Locust
Posted by: David Arnspiger on January 26th, 2015
Locust is a Beatdown/Hardcore/Nu Metal band from Las Vegas, NV. I had recently photographed a band member's girlfriend, Sarah Sommer, as Wonder Woman. She introduced us. They asked me to take some moody shots of them around a grave in the desert for promotion of their band and first single.
One thing I have learned from doing band portraits is that invariably, one band member shows up who didn't get the memo on a cohesive look. Drive this point home with the band. Make sure they have discussed it. Get an email chain going with the whole band. It will serve you well.
For this shoot I set up in the dry lake bed south of Boulder City with the band. I used my two flash guns on remote triggers through my 24 inch softboxes.
We dug a fake grave in the hard soil and then wrapped my skeleton Bob in a sheet for a body. While it was not part of the plan to shoot on a cloudy day, we got one, so we made the best of it. Turns out it worked much better for the mood the band wanted to create and they were happy with the shots I provided. In fact, they used them on their Facebook page for promotion.
We did do a fun series of shots. We put padding in the bottom of the grave and had each band member fall backwards into the grave. While not all of the shots came out right, we did get a couple cool looking shots. There is one included below.
Overall I consider this shoot a success and the band was happy with the images. That is what is important.