I had just arrived in Vegas when I got a text from one of my most frequent clients - Extra. Extra is a Hip Hop Recording Artist based in NYC. He was referred to me about 2 years ago from another client. Since then, we've done about 4 photo shoots and I've designed his website. He's been one of my most loyal clients so of course I had to answer his call while I'm on vacation.
Extra was about to begin working on his next project entitled, "Blue October" and asked me if I could take a few photos and design the cover art. I said sure, so we set a date for the shoot.
2 weeks after I came back from vacation, Extra double checked to see if we were still on for the shoot and if I had any ideas for the cover. We were good for the shoot, but I didn't have a clue what I was going to do about the cover. I looked at images from past shoots & ran to Pinterest (I freaking live on Pinterest) for inspiration. My "shmoke & a pancake" Pinterest board caught my eye immediately. I had already owned a blue smoke bomb, which was perfect because of the album title and I've really been wanting to use it for a shoot. I texted him to tell him my idea and he loved it!
The day of the shoot, I was super excited. I had been on a hiatus dealing with life and this was the first photo shoot I've done in a while. Out of everything I do for work, I enjoy photography the most. Creative shoots especially make me extremely happy. Extra chose an outdoor basketball court in Bushwick, Brooklyn for the shoot. I was kind of nervous to shoot there because the court is right next to a school park in a residential area. I didn't want anyone to be alarmed by the smoke bomb and call the cops or something. Lol. I've only used a smoke bomb once for a music video I shot and I was all the way in no-man's land in the middle of winter. No people. No cops. When we got to the basketball court, I scoped out the place (because I was so nervous) to make sure there were no snitches, proper shade and lighting and a cool enough background for the photos. I took some test shots to make sure my camera settings were right then told Extra all the rules while dealing with the smoke bomb. He pulled the keyring and boom - it didn't work. 😡 Then he reattached the keyring to the wire and pulled again. This time, it was successful.
So happy about the way the images turned out. I processed them in Lightroom and designed the cover art in Photoshop. Extra's EP will be released in October and I'm happy I got to be apart of the process. See more the images from the photo shoot below.
