We discovered 1950's albums were typically composed of colour illustrations and/or black and white photographs, whilst the 1960's began to feature vibrant, colour photography. We began to think about why this might be the case and looked into when colour photography actually became available. Although the three-colour process saw development in the late 1800's, it wasn't until the late 1950's that colour photography became more accessible to the general public (although this was still reserved for special occasions due to the expense). In 1963, Polaroid developed the first instant colour film - from there on colour photographs were considered the norm.
The majority of 1970's albums we looked at were very different to the 1960's albums we studied. Quite the opposite in fact: they mostly featured black and white photographs, dull colour photographs or simple illustrations. One theory we put forward for this change was the fact most bands (and artists in general) of that time were being treated in rehab after the liberal use of drugs in the 60's era. The 70's also heralded another economic depression - perhaps the combination of these two events reflected in the artwork produced.
The 1980's were vastly different yet again - this time featuring various 'quirky' illustrations and photographs designed to 'break the mould'. This reflects greatly in the style of music at the time, with the increased popularity of punk rock.
We eventually chose Frank Zappa's 'Hot Rats' as we were immediately drawn to the pinkish hue of the picture, specifically with how that effect was created.
After some further research into the 'Hot Rats' cover photo, we discovered that the original photography was done by Andee Nathanson - a popular band photographer of the 60's. In order to create the pink hue seen on the photo, she used colour IR (Infrared) photography - something we were keen to try and replicate. However we, discovered most digital cameras have filters on the sensor which protect against UV and IR light (as these wavelengths interfere with convential photography). We did try and source an IR lens for the Canon 40D, however the lenses cost upwards of £75 and without extensive modification of the camera's filters they can be quite 'hit and miss'. Instead we opted to shoot our image in RAW format and then replicate the IR effect by using the modifying the photograph's levels & settings. Our equipment consisted a Canon 40D camera, a 17-85mm lens and a camera tripod.
This is the original artwork for the front cover, the inner booklet and the back cover:
We captured the photos in RAW format to preserve as much of the image quality and information as possible for use in editing. This helped us to perform extensive modification to the photographs that would be used for the front and back covers of the album, specifically to replicate the colour IR effect. These are the settings we used to acheive this:
- Temperature adjusted to 5250
- Tint increased by +136
- Exposure increased to +1.20
- Recovery set to 0
- Fill Light set to 39
- Blacks reduced to 5
- Brightness increased by +28
- Contrast increased by +58
- Clarity remains unchanged
- Vibrance increased by +64
- Saturation reduced by -8
Next, we desaturated several photos to achieve a greyscale effect. We also increased the grain roughness and amount before applying a slight
tint to the portrait photo of Frank Zappa. Finally these photos were
cropped, scaled and arranged into their final positions to make up a collage of "behind the scenes" photographs.
These final images were optimised as JPEG files with a 500px height and width. The image quality was reduced to between 40 and 50 percent (depending on the original image) in order to meet the file size
requirement of 50K - fortunately this reduction in quality doesn't negatively affect the
finished piece.
The final images we managed to produce:
The front cover closely resembles the original apart for a few minor details. The photograph is a medium-close shot of the subject crouched inside a concrete pit. The subject has their face partially obscured, with their hands positioned on the lip of the concrete edge. In the background can clearly be seen plants and greenary, as well as an abandoned three-story house. The entire image is tinted pink in the same style as the original album cover.
The reverse of the album features a similar photo taken from a slightly different perspective and zoomed out from the subject. Also featured is a track listing, barcode and relevant copyright information. The inner booklet features a collage made up of a guitar amplifier close-up, 'behind the scenes' photos of Frank Zappa, plus track listing and credits.
Overall I feel the project went really well. We had very few problems - our main concern was not having access to an IR lens or camera but we managed to resolve this by altering the photograph's levels within Camera RAW. Location hunting was also key to this project in order to pull of the right look. However, it took an awful lot of time to find anything that even resembled the original photograph - and even then it wasn't perfect.
