Shooting Promos with SHYforSHY

Okay, so a few weeks ago, I was walking to my microeconomics class, and my phone goes off. I get a text that reads, "Hey Jesse, I'm Steven from ShyforShy, and we'd like to talk to you about your photography work." or something along those lines.

And I'm like O: !! I've been listening to this band since 11th grade. Hold up. Is this real? Where's Ashton? Sure enough, it was ShyforShy, and they wanted me to do their promos for their upcoming shows — posters, fliers, online, etc. Pretty sweet gig, if I do say so myself.

ShyforShy invited me to their show at El Corazon on January 28th to hang out and shoot some live photos. Here's a couple of my favorites from the night:

So, on Sunday, February 6th, we did the promo shoot in Suzallo Library at The University of Washington.

And of course, things went wrong. As soon as I set up my lighting equipment, I was approached by Suzallo Library staff, asking who I'd gained permission to shoot from. My first instinct was to say, "WHAT? I need permission to shoot in this library, which is public property, built by taxpayer dollars? HELLO. We're all taxpayers. I think we should be able to shoot in OUR library."

And of course, I didn't say that. I was nice, respectful, and harmless, so they granted me about an hour to shoot, as long as I tried to stay out of everyone else's way. Except for totally blocking the Grand Staircase and even setting up my own signs directing foot traffic away from my "set," I think I complied. :P

I shot SHYforSHY's promos as a composite, in order to gain more control over the lighting, since the set wasn't exactly cooperative, and I only had two lights.

Check it:

Yeah, that's basically how I shot that. Then with some ridiculous photoshop magic, I layered them all over each other, and did my best to make it convincing. I also did some cool texture stuff, and then my basic, signature J. Rogers editing tricks to give it an edgy feel.

In the end, I came up with this:

So, after being surprised and honored to have been chosen to do SHYforSHY's promo shoots, and almost getting kicked out of my one and only location idea, I'm calling it a success.

SHYforSHY is five really awesome guys who actually write amazing music. Seriously, I don't always like the music my clients play, so this was a big plus for me. For real, go check them out. Fan them right HERE.

Special thanks to Sang Cho for letting me borrow his strobe for rim lighting. I'm going to invest in some Alien Bees in a couple months. Pretty excited about that.

Thanks for reading, everyone! I'm heading off on an adventure to a Buddhist Monastery next Sunday, and after that, I'm starting some... *drumroll*... video work. O:

Until next time.

Stay well, and God bless.
J Rogers