It all started...
...with a call from a client who wanted family photos. The thing is, she didn't just want your normal family photos, she wanted something a little different. Over the next couple of weeks, I received examples of her vision and asked if we could make it happen. The vision was grungy rock band. Think Kaleo, Indie Pop, or With Confidence.
After deciding on the rock band theme, looking for a studio started. Fortunately, the birthplace of grunge music is Seattle, so there are many choices. We discovered a fantastic location in the heart of Seattle, next to T-Mobile Park, with exposed bricks, pipes, soaring ceilings, and most importantly, tons of light.
The session was awesome. We didn't do the usual family posing, instead, I gave general directions and captured their natural poses, or asked silly questions and caught their reactions as they answer. Personally I like this style photography as everyone has more fun and I'm able to capture more authentic photos.
After finishing in studio, we headed outside on a typical overcast Seattle day. The location also happened to be a great location for a "grunge" backdrop. The building had a garage door, there were overpasses right across the street, and of course road barriers with with graffiti, it was perfect.
On to the edit
We shot 600+ photos that day but the main shot was going to have to be a composite photo. With the studio building as the backdrop, I pulled up a photo and directed my client's to pose in a similar way, then ran across the street. I took about 20 photos in total for the final picture.
Next I took all of the photos for the building shot and brought them into Photoshop. One photo had a pose I wanted, two others had facial expressions that needed to be swapped, and with the remaining photos, I cleared everyone out to merge them all together. In the end, we had the perfect shot. Scroll down to watch a speed edit of the photo.
