Depeche Mode meets Deliverance

Wednesday was a really cool day. In the morning, I was the featured speaker at the “Apple Campus Lecture Series Photography Tour” in Philadelphia. I spoke for about an hour and a half – plenty of time to show some of my images and go through my Aperture workflow.

After the talk, I met innerpartysystem manager Stephen Penta for a two and a half hour drive to the band’s house in Mohnton, PA. Their music is hard to describe – sort of electronica with rock and metal influences. Depeche Mode meets Nine Inch Nails.

Mohnton is in the middle of nowhere. The four guys live together in this house and are pretty much surrounded by computers and keyboards all the time. It reminds me of my time as a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

In addition to managing the band, Stephen is also a video director so we spent the entire week before the shoot coming up with funky photo ideas. The guys didn’t want to do any traditional band photos, so we decided to play around with some old TVs and video cameras.

In one of my emails with Stephen, I mentioned that it might be cool if we had a smoke machine but I wasn’t sure where I’d get one out there. He responded with, “Of course we have a smoke machine!”

We put the guys in the house and I set up the TVs and my lighting in the backyard. I shot a few different arrangements, but this is my favorite image.

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