November 2nd, 2009
The Mad Pianist – Behind the Scenes
I get ideas for my photo shoots from many sources, and one of those is to simply listen (or in this case, read). A few weeks back I received a text from one of my frequent models, Andrew. It was short and simple: “How about a crazy piano player photo??”. Knowing that Andrew is an extremely talented musician and very creative, my immediate response was “Sure!”.
Last week we got together for the shoot. We used the grand piano at a local church and went to work creating the images. What made this shoot different than my regular work was that it was Andrew, not me, that had the pre-visualized images in mind and I simply followed his direction. He had coordinated his wardrobe design and hair styling for the session.
I did however add a bit to the shoot for some shots I envisioned (with some input from friend Ann Torrence). In addition to Andrew as the pianist, I had another of my regular models Kati join in for a few shots portraying a sultry singer. 
On the technical side, lighting was accomplished mainly using two softboxes – one large octabox (as seen in the behind-the-scenes image) and a smaller one to use for hair light and accents. Managing the light on the background proved to be the largest hurdle and made me realize that I really need to ad a grid to one of my octaboxes.
Since these images are a bit of a departure from my normal style, I am not sure how well they will sell as stock images. But they were a lot of fun to create.
