Photo for CD cover

I was asked to design and shoot a CD cover for a family. It was a nightmare shoot not because of the people but because of massive equipment failure. My strobes were not working so it was a nightmare. I had a speedlight on full blast behind them with a full CTO to act like the sun. Two speedlights in the front to light them inside the room . The wireless triggers kept failing so we had a lot of shots where the backlight would not work then it would fire and the front lights would not. Shooting is meant to be fun but this was pure frustration. I had a vision that I was not quite able to execute due to equipment malfunction. Anyway here is the end result.

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Here are the two CD cover ideas the client was thrilled with both choices.

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not a big fan of it.. tho it might work in the context of community where it will be released..

Yes this is not the hip Dave Hill style rap music garage band type stuff that I agree is fun to shoot but will work in their conservative circles this might even be considered pushing the envelope in their circles.

well, sam, i'dnt buy that cd even if cover shot was by david lachapelle
but its fine for family archive

Roman I understand thanks for the comment.

what triggers were you using?

I live in China and we can not get sky ports or pocketwizards we can only get Chinese no name brands very similar to cactus triggers from E-Bay when they work great when they don't frustrating.

not really feeling these... its more about the concept than anything. I'd so some outdoor stuff in a field or something like that.
1st - they are soft. OR it's just the way you resize your images for web.
2nd - the shot is boring... Yeah,man, sorry to say that but, this looks like some sort of a cheepy poster from the 80s. THere's no action, just a semi-ugly family smiling lol jk

-mom's hair is on fire.
-poses look forced.

this looks a last minute shoot.

Sorry to hear you had such a frustrating time with the equipment. Hope next time it goes better for you.

One thing that jumped out to me on the 2nd design is that it looks like there is a spot by the left door (to the left of the boys eyes) that you missed selecting for the color change.

korrektor wrote in post #9654102
not really feeling these... its more about the concept than anything. I'd so some outdoor stuff in a field or something like that.
1st - they are soft. OR it's just the way you resize your images for web.
2nd - the shot is boring... Yeah,man, sorry to say that but, this looks like some sort of a cheepy poster from the 80s. THere's no action, just a semi-ugly family smiling lol jk

-mom's hair is on fire.
-poses look forced.

this looks a last minute shoot.

agree

Any chance you can replace that bright blown out area behind them with something that will make the people "jump" out a little more? Right now that background is just so harsh to view. It's usually best to make your subject be the brightest part of the image and that's not the case here.

not feeling this one as well... it doesn't help that this family scares me.
..but wait a minute? You live in China? Did you shoot this in China as well?
Sorry just not the typical looking Chinese family!

Thanks for the comments guys. I guess you can't win them all. Misha this was a last minute shoot very last minute and they wanted something like this CLICK HERE We just did not have the facility to do the job correctly. I tried to talk them out of a photo all together and just go with a design but they really wanted a photo on the cover of their family so that is what we did.

Happy Snapper I have tried replacing the bright spot but everything looks fake and dropped in.

Sonic Zoom I am not sure why the family scares you but anyway they live in China as well and they are going home and want to have this CD ready to take back to the states as it is cheaper to produce these things here then in America.

For the record (or in this case CD :lol the family loved the first cover and want to go with that. I gave them a few more options but this is their favorite.

man this family piss me of .. they are jus so ... goody goody lmaoo