOST BOYS style - cali vampires - warmer - more natural. - I shot these at 2.8 to really bring out the vocalist Michael - which oddly enough is the name of the main character of Lost Boys! and he was wearing a lost boys shirt! - works out right?! YES!
For the last shot I wanted to give them a real - motley crue, rockstar type of look. I used triangular lighting - so two rims up above - and i used a 3x4 soft box main for this one, trying to give them softer lighting, softer shadows and highlights, etc. - this was shot at F14 at a 10th
So all in all these dudes were excellent people to work with, super nice, and absolutely went above and beyond in taking a leap of faith in going outside to do a shoot. These are some of my favorite shots ive produced this year thus far.
Needless to say - love them - hate them - doesnt matter - they are going to be massive - twilightcore exists! and they are IT!
I really hope I get to work with these dudes again in the future, and to them, a long and amazing career!
PROTECT YOUR NECKS!
really like the motley crue style shots there at the end! nice work jeremy
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