My client was Nat Blair, a guitar player from Suffolk new college who played and listened to rock music. He wanted pictures with him and his guitar to show he was a musician and admired existing photographs of performers captured backstage. He was also a fan of strong contrast added in the editing stages after the shoot itself. I therefore kept these requirements in mind when planning the shoot and layout.
The location I chose to shoot in was the TV studio of the college as this provided me with a plain background with extensive lighting options and space to move and capture the shots I wanted. I believe that as I tried out many different angles and shots during the shoots that I gained a variety of options for my final photos and am happy with the results. I used a spotlight with some soft background lighting to make the contrasts between light and dark as extreme as possible which was inspired by the artist’s work I researched for this project. It also gave a perfect balance between an onstage and backstage feel to the photo which is what I wanted to achieve. When editing my images on Photoshop I concentrated on increasing the contrast or decreasing the saturation to create really strong colours or black and whites. I cropped most of the photos so they were close around the main subject, giving the picture the personal touch that captured moments backstage have, almost so close that the music he is playing on his guitar could be heard.
I chose the final image in the layout for exactly those reasons stated above and I thought it conveyed the client’s personality well whilst still representing him as an artist. When further editing the image I used the dodge and burn tool to accentuate the difference in tones, using it on the white and black squares on his shirt, the guitar’s details and other small details that I wanted to stand out. I positioned the title (“Nat Blair”) at the bottom as it stands out on the black well and follows the line of his leg. This was purely an artistic choice as when trying to fit the text at the top of the page it looked clumsy and unprofessional. It also supports represents a signature style signing that is common at gigs, relating again to the backstage aspect. The contour and shadow effects I used on this text helped the letters to sit in the page rather than lying over the top of the photo. The text on the opposite page is simple and doesn’t detract from the main image as I wanted the picture to say more about him than the information. I chose to position the text there as it is different to the normal layout of a magazine double page and its visually interesting and a manageable size that would encourage a reader to stop and take notice rather than be overwhelmed by a large amount of writing.
Overall I am happy with the final images and layout. If I was to do the project again I would hope to get a range of locations for different shots, for example an on stage shot to balance the backstage ones. An opportunity for this did once arise but travel arrangements and communication problems between me and the client meant I was unable to gather these shots along with what I had already shot. However I believe the shots achieve what the brief and my client asked for and the final layout is a good enough standard to give back to the musician himself.
