OK. ; My son and his friends have formed a band. ; The name - "I head banged with Ghandi" ; How they came up with this name I will never know. Anyway, they want me to takes pics of the band tomorrow as they practice in our garage. ; BTW, the county police have already made a visit to the house after some non-musical people complained. ; (Well, don't blame them as they were very loud and it didn't sound like any music I ever heard.) ; They don't have a singer, they have a screamer as the lead. ; So, I have never done this before and would like to see if any of you have suggestions as to how to go about this shoot. ; The garage is finished and painted white, although it is dirty white, after all it is a garage. Thanks for any comments.
first for your own sanity, have them just mime playing/ and or screaming use a flash, diffused and reflecting off ceiling/other walls as an indirect bounce, if it's nice and sunny maybe open the door, if sun is coming inside set up some cardboard with tinfoil applied, this is the poor man's reflector, gold is better, but it's hard to find gold foil in sheet rolls, the gold warms things up without so much brightness experiment a lot, without actually being there it's kind of hard to define what's going to do better, but the above should be a good start
I'll second the earplugs... ; You could also have them play without the amps or microphones turned on. ; That way only the drummer has to fake it. Here's an interesting post on Scott Kelby's blog. ; A couple of months ago he did a photo shoot for a rapper, and got some really interesting results by running the photos through a photoshop plugin. ; Here's the links: Part 1: http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/2946 Part 2: http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/3356 Part one shows the outdoor shoots and the lighting setups, but they are pretty involved. ; It also talks about the plugin. ; Part 2 shows some indoor shots taken with one light above the rapper's head. ; Kelby used a beauty dish, but shooting a flash through a pillowcase would give a similar result. ;
This may be way beyond what you want, but pro John McMurtrie has many photos of different bands on his site at http://picturedesk.co.uk/. ; There are no technical tips, but it's always fun to try and learn from people who know what they're doing.
Band pics put on hold. ; Got called into work at last minute so more time to plan. ; I like the idea of no amps, but the drummer is my son and we are used to his constant banging on his drums and anything else within arms reach. ; Actually, he is alot of fun to watch.