Photography | The Wake Up Call

Yesterday was a pretty special day because not only was it my brother’s birthday, it was also his album release date. It’s been such a long time coming for both of us! We’ve been doing music for so long that and it was just nice for me to witness his success in an area that we’re both so passionate about.

My brother, Jake is such a gifted singer, songwriter and producer and his album is breathtaking!

I was blessed to have the opportunity to not only shoot his album cover but also appear as a

featured artist on a few tracks and co-write some of the others. I am also credited as executive producer.

When it came to the initial album cover idea, Jake and I were completely stuck. We had a few brainstorms and knew that we wanted to do a portrait with a twist. We also wanted a link with album title, The Wake Up Call to the image without being too literal.

Jake thought of the idea of getting water splashed on his face. He spoke to his friend, professional photographer and retoucher Gregory Chong (check out his awesome portfolio here). He was the one who suggested using orange paint instead of water because it would be easier to photograph.

Gregory has also collaborated with my brother's project all the way from Hong Kong! Using my photo to create the artwork for Jake's promotional posters.

On the day of the shoot, Jake went out to buy £1 bottles of poster paint from The Works while I transformed my living room into a studio. The setup was pretty simple. I used the light from the ceiling light bulb to light the top of Jake's head and a work light to the side of him. This light is pretty hard, so it manages to pick up every detail. I used amy canon 70d on a tripod,with an inexpensive canon 50mm 1.8 lens.

The shooting process was a little more tricky. I had to apply a tiny amounts of paint to the top of Jake's head, then rush back behind the camera to take a shot. I kept doing this over and over in stages until the paint gradually started to drip down his face and shoulders.

I felt like we only had a certain window of opportunity to take the shot because the paint was constantly changing shape and form.

In the end, it all just worked out perfectly. Even the way the paint framed his head and face just looked perfect!

I'll be sharing some more of the photos I took that day in a later post. For now, you can check out my brothers' album on Spotify or you can download it from iTunes !

Before & after