Portraits for The Sky Is Broken
As seen in my latest post on Instagram and S̶n̶a̶p̶c̶h̶a̶t̶ Instagram Stories on Sunday, I did a fun little shoot with the band The Sky Is Broken. They’re a Jamaican rock band with some great, and unique(!) sounds. I shot portraits of them back in 2014 as a part of my final year project at the University of Technology, Jamaica, and I also did a shoot for their album art for the release of their EP, Tribes. It was a great experience working with them again.
Taffarie, the bassist, contacted me a little while back saying that they had a few ideas in mind for a shoot that involved the wilderness, and smoke bombs; somewhat vague, but still interesting! On Saturday morning we trekked to Portmore to scout a location close to Jam World and I took a few test shots to get a feel of the place. Not exactly what I was expecting, but we decided to make a go of it.
We got there on Sunday morning, got my gear set up, and with the help of fellow photogs Kid Bazzle and Stefan Ramdal, (Unik Fotografi) we got to work. Shoutout to Stefan for the behind the scenes shots!
Because I needed to overpower the sun (and I don’t exactly have a powerful strobe), I taped two speedlights together and shot them barebulb, and used circular polarizers to get the look I wanted.
After a few group portraits to get things started, we busted out the smoke bombs! Stefan would pull the pin and run across the frame (they lasted for approximately 1 minute) and I timed the shots to get the moment when the smoke looked most pleasing.
We did more or less the same for the individual portraits sans speedlight-use. All in all, the band was super happy with the final results, and I got some great shots. Click this link here to view the full album of portraits and don’t forget to check out the band’s Soundcloud page!