One of the most fun and creative jobs we have each month is the cover of Show Me magazine.  We’re so fortunate that the editor, Lee, allows us the freedom to run with a lot of our crazy ideas (and in this case, we were fortunate to find Jake – a subject willing to have a huge chunk of his hair SHAVED – for real – not Photoshopped!).  Looking forward to Wednesday, when we’re photographing the August cover (hint: it involves duct tape!).A little behind the scenes of how this cover came to be…

Here’s the location at “The Club” barbershop in downtown Joplin.  As you will see in the upcoming shots we moved a few things around and simplified the background a little bit so as not to take away from the subjects (yep, even those handsome muscle man pics!).Next we begin the process of testing to get the lights just right.  Notice when we’re working with mirrors that we tend to have ISSUES!!!  Thanks to Skip for being our test model!We’re also working on placement for the pose.  When photographing a magazine cover, you’ve got to think not only about the lighting, impact of the image, and the message you want to communicate, but also spacing for placement of the masthead and other text.  Agh!And although you never see it, we do go through several variations of BAD lighting before we hit on just the right combination.  The flash for the background was obviously waaaay too bright here, and we ended up using it on the right side of the image so it not only illuminated the background, but provided some additional fill light on our subject.  Also notice the reflection of our light on Bob’s photos from when he served in the Navy.  We definitely wanted those to show up… another problem spot!Last minute clean-up!  Notice in the top right the Norman Rockwell print of “Shuffleton’s Barbershop”.  That just happens to be the image that was my original inspiration for wanting to do a session in a barber shop!  Coincidence?  I think not. : )An outtake with Bob and his son Skip.  Had to do something with them together!
And now we get down to the final image with Bob the Barber and Jake, our brave dad.  The left is the image straight out of camera – the right has been edited in Lightroom.We then pull the image into Photoshop to remove some distractions from the background, do some digital dodging and burning and apply some of our special “mystery sauce” to prepare the final image for the cover.Voila!And now for the game our kids like to play… from the original image to the final cover shot – how many changes can you see?

Thanks so much to our friends Bob and Skip from The Club barbershop and to Jake – who let us damage his image for the sake of a good laugh (always worth it in my book).  You guys were the best!