Since ‘Covers,’ Daniel Boud and my joint show at Mart earlier this year, a few new covers have been added to the list, so, here are some of them.

If you’re into photography, and what goes into making these covers, read on! Some behind the scene pics, how we made the Cloud Control kids tiny enough to fit on a model train set, and wrapping North Maroubra cliffs in a big stripy tarp.

So, here we go. I thought I might go through the process of these 3 shoots in particular, to show you what goes into making a cover for street press. There are a few golden rules:

1. make sure the subject(s) is clearly visible (though sometimes it’s nice to flip this rule this on it’s head)
2. leave plenty of space for the masthead and the bottom inserts
3. the image has to be clearly visible from far away, so nothing to complex or distracting.

Tame Impala cover:
Originally I wanted to make an infinite kaleidoscope with the boys, which coincidentally, is what their album cover is based on.

So, we shot each band member on green screen, and played around with the kaleidoscope effect. In the end, it was a little too complex (see rule 3 above), for a mag cover, so we had to come up with a new plan, with the images we had shot already. A little daunting, seeing as I had shot each member separately, specifically for the kaleidoscope. So, I pulled out some of my favorite travel and landscape shots, and played around with layering the boys on top.

Here are the backgrounds we had to chose from, and the final result. The first three are from a series called ‘Pinhole,’ taken from a plane window during my last trip to Europe at the end of 2009. (which reminds me, I still have to upload all my photos! From Paris, Athens, the Greek Islands and London….keep posted!)

And these are some shots from the Nevada and Calofornia desert, shot during my trip in 2008.

And this is the end result. We made two. One for Sydney Drum Media, and one for Melbourne Inpress

Now, to the Dead Letter Circus shoot, far less complex in post-production, but where you save time in post, often you put it in on the day of the shoot. Justin, my brother and co-conspirator took a 6 x 12m yellow and white tarp to the cliff tops at Maroubra, and proceeded to ‘wrap’ the sandstone formations. Sounds pretty simple huh? Well, not quite. To hold the tarp down, we took some 20 shot bags (photo speak for sand-bag), each weighing around 10kilos. I could barely move my arms for the following 3 days as a result. And, although 6 x 12 sounds pretty large, once you put it next to the shear scale of a cliff, it becomes somewhat dwarfed.

This is me, showing you how big it was. The one that got away.

And here is Justin, with the tarp in our first setup. See his triceps? Big workout. And look at how tiny the tarp looks? We didn’t end up shooting this one, for that reason.

We decided to move the tarp, and the 200kilos of shot bags to a smaller part of the cliff, so as not to dwarf it quite so much. This is the final result.

And finally, the last cover of this epicly long post: CLOUD CONTROL!

Firstly, I just want to say, I love this band. First discovering them one drunken night, when Dan and my pal Imogen watched Rage into the early morning, their song Death Cloud sang a sweet melody that instantly caught my attention. Anyway, enough gushing, back to the cover photo!

So, looking at their artwork, by the lovely ladies at Greedy Hen for their forthcoming album, I wanted to play around with the motifs of Swiss Alps and miniatures. Off to HobbyCo I go! When I studied architecture, I used to have to go there to buy balsa wood, 1:100 turf, woodchips, clay and other model-making equipment, and I remembered they had some awesome train model sets. I was thinking of shooting there, but seeing as I could buy my own mountain with train tunnel, why the hell not?

Justin spent about a half a day perfecting the model, adding turf for the foreground, maples, conifers, shrubs and a couple of cute deers. I then shot each band member separately, in many different poses and angles, shot the model from every which angle, and placed it all together in post.

Here are shots of the model without band and background. I had to shoot it from all angles, and tried many different lighting techniques, some to emulate daylight, others to make it look like the whole scene, and band were lit from the moon in the background.

In the end, the mag chose the daylight pics ( back to rule 3 again), but I have included the nightime shots, to show you the totally different feel you can get from a simple change in the lighting setup.

Here are some more treatments we worked on for the inset.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this pictorial story on shooting for Street Press covers! Any questions, hit me.