Sketch It Out First (part two)

Ari Picker, Pittsboro, N.C., 2010

Honestly, there really is something special about this place and the community of talented musicians who call it home. Working for the Independent Weekly has given me the opportunity to spend copious amounts of time listening and making portraits with a great deal of them. A few strong friendships and long nights have resulted. One local act, Lost In The Trees, recently signed with ANTI- Records out of L.A., home to one of personal favorite people on the planet, Mr. Tom Waits. One way or another they ended up giving me a call to do a round of promotional photos for the band’s new album being re-released sometime this summer.

I must say, It’s nice to get a call from a client to photograph someone you already know. Ari Picker, the leader, arranger and motivation behind Lost In The Trees, sat down for a portrait shoot with me nearly two years before. We sat down for a few and started sketching out some ideas and talking about the motivation for this album, Alone In An Empty House. As the title suggests, it’s a heavy record of sorts, written by Ari after his much beloved mother passed away last year. So how to pay respects to this and still make a compelling image to promote a little-known band on a national level? As Ari pointed out, it’s fairly similar to the challenge of performing a song written from a deeply personal place for total strangers, night after night. Enter the rough sketch.

Photographing one person well can be challenging, six people is just damn difficult. This idea, the yarn idea, was an attempt to involve and connect everyone in the band. The sharp things would be symbolic of the difficulty in trying to meld together so many strong personalities. Plus, two of the band members sew wild yarn creations while they’re on the road together. I had made some quick chicken scratches of the idea during our meet-up, Ari sent me this sketch afterward to help keep us on the same page. We wanted it to be dramatic, sweeping and complex, so I started looking through some works from the old dutch masters.

Frans Hals – ‘Officieren van de Militie van Sint Adriaan’

If ol’ Frans could make 14 well-dressed dudes all look sharp as a cheshire cat, well then, bring out the big lights. We were still in need of a good interior location about 18 hours before go time. Luckily mi amigo Nick H.J. had just acquired a crazy beautiful old house in Durham – double points for no furniture to move. This was the third set-up of the day (I’ll post the other two as well as additional images from the shoot on my archive site once the album and promotional campaign for their album is well under way) so most everyone was showing signs of fatigue, nothing a few six packs couldn’t fix. See if you can spot the two Utica Club bottles.

Everyone nailed their looks and outfits for this one. The duds were a source of much consternation prior to day of shooting, which made me consider have a fashion consultant on hand or even on set. I have been known to rock overalls and sandals from time to time, so having another person focused simply on the fashion could help out tremendously on set, though everyone here ended up matching quite well. Knowing where to have everyone look and what motivation they should be playing on came through some trial and error, but mostly because everyone was comfortable being photographed by that point in the day. A playful sort of mood was on set, just the thing you hope for when you’re trying to sync up a group just right. I’d like to play on this idea some more in the future, for a music video perhaps.

Big props must go out to Jason Arthurs for assisting me on this job. It really pays to have another photographer with you to bounce off ideas and last minute audibles. Here’s a behind the scenes photo of Jason pulling out all the stops to deliver folks back from the floating dock shot earlier in the day. Ridiculous.

Related posts:

1. Sketch It Out First (part one)