The Cool Calm Collective

Well I finally get to blog about an actual photoshoot! I've been finding with a lot of my recent work that due to confidentiality clauses for one reason or another, I'm not able to release images via my blog or Facebook page until they are released. I promise to get them out to you as soon as I get the go ahead though.
Had a great shoot not long ago with reggae band The Cool Calm Collective. I came up with this pretty cool concept for them and pitched it, and it got knocked on the head, Ha! OK not exactly, but the powers that be decided to reserve that concept for a later date.
Instead, bassist and manager Jai Mitchell said, "let's just hang out and see what happens". We decided to all meet at his house, sit in his living room, then go out for lunch. The idea was to get real candid shots, almost like a bunch of housemates.
When I arrived in the living room, there was an old keyboard in the corner, and so much cool stuff that we just took a bit of time building a "set". I keep a ladder in my car, brought that in, and decided to shoot from overhead. You can view the setup shot here.
Next, I evaluated the lighting. Since all the shots were meant to look candid, I needed a way to light the room so that it didn't look "lit". To do that I had to make my light source as big as possible, so I fired a speedlight through a shoot-through umbrella pointed directly at the ceiling, essentially turning the ceiling into a giant softbox.
The final challenge was getting all the band members to show their faces without making them look like they were looking at the camera. I saw all of these Polaroids on the wall and we made a stack and got them to throw them at me. That way everyone would be looking up at the time I took the shot.
The final image is a composite of 3 shots to make it look like there were more Polaroids then there actually were.
After that we went to the 25 Hour Shop, this burger joint that has a old fashioned diner feel to it. The boss very kindly agreed to let us shoot in there, and we ordered a heap of food and, well just ate.
I got to use my new Canon 1Ds MkIII too, and am really happy with it. I don't normally like to get too into camera bodies but wow, I'm blown away. No one needs me to tell them how great of a camera it is, as there is a reason why it's the flagship Canon camera. But let's just say I'm glad I got it.
You can view the rest of the photos from this shoot here.