Have you ever wondered what goes into an album photoshoot?! Here is your inside scoop from an eager, although somewhat unknown, artist of what a professional photoshoot entails.
First there is the initial creative meeting. What is the creative direction? Are we going super hipster and making everything look like it’s from an old Polaroid camera? Are we going for a diva Beyonce studio thing? In that meeting I brought a few images like this one below to show what I wanted for this photoshoot:
After showing them the photos, words we used to describe the shoot were:
enchantment, natural light, fairytale, and forest.
So after deciding on what direction, we talked about who we would love to use for photographer, stylist, and hair and make-up artist. I am excited to tell you that all my #1 choices were available and willing.
So first came my meeting with my stylist, Samantha Roe, who I just adored from the instant I met her. After discussing direction, sizes, how I’ll never wear sleeveless etc, we planned a shopping day. Samantha also ordered a bunch of clothes online and shopped for me as well.
Shopping day/try on all the clothes day
A week before the photoshoot, my manager, my marketing team, and myself had a phone meeting with the photographers, Sarah Barlow and Stephen Schofield who shot none other than the last two Taylor Swift albums. NBD. Fun fact: Sarah Barlow is cousins with the Christian band from back in the day BarlowGirl.
Photoshoot Day!
I arrived around 8:30 after basically no sleep from excitement. The photoshoot location was an old house with a lot of land about 45 minutes outside of Nashville. My hair and make up artist Megan Thompson set up rows and rows of eye shadows, lipsticks, curling irons, and make-up brushes.
The photographers cranked up Beyonce’s “Lemonade” on their iPhones as we bustled from location to location. I asked to change the music to The Punch Brothers and later the Lord of the Rings soundtrack “Concerning Hobbits” title, because these L.A people already thought I was weird anyway.
We spent a couple hours shooting, changing outfits and hair and make-up about every 30 minutes till catered lunch. My favorite part about catered lunch is that I get to pick what I want, which always means tons of coffee, coconut water, and smart water. I’ll eat anything as long as I have coffee and coconut water all day.
Two weeks later the 1500 untouched pictures flooded my mailbox. I was in LA having lunch with my manager when I got them. I was freaking out! I looked so ugly!! And fat! Actually, I looked like a really done up version of myself, and the photos were amazing. We picked our favorite 100 or so. I completely disagreed with my label and management on certain ones. We agreed on many like this one:
Then we touched up the photo so it looks like this:
Now the world is ready to see the photos!
