Album Cover Recreation: The Queen is dead by The Smiths: Digital Vs Analogue.

Whilst researching the work of Andy Earl, I tried to use his work as inspiration for the album cover I was going to be shooting. I noticed he'd shot the cover for This is My Truth Tell me Yours (below) by the Manic Street Preachers, an album I purchased on the first day of its release back in September 1998, and I was interested in recreating this, but it would have been difficult to find three blokes on the day.

It wouldn't be amazingly difficult to reproduce this, but I suppose I would be struggling to find a beautiful landscape such as this around Didsbury. I did think of doing it in a car park, but deemed this an insult to the original.

So I went home looking at all my old CDs, and after some hours scratching my head (not constant: I did do other stuff in between), I came up with the near- perfect choice: The Queen is Dead by The Smiths. This would work both creatively (it was just one man lay down in the darkness) and thematically (John Kiely had already drafted his own brief based on Manchester's musical heritage, culminating in a visit to see Kevin Cummings' photographs of the band itself).

The Original: The Smiths' 1986 album, The Queen is Dead

 I'll start with another link. Like Andy Earl's reworking of Manet's Le déjeuner surl’herbe, The Smiths were renowned for featuring Hollywood idols and other celebrities on their album covers (Pat Phoenix springs to mind here), again playing on the link between music, photography and popular culture. The Queen is Dead album cover features the actor Alan Delon in the 1964 French film  L'Insoumis (so slightly more arty than Pat Phoenix here then). This fits well with the band's target audience: Morrissey was big on literary references (a massive fan of Oscar Wilde), tapping into the existential angst of his acolytes. Somewhat ironic, in today's digital age, where these images and ideas are mass produced and mass printed wholesale. To quote the Manics themselves: "rebellion always sells at a profit" (1)

The idea (or: how?)
Its more than just a man lying down. The facial expression and posture of the model would have to reflect the foppish elegance that Delon seems to exhude here (much like Morrissey himself). Who would the model be for a start? (2). There is a lot of blacks, darks and shadows in the image (subtext: that's practically all it is), so it was important for the model to be wearing something dark (I did think of allowing Richard to use my coat, but a North Face jacket was the opposite of what I was looking for). The shot is obviously a film still, meaning something would have to be done to give the impression of grain that is so prominent in the image, so this (and the darkness in the shot) would need to be controlled in some way during post-processing (more about this later).


The Shoot

"I’m a firm believer that as much as possible should be done on the camera, during the shoot" (Andy Earl)  

I used my Nikon D3100 with my Sigma 50-200mm f4-f5.6, for I knew I decided the 50mm (which would give an effective length of 75mm on a full frame or analogue 35mm camera) would include all I needed in the frame, when stood in and around 4ft away from my model. I used Spot Metering. There was a time where I used this as my default for accuracy. I used it here for the same reason, for I knew I would be shooting from close quarters, thus treating the model like an object, as opposed to a person that makes up a wider scene (reason: there was no wider scene).  

The main thing to consider was the type of lighting required to recreate the mood. The studio was booked on the day of shooting, so our group set about transforming our regular classroom into a makeshift studio, making the Health and Safety issues discussed in my previous post all the more pertinent. A black background (hard matte black paper in a roll) was suspended from two chunky crocodile clips on the far side of the room where the windows are. We chose black as most of the other albums my classmates planned on shooting that day were to be of a similar ilk (e.g. Andy's The Chronic by Dr. Dre). 

  For mine, I needed a black sheet on the floor for Richard (my model) to lie on, and by a strike of luck, this was found in the studio itself (someone's old bed sheet by the looks of it). It needed to be placed randomly to accentuate the folds, so the light could pick up the shadows in said folds. This was relatively simple, meaning it was just a matter of deciding on which light/modifier to use, directing Richard and positioning myself in terms of getting the right camera angle and perspective. I must have misunderstood where the light was coming from at first (see below). 

Camera Settings: f5.6, 1/100th, ISO100, 50mm, spot metering,
Lighting: soft box positioned to the left above Richard's head.
This was the first shot I took of my model, hence why his head is out of frame.
I used the soft box by mistake here, meaning the light was too soft, and not contrasty enough to bring out the shadows. This wasn't helped by the wide aperture or the fact the light was positioned too high.

Try to imagine the model lay down here. I'd also like you to imagine the soft box high above the model, thus rendering the light way too soft.

Camera:  f11, 1/125th, ISO100, 50mm.
Lighting: Deep reflector placed to Richard's right (my left), low down, aiming at Richard's brow, thus sending the rays across his hands a la the original. Got a fuzzy feeling inside when I seen this result, for I knew I'd hit the jackpot, and wouldn't be messing around for ages.
However, the composition still needs work here. I was stood too close to the model, and needed more of his lower half in (below).

Camera: Same
Lighting: Same
This is much better in terms of what is in the frame, but for some reason Richard tilted his head up towards the light. I mustn't blame him too much: he was generally very compliant.

Basically just replaced the soft box with the deep reflector here, and took it off its stand so it would be literally next to Richard's head.

