Two weekends ago, I had a really awesome time shootingpictures of the alternative rock band “Antimano”.One of their guitar players, Tati, is a close friend and she invited me toconceptualize the art for their album cover and leaflet. They are launchingtheir EP this month, and I’m really excited for them.
 
Their album is called “Satellites” and as soon as I heardthe word I wanted to interpret it almost literally. We did two sets…
 
The first idea was to capture the band as they seem to defygravity, like satellites hovering above ground. I asked them to jump in syncover and over, set my shutter in burst, and picked the best moments that’llmake it to the final set.
 
The second concept was inspired by SaсhaGoldberger’s serial work on “Grandma Mamika”. I found his collection quiteamazing and knew I had to try that out after seeing it for the first time. So,I photographed the guys on ground, and later went around the location to shoothigh-rise building exteriors. Later in processing, I placed the cropped photosagainst the building backgrounds, and recreated the shadows and reflections tomake them appear as if they were actually standing or hanging out on the wallsin mid-air.
 
To tie the two sets together with a coherent look, I applied“anamorphic” lens flares –the kind that J.J. Abrams used on the TV seriesFringe, and the same kind of lighting found in the 2009 Star Trek movie. Ilearned that those flares weren’t visual effects at all; instead, they’re optical,quite real, and are achieved by placing cylindrical glass in front of the lenses.So no one really had a tutorial or Photoshop brush for recreating the effectdigitally. I had to base my flares on a screenshot from an episode of Fringe,and slowly built the light fractions on top of it, layer by layer until Iachieved a realistic flare. That was totally fun!

So here’s Antimano for you. Catch them during their EP launch at B-side, TheCollective, Makati City on September 23, 2011.