Matt Jackson is a local singer/songwriter who I’ve worked with a few times over the last decade. The first time was to make photographs for his Prove You Wrong album (2010). Then I made some incredible photographs of Matt while he was recording at The Space in Lowell (2012). Matt did a lot of traveling since the last time I saw him and he lived in some really great places, but he recently moved back to the Nashua area and he’s been spending a lot of time getting things ready for his new album: GROWTH 101.
The album is very personal to him and very introspective. For the cover, Matt wanted his face emerging from the ground; growing up out of the earth. I met with Matt a few times prior to the shoot and we brainstormed some ideas of how we could do this. Photoshop was lightly discussed, but we both really wanted to physically do this session with tangible things; real dirt, real things that we could use so that the cover didn’t look overly processed or fake. Matt is all about things being real. I am too, so it’s a perfect match. We would also spell the name of the album out in wooden letters that we would place above Matt’s head. We both wanted this to be 100% real. Nothing fake or digitally inserted.
Matt also wanted some images that he could use for promotional and social media purposes, so we also scheduled a full portrait session on a separate day. We would get shots of Matt on white, on black and then we’d freestyle a bit during the session. He also wanted a head/shoulder headshot as well.
Matt brought this really great red shirt and I knew that it would photograph really well against a black background. I swapped the lighting around a bit and we got some gorgeous shots of him just bursting out of the background.
I then dropped a textured backdrop down and made my light simpler and more off to the side. I wanted to get some really nice, simply lit images of Matt standing and then sitting on a crate.
While Matt was changing I set his guitar up for a simply lit “still life”
TIME TO GET DIRTY
In order for us to be able to control the dirt we were going to use, Matt constructed a small planter box. Something smallish and square in shape - it needed to fit his head and roughly be the same height. We would place the dirt in and around his face and we’d clear some of it off.
I’ve never covered someone in dirt before and I was totally on board for this and ready to pour potting soil all over Matt’s face!
For my lighting I placed a light directly up and over where Matt’s face was going to be. I also put a small plastic ring light that I use for Zoom meetings at about the same level that the camera was going to be placed just to give his eyes a little catch light. It didn’t add much to the overall lighting, but just added a tiny bit of fill and dotted his eyeballs with a catchlight.
We did a few quick tests with the empty planter box to make sure everything worked. When we first placed the box over Matt’s head, there wasn’t enough space for his neck. The planter box was weighing down on his throat. Matt added a few little legs that would hoist the planter box off the floor and he cut a notch in the planter box so that it didn’t touch his neck in any way, giving him full ability to breathe.
Once we had the test lighting down and ew had everything gridded out, it was time to start dumping dirt all over Matt. I had to make sure I didn’t get any in his nose, as this was his main way of breathing since his mouth was going to be covered with soil.
Let the covering commence!
Because he couldn’t talk, if I had any questions Matt would blink once for yes and twice for no. Apart from my puppets I’ve never had someone so quite on my set before!
Everything worked like gangbusters. I had a small brush so that we could get the potting soil away from his nose. I would arrange things and then take a cell-phone shot to show him how everything looked and he’d give me his blink approval.
Using the little wooden letters worked like a charm, and after the images with Matt’s head were finished, I suggested taking some time and we could make a whole series of social media-related images using the square planter concept. We also planned to use this for the back of the cd release; the back would have the song titles done completely with the wooden letters.
Matt was a trooper through this whole session.
The GROWTH 101 EP was released on May 4, 2021
You can hear the EP wherever music is available digitally.
Visit Matt’s website.
Find GROWTH 101 on Amazon Music and Spotify.
Head on over to his Facebook page, his Instagram page and find him on Twitter.
Make sure you catch his Youtube page, where he streams virtual concerts usually every Friday evening.
I want to thank Matt for working with me. One fun little tidbit of information is that we practically did our session exactly 10 years to the day we both worked together for the first time. A decade apart. That’s pretty cool.
I’m glad Matt is still around making music after 10 years. I’m glad I’m still around to work with musicians to help them create visuals that they can use to help market and promote themselves. I really love these images of Matt that we made together. I can’t wait to work with Matt again on a future full-length album that takes the GROWTH 101 concept and pushes it even further. He’s making great music that asks tough questions and it’s an introspection that is worth the listen.
got any questions about my sessions with Matt? Got a comment? Want to talk music?
Leave a comment down below and let’s chat!