All settings the same.

This was the one I eventually went with because of it nice balance between where the model is within the frame, where the light is falling and where the hands are in relation to one another. It is not perfect: in the original we can see more of Alan Delon's right arm. Progress not perfection.

Post-Processing

1)  I started by duplicating the background layer, selected a black brush, and started painting over the areas that were dark in the original.

Obviously, this is way too explicit.

2) Because the black was too explicit, I applied a white mask to the duplicated layer and, with a mix of opacities, revealed what was underneath to lessen the effect.

A lot more subtle here, but the process was a drawn out one, and reliant upon trial and error.

  3) Then I turned it into a monochrome image by adding a Black and White adjustment layer.

Getting there I'd say

4)  Looking at the original, there seems to be a milky texture to the (35mm) film negative used (3). Indeed this milkiness (my word) was said to look green by a friend of mine (again to do with the negative used), so:

I added a Curves layer, selected only the Green channel, and took the bottom left-hand corner of the curve (darks/shadows) up slightly, giving just a slight green tint to the image (to the point of most laymen not being able to notice it).

Maybe if you look closely

5) The main issue was recreating the film grain, so I used an online tutorial (4) I found on this. I'll try to talk you through it:

i)  I filled the layer with 50% grey (Edit > Fill > Use: 50% grey).

ii)  I then changed the blend mode of the layer to Overlay.

iii) Then I turned the whole layer into a Smart Object, enabling me to make non-destructive changes to it as if it were a separate image and not a layer.

iv) Next was to add Noise to the layer/smart object (Filter > Noise > Add Noise > set to 400%).

v) Then I had to blur the noise so it looked like film grain and not just digital noise   (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur: turned right up till I was happy with the result). Et Voila!

Of course then I had to turn the thing into an actual album cover with text etc. Turns out the size of an album is around 4.75 x 4.75 inches, so I just created a black canvas of this size, and then used the Clone Tool to clone the grain texture over the rest of the black canvas I then reduced the size of my finished image to fit into it, thus leaving room for the text. It took a while to decide which font and which colour I needed (arduous process using the colour picker). According to a very obsessive Smiths forum (5) (of which there are many), the font used was Bodoni. I couldn't find this in Photoshop, so I had to make do with Cambri instead.

The Finished Article & Evaluation

  Overall, I am happy with the amount of work I put into this album cover, and also happy with the end result. Although, me being me, I am not ecstatic. From the comparison above, you can see my reproduction pushes all the right buttons in terms of composition, lighting used and the the angle of view I have chosen, but there's just no mimicking of the movie still feel (6). This is testament to the major differences between film negative and digital photography. A while back, our tutor John Kiely asserted that, what we create with our dSLR cameras is- not photographs- but digital images. Initially, I thought this was aimed at undermining everything we have don digitally, but after this experience, I can wholeheartedly agree that digital can never be be as organic (7).  

  I still think it would make a decent album cover for a band, even if it doesn't fully pay homage to The Smith's penchant for the cultural reference. I'm thinking here of other Manchester bands that have built their image using darker, more moody, imagery. With the photography of Kevin Cummings and the designs of Peter Saville, Joy Division's album sleeves were darker and perhaps more iconic, which compares with the absolute blacks of my image. I'm also thinking of the likeness between mine and some of the film stills from Anton Corbijn biopic, Closer, with Sam Riley as Ian Curtis, who bares a vague likeness to Richard I'd say. 

Peter Saville's design for the cover of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (1979). This is probably one of the most influential album covers of all time, and fully represents the power of digital imagery.

A film still from Anton Corbijn's film, Control. In keeping with the band's image, Corbijn shot the whole of the film in black and white. Almost like a complete reproduction of the era, I don't think it would have been the same film had he shot it in colour.

This was the main image for the film's poster. Black & White has always been associated with creating mood.

The majority of Corbijn's work is in monochrome. He is responsible for helping to create some of the most well-known bands of the last three decades, including U2 (above), REM and Depeche Mode.

  

1) Taken from the song, 'Nostalgic Pushead', from the album Gold Against the Soul.
2) Thankfully, my tutor, Richard Gaskill volunteered for the role. God bless him.
3) Remember this is not strictly photography, more cinematography, which means they were working with motion-picture film emulsion. I could say more about this (like how the film processed using the spherical process, rather than the anamorphic, which gives the effect of what photographers call 'barrel distortion'), but I'm willing to make things easier for both me and my readers.
4) http://photoshoptutorials.ws/photoshop-tutorials/photo-effects/natural-film-grain/
5)  http://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/81172-Morrissey-Smiths-font
6) My Photoshop skills allowing, of course. I did research different ways of getting it to look grainy, but none really cut it.
7)  Our time spent learning about Large Format photography is a more pressing testament to this. Here we are expected to take control and understand everything about the photographic process, lending us greater insight into how photographs are made. We take this for granted with digital, where the settings and what's happening in-camera are more arbitrary facts and figures, and less about how the instrument is shaping the image.