I’m going to go back in time a few weeks to recap my most recent shoot with The Hello Strangers. If you read my previous post then it’s no secret that my wife and I just had a baby. And if you have read earlier posts (like this one), then it’s also no secret that Larissa is one of The Hello Strangers. The reason this is important is because The Hello Strangers have a song called Pregnant in Jail. The song takes inspiration from a friend’s true story. No really, it does.
Here’s the chorus. “Pregnant in Jail, won’t somebody pay my bail, wastin’ away in a cell, I’m just Pregnant in Jail.” But, my favorite line of the song is, “Well these days ain’t sunny no more. With all these people talkin’ I’ll be damned if I’m a two bit whore.”
Last fall when it came to be known that Larissa was pregnant, Dave, the bass player of the band, asked if we were going to do a Pregnant In Jail photo shoot. We realized that this would be a great opportunity to bring this song to life in a photographic way. We decided to wait until Larissa was good and pregnant. The timing on this was tough because we didn’t want to shoot too early and we didn’t want to wait too long as the chances of going into labor increased. And, I definitely didn’t want my son to be born in a jail cell.
The most difficult part of the shoot aside from the timing was securing a location. We wanted something with bars that had a turn-of-the-century kind of feeling to it. Well that should be easy, right? All jails have bars. Unfortunately what you are used to seeing in the movies is not quite like most prison’s these days. To find our location I started by calling the mayor of my town since he works with our local police force on a regular basis. As a fan of The Hello Strangers, he agreed to help connect me with the Chief of Police. He informed the chief that I would be stopping by to take a look at the jail cell our small police office has. Unfortunately, the cell didn’t have the space or the look we needed to complete the shot, but the Chief sent me to another Chief a few towns over. I followed a few more leads like this until I finally ended up at the Old Jail in Chambersburg, PA. It was perfect. Black bars with white walls and officially closed to detaining prisoners. The Old Jail now houses the Franklin County Historical Society. If you’re ever on a road trip through PA and want to check out a fascinating museum be sure to stop in.
We had our location, and after some back and forth were able to schedule a suitable date for us to shoot. Now we needed wardrobe. Dave, the band’s master of disguise, happened to have a vintage prison uniform. We decided to maximize the use of this and have both Larissa and Brechyn wearing a piece of it. Obviously, we wanted to show off Larissa’s belly so she wore the pants while Brechyn wore the jacket.
Now for style and concept. The protagonist in the song is tough, yet sensitive. She’s been dealt a tough hand, but has to keep moving on. Larissa and Brechyn already know their part because they wrote and perform the song regularly. As with all of our shoots, they make my job much easier by quickly getting into their part. As for light, the