Stampede of the Damned
After a really busy week I was thrilled when I found the new album by Mabon in the mail today. Their new record is entitled “Stampede of the Damned” and I was fortunate enough to shoot the cover for it:
Album cover for "Stampede of the Damned" by "Mabon"
To create the cover image we shot all of the band members individually against a black background in my studio. Each exposure lasted 6 seconds, while I had the modeling lights of my Elinchrom flash heads running. Within those 6 seconds of exposure I asked the band to move around, kicking and screaming as if in agony. During the long exposure I manually triggered the strobes to freeze a few moments in time, while the rest of the movement was smeared due to the long exposure. The resulting images looked something like this:
6 second exposure with multiple strobe bursts
6 Second Exposure with multiple strobe bursts
Multiple frames likes these of all of the band members where then composed into one burst of humanoid emotion… at least that’s what it felt like while I composed the final result.
The final result after compositing the individual shots
Once again this project proved to me that working with musicians is one of the most rewarding things to do as a visual creative. Mabon’s new record is available now through their website!
Posted by nicolas_henri on February 5th, 2010 :: Filed under Artist Technique, Photography, Post Production
Tags :: band, Composing, long exposure, Mabon, music, Stampede of the Damned, strobe
