The Art of Selling the Story: Mental Meltdowns
INTRODUCTION
Hey everybody. A couple of years ago I had a show here in Mobile called “The Art of Selling the Story.” I displayed a selection of my favorite covers from Lagniappe, the local magazine where I work as Chief Photographer. With the photos I also included a plaque that detailed the creative and technical process behind each cover. I hope to do this with this blog.
THE ART OF SELLING THE STORY
“Mental Meltdowns”
The feature story for this week’s issue deals with schizophrenia. We tried to come up with a respectful way of illustrating this mental illness in the editorial board. I explained the idea of having several emotional expressions from the same model cut into fourths and mashed together. I was trying to illustrate the idea of insanity and thought the different facial expressions would be a good way to get that idea across
Gideon Carson Kennedy, a local filmmaker, was my model for the shoot. This is his third time as a cover model but the first time I did not hide part of his face (well, sort of).
The many faces of Carson
I had Carson display a list of emotions. The lighting setup was a pretty basic. One light with a soft box and a reflector on the opposite side and a grey backdrop get the job done. (Special thanks to my friend Lyle for hanging out and holding my reflector).
I put together four different expressions in Photoshop.
A little weird, huh?
I put stark colors for each fourth to help them stand out more. My thinking was that by highlighting the differences between each section it would make the overall image more pleasing to the eye then trying to force them together. The bright colors are also an easy way to grab potential readers eyes while on the newsstand (and yes it’s a bit of nod to Warhol).
I tried just getting two expressions and putting them together in case my editors thought the multicolor one was too much.
My editors thought my multicolor version was good, but liked the idea of just using two different expressions. I ended up getting the “angry” look and the “composed” look from my alternate cover above and cut it into fourths and added a color to each square.
The choice of red for part of the “angry” photo is pretty obvious. I couldn’t think of another color for the other “angry” part, so I picked green as an ode to the Incredible Hulk. The colors for the “composed” look don’t have any association for me. I just went with what worked.
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Awesome work as always. You are truly an amazing talent.