Sparatica

The other day I had the opportunity to shoot a band, not just any band, but a great group called Sparatica, who traveled down from South Carolina to get their picture taken. Ok, they were traveling to meet a friend, but I was begged to do a session with them while they were here. They had one concept in mind, and they wanted to be shot on green screen so they could be placed on the moon. I am not a big fan of green screen photography, but I did it anyway. I created a scene using it, but someone else was going to use the photos for the moonshot, so that was alright with me. Some things I did know about shooting on green screen, the screen needed to be brightly lit, and it needed to be flat with no wrinkles. I got as close as possible with both. I used spotlights to light the screen, and I used flash bulbs to light the band.

The hardest part for me is to pose people, or rather direct them into a pose. I let them know that up front, and let them do their own thing, and I got some pretty decent photos as a result. I then put up a black background and did some low key shots, which I am more comfortable with. When we wrapped up, they had gone outside and I went out to show them a couple of the good shots, and noticed how great the sun was outside, so we went to a neighboring field and got some shots.

Here are some of the final results:

The first is one of the outdoor shots (obviously). I used my favorite filter, Melancholytron from Flaming Pear. The second I filtered with VirtualPhotographer. The third is a comp of five photos. The first is a planet landscape I created a couple months ago. It was curved so I flattened the ground. I then pulled each member off the green screen and placed them in the scene. I added a shadow, and then darkened their right sides to make it fit a little more into the scene.

Sparatica photos on SmugMug.
Sparatica MySpace page.