Photo Shoot... Need opinions

[Janie]

These are from a shoot I did 2 nights ago with Matt O'Ree and we're trying to decide on the best press photos that represent him, and represent his music. If you want to hear, it's at www.mattoree.com - Which do you guys feel are the best shots of this group? I've been looking at them so long I can't decide (I need 4 photos, the first one I love, but other than that... ???)

[Asylum Steve]

They're all pretty good, Janie. From a conventional CD art point of view, I think the next to last one (#6), is the best. I could easily imagine the shot squared off as a front or back cover...

#2 and #3 are both real nice, too, as that image IMO works well in both color and bw.

To be honest, the hair light you have in all the shots doesn't do anything for me, and in fact creates a distracting hot spot. Again MO, but I think they would all be stronger shots without it. By using the light to create a slightly "warmer" area on the bg behind him, you'd get the same hair seperation, but it would look much more natural...

[Janie]

Yeah, hate to say it, we had a very small space to work in - that "hair light" was on the backdrop! lol I need a bigger studio - I shot this at his place with my portable studio and it was just cramped as all hell. I may actually be able to soften that light. hmmm

[Janie]

They're all pretty good, Janie. From a conventional CD art point of view, I think the next to last one (#6), is the best. I could easily imagine the shot squared off as a front or back cover...

#2 and #3 are both real nice, too, as that image IMO works well in both color and bw.

To be honest, the hair light you have in all the shots doesn't do anything for me, and in fact creates a distracting hot spot. Again MO, but I think they would all be stronger shots without it. By using the light to create a slightly "warmer" area on the bg behind him, you'd get the same hair seperation, but it would look much more natural...

How you like these two?

[Asylum Steve]

that "hair light" was on the backdrop! lol I need a bigger studio...

Yeah, I've been there. But you can still control any type of light in any size space. That's why you need items like scrims and flags and fingers and dots and cine foil and tape, to prevent spills from going where you don't want them to...

[Asylum Steve]

Yeah, they're good. I like the second one better, although the strands of stray hair over the guitar kinda drive me crazy. But the lighting and tone are near perfect...

Also, in the first shot, he's looking a little too straight into the camera. If you notice, just about every other shot has a slight tilt to his head, and that (almost unconsiously) creates a more natural flow to the composition.

Having the subject turn and/or tilt their head slightly can make a huge difference...

[Peter_AUS]

Take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I took some of the images into Photoshop CS2 and had a little look at them.

First off to me just looking at the images they have too much of a glow look about them for my taste. But as I said take my opinion with a grain of salt. I don't do this type of work looking at the end product of CD cover but......

When you apply some unsharpen mask to the first image, the chain, the ying/yang medallion, and his eyes just pop, pop, pop. I used 200%, .5 and 1 as the settings, keep in mind this is a low res image with not a lot of detail to work with.

I then use Noise Ninja and let it profile the image, then selected some other area in the image, such as his cheek and forehead and then applied the noise ninja to the iamge, this kept the eyes popped and also the chain etc, and gave less of a glow to it and his checks looked silkier which I think maybe better seeing it is a "For Sale Product Shot" as well (just my opinion), unless you want the roughish look you get from him.

Doing the unsharpen mask on the ones with the guitar in them, also brings some of that part of the image to sharper detail, but then I like sharp details.

On the first image there is a little spot on the right nostril that distracted me as well, so I would suggest fixing that. Might not be much, but to me it stuck out like a PIMPLE does when someone has one.

They are also very warm colours as well, but that is probably good for his look as well.

Just my thoughts.

[LeeIs]

Janie,

I thought #6 was absolutely amazing. IMO that has to be in. I haven't decided on which of the others work for me but I'll go back and view. I had to stop and report on #6. Very nice.

[LeeIs]

ok, #2 & #4 are my other choices. If I can advice you NOT to include a shot it would be #7! There's something not so flattering or just awkward about how he's holding that guitar!

Good luck .

[SmartWombat]

#1 is my favourite too !
#2 I actually like the light on the hair
#3 seems heavily sotened, too heavy for my taste, but it gives them another look
Not one that I'd associate with the music on the website - that's #4 for sure
#4 is gritty and grainy, well done it if they want that look, but is it sofented too?
I'd like to see the effect sharper and evem more edgy
#5 I just don't like the hangdog expression
#6 I really like, but maybe it couldn't be cropped successfully to CD cover format
#7 is good too.

#8 is that really '7 in B&W? I prefer it.
#9 is that a square crop of #6? Tight, but now I see the hair on the guitar.
That is so annoying because I don't see the detail in the shadow area above it, or below.
Probably my monitor setup, it's unprofiled

My picklist would be 1, 4, 8, 7

[Janie]

He chose his CD Cover (For his interactive sampler cd, which will be handed out at shows and by street teams!) Cool, huh? goes to production tomorrow!

[Asylum Steve]

Yeah, that was my pick. Looks good...

I would have cloned out the stray hair over the guitar, though... ;)

[Janie]

Yeah, that was my pick. Looks good...

I would have cloned out the stray hair over the guitar, though... ;)

I can still do that - I have the file! ;-)

[Janie]

Yeah, that was my pick. Looks good...

I would have cloned out the stray hair over the guitar, though... ;)

Okay, this is driving me nuts now - I can't get it cloned to look right!

[Janie]

I'm being super critical here, since it will be on 2500 CDs! I'm not crazy about it. argh

[Asylum Steve]

Janie, I'm really sorry for using the term clone. I posted that before actually working with the file itself. As it turns out, the clone tool is not at all the best option...

What I did was simply cut/copy that section of guitar (lasso tool) from one of your other shots (with no hair over it), pasted it on the CD cover file, rotated, scaled, and skewed it a bit to put it in the right position, adjusted the tone a tad to match the rest of the gutiar, then quick-masked it and softened the edges (painted on mask with soft brush at reduced opacity) so it would blend in.

I also masked out a bit of the hair next to the guitar so he would have a straight, natural looking line going all the way down the frame.

This is infinitely easier (and looks much better) than using the clone tool...

[Janie]

Well, as it turns out, we may go with the other cover (I was working with 2 A&R guys to make a cover that looks label ready and they didn't like the one with the guitar - they used the term... "Cliche!"). So here is the new one, that I created with their help!