The Look of Rock

Last night I began photographing once again, and for the first time on the project I took the camera into a studio setting. After capturing the themes of nature and industry, I wanted to capture the concept of high-energy music, a theme that has an edge yet still maintains something of an artistic side.

So I brought in one of my friends, set up a few lights, and had him strum around on my electric guitar while I got a few shots. The first picture shown here captures the spirit of what I was going for. Much of the technical work is actually similar to my industry theme. High contrast, which is emphasized by the black-and-white nature of the shot, as well as a solid black background. I set up the lighting to be fairly direct on the subject to create harder shadows as well.

After a first round of shots, I put together a harsher lighting set-up that essentially backlit my subject entirely. I was hoping to get a progression of shots moving through an epic jump, but I discovered that my camera was far too slow to capture anything between the peak of the jump and the beginning and end of the jump. Instead, I opted for a variety of jump shots provided by my friend, the shot above being my favorite.

All-in-all, I think the jump shots turned out surprisingly well, and enough of everything else I got was at the very least decent. Tomorrow I go in for a little more studio work, so we’ll see if I fare as well as today. Here’s hoping!
T.H. Excellence