Dairenn Lombard’s new project is ready to roll and be booked, but the band lacked any live photos demonstrating their theatrical, high energy show. Not to be deterred, we rented a showcase stage in Orange County and shot a day’s worth of photos of him performing.

Click here to see a short slideshow of selected images from the shoot.

Judging from our site traffic, the last set of baby pics were popular.  So here’s another awww-inducing photo set slideshow, this time of little infant Elizabeth sleeping sweetly in the night.

Baby photo shoots generally work the best when the parents stop fussing over the baby and the baby’s outfit and just let the baby be him or herself.  Infants are especially attuned to the moods of their parents, so if they sense anxiety they will be antsy themselves. Some parents think a pro photo shoot should result in something that looks like a school photo — posed with props.  But the best, most memorable photographs come from real situations, real life, real interaction with the baby.  A great outfit is a nice thing, but a really messy one can be even better…

A selection of photos of rock songwriter Will Bryant taken on location in downtown Los Angeles, where we were able to incorporate views of some of the gorgeous Moderne, Gothic, and Beaux-Arts bridges that bejewel what is otherwise a gritty industrial landscape.

In one of the samples attached, you can see the Sixth Street bridge, under which the famous drag race from the movie Grease started.

click here to see a short slideshow

When Rich McCulley approached us about creating a cover for his fifth Americana record “Starting All Over Again,” we jumped right into it.  This is our third album together now, and the last two have seen quite a bit of radio play and placement activity on TV and in film. 2009 was a tough year for Rich, in which he lost not only a close friend but also a former girlfriend, both of which were music partners too.  So this record carries the theme of loss and inevitable change, not always for the best.

Typically we begin with me listening to his master recordings and sketching out dozens of ideas, a process that works well for artists that don’t come with set image or theme ideas out of the box.  I keep my sketch pad handy in the car and in the studio and just spin the record as much as possible.  All in all I presented about 30 finished sketches to Rich and this one struck a chord right away:  a little toy house burning right to the ground.

We had some difficulty locating just the right plastic house, but finally an Echo Park 99 cent store turned up two packages of the structure seen on the cover, allowing us to burn one as a test and use the other for the final shots (and only cost $1.98).  As it turned out, both sets of shots yielded some great stuff, so we ended up using one set for an animated film on the splash page of his website, and the other for the cover.  Who would have thought it would be so tough to burn down a little plastic house?  But it is, probably for kid safety I suppose, and it took an entire box of wooden matches set aflame inside to get the houses burning correctly.

The inside photo was taken on a concrete staircase nearby to Rich’s recording studio, showing him in a reflective mood that matches the vibe of the record.  All the album notes fitted neatly under the cd face, allowing the rest to remain relatively untouched.  On the back cover we placed a closeup of a match, which also appears from a different angle on the cd face.  The texture and color of the asphalt adds a nice grey tone to the whole package.

This album drops on March 16, 2010 with a full press campaign, so listen for it on a station near you soon…

An 11″x 17″ concert poster for Americana artist Rich McCulley, featuring a photo taken by us in Los Angeles’ Echo Park neighborhood. This is intended to be printed in large quantities and reused, so there’s plenty of space for writing gig details in the middle, over the sidewalk (which had to be created out of thin air as the actual photo ends just below Rich’s feet).

There’s also a small bit of promo on the bottom for Rich’s upcoming record, for which we also did the art design and photography (our third collaboration!).  Look/listen for the new record “Starting All Over Again” on March 16.

A glance at a MySpace page for a prominent member of the Americana scene here in Los Angeles shows 5/20 of his “top friends” using photos taken by Duff Ferguson as their profile picture. Another 4 are clients, either for photos or art or both.

We’re proud to be such an integral member of this vibrant community.

This was a very fun 6 panel digipak (with 16 page booklet) project for Christian rockers Jesus Band Los Angeles, which is putting out this debut record this spring.  Their vision of the message of the Bible is not exactly a happy one for those “not in the fold,” so this artwork was intended to show a dramatic, somewhat terrifying world in which the cross appears as a saving grace.

No matter what your religious bent, you are sure to enjoy the heavily manipulated original images and photo collages I created for this package, showing famous LA landmarks (Capitol Records, City Hall, Union Station, the Hollywood Sign, etc) with crosses blazing out their windows and key Biblical verses replacing the familiar lettering, all underneath extremely forbidding and stormy skies.  It is a rare thing to see as much as a shred of cloud in Los Angeles, so of course there was a need to replace the skies with something more interesting. There was also some interesting touches thrown in at the suggestion of the band, including a plane flying over LA with a banner reading “Jesus loves Los Angeles,” a carpenter tacking up an addition to the Hollywood Sign, and lots of lightning.  You’ll see flaming letters, a blue planet crashing into the Earth, and more.

The band that will be touring the project is different from those heard in the studio (except for singer Pat Rettig), so there were two separate musician credit sections with pictures to be shown.  Sadly, we had only low res pictures to work with on the musicians, so there was a fair bit of editing that needed to happen to bring them up to snuff.

The LA landmark shots were originally photographed to be displayed in large format on the walls of a Los Angeles legal practice, and it was great to be able to extend their use here.  The shot of Union Station with the palm tree shadows is not a digital manipulation (though the landscape behind is of course) — I just caught the right moment of sunset when the tree aligned exactly with the clock.

The CD face has an aerial shot of the Los Angeles grid screened over black, and the letters of the band name cut through to the silver disc — a very powerful, impressive looking disc to hold in your hand.  Around the edge are the names of all the tracks, also cut through to silver.

Christian rock fans, keep your ears peeled for JBLA!

A small grab bag of recent baby and toddler images, including a couple of Santa Claus shots!

For a small slideshow, click here.

Photos of a new alternative medicine practice in Valley Village, CA, providing chiropractic care, acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage therapy, and more.

To see a full slideshow, click here.

Roots rocker Rich McCulley is readying a great new album for release early in 2010, with artwork underway here in the Amplitude studio.

For a recent photo session, we walked the gorgeous Echo Park neighborhood near his new location for Red Hill Recording.

To see a photo slideshow, click here.