A couple weekends ago I had the privilege of joining a fantastic local band in the studio as they recorded their latest album.  Their name is BOWI and if you love kickin’ Celtic music they are very much worth checking out.

Despite how it may look on TV, recording an album in the studio is a difficult, meticulous and stressful undertaking.  I know this because I basically grew up in a recording studio in San Diego.  During the 70s, 80s & 90s my father owned Studio West, one of the premier studios for “jingles” in the nation at the time.  Anyway, despite the stress involved with recording their new album the members of BOWI allowed this crazy photographer to stomp around and blast them in the face with strobes to document the process.  I’m so glad that they did!  To follow are a few photos I captured during that day.

When I first arrived in the studio Tony Schuler was busy recording some electric bass tracks.

The talented recording engineer pictured below is Steven Bell, the owner of Top of the Hill Music Studio.  He was an absolute pleasure to talk with and he was very patient with me as I set up my lights in various parts of the studio during the session.

Below: Rich Teachout recording some whistle tracks.

I should mention that I had to shoot almost everything from the control room because the shutter on my camera was too loud for the microphones.  That presented quite the challenge at times because I had to shoot through two panes of glass into another room most of the time. But it gave me an opportunity to get some fun shots that I otherwise might not have captured, like the image below.

I was lucky enough to catch Tony warming up in the main studio during a 5 minute break.  So I grabbed a few shots without having to stay in the control room. The main studio is ENORMOUS and beautiful. I tossed in a little mood lighting for Tony here.

The talented Leah Cupps, goddess of the bodhran.

Below you can clearly see what fuels any decent Celtic album.

During a short break I grabbed Rich’s banjo and took a few close-up shots.

Slán,

Christian

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Deloreans.  Heck, I have to admit that my rather large and not so suppressed inner-geek would love nothing more than to have one sitting in my driveway (complete with all the time-machine gadgetry of course).  So when Tami approached me about doing a 1950s retro themed photo shoot, I immediately realized that I didn’t have a Delorean and therefore would have to come up with a more creative (and slightly less expensive) way of making it to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance.

Thus began the process of combing through tons of images from the 1950s to get an idea of the style, the posing and the lighting that was commonly used during that time.  We didn’t go for 100% period accuracy, as evidenced by the somewhat modern/artsy picture at the top of this post.  But hey, an artist has to take a bit of creative license from time to time right? 

We did the shoot over the course of two different weekends.  The first weekend we shot against the white seamless background.

Christian: “Okay Tami, now I want you to jump over a “puddle” and throw the fur at the same time”.  Tami: “You mean you want the fur to fly?”  <pause>  At this point everyone cracked up.  Christian: “Yes, let the fur fly!”

Amber (my wonderful partner and creative director) was very understanding when I asked if we could sacrifice one of her Valentine’s Day roses to add a splash of color to these shots.

We picked this mirror up at a thrift/antique shop in downtown Seattle a few months ago.  We’re always frequenting garage sales and thrift shops looking for fun items that we can use during our photo shoots.

Okay, moving on to the 2nd weekend.  We decided to go in a completely different direction and went with dramatic/hard light against a dark background.  Think “1950s hollywood”.  Once again, the garage/estate sale items came in handy for these shots.  And of course Tami’s freakin’ awesome collection of retro clothing was a fantastic addition.

We ended the shoot with a total deviation from the 1950s theme and mixed in a little goth boudoir for good measure.

Thanks to Tami for being such a fantastic, creative and fun model!  And as always Amber and Brandi were wonderful creative directors and played an invaluable role with hair, makeup, jewelry and posing ideas.  Go team!

Christian