Music Album (Part 1)

How to Shoot Music Album Covers

Written on the 22^nd of February, 2023

I got a call from my friend, Hussein Roumani, who is a talented rapper known by his stage name, Manello. He reached out to me because he needed striking images for his upcoming music album cover to promote on social media. While the specific theme for the shoot wasn't clear to me at first, I had a strong intuition that he was interested in incorporating vibrant lighting colour gels to create visually striking imagery.

I photographed Manello in various setups and themes. I started with simple low-key images, moved on to high-key photographs, and concluded with colourful shots using complementary gels. You can find most of these themes in this blog series.

I started with a low-key one-light setup.

I cropped the image to a 1:1 aspect ratio, which is the standard for a music album cover.

The Gear I Used

Here is the lighting setup for this image:

I hope you learned a lot from this blog. If you are interested in a one-on-one training session, drop me a direct message on my Instagram account.