Defeatem “Cut the Wire” Metal Album Promotional Images
It turns out to be surprisingly useful to have a guitar, some cables and an artificial skeleton lying around at home.
In 2021, I photographed promotional images for Cut the Wire, an album by Defeatem, a metal band from Valga, Estonia. The entire shoot took place on the floor of my living room in Saue.
Advertising photo featuring the album and the band’s T-shirt.
I built a simple setup around the album and its title, using things I already had at home as props. The guitar, cables and skeleton all found their way into the photos, and the improvised setup ended up fitting the mood of the album surprisingly well.
This was a bit like designing with a camera. I already had the final composition, text placement and doodles in mind while taking the photograph, so the photography and graphic design developed as one image rather than two separate stages.
The setup itself was surprisingly simple: a key light from camera left and a second speedlight with a red gel from camera right for the red rim light. The entire composition was built physically on a piece of black fabric on the floor. Don’t ask why I happened to have the skeleton readily available.
One small cheat: the T-shirt design was added in post, because the printed shirt wasn't available for the shoot.
Album Images
Photography of the completed CD case. Album design by Reio Raudheiding.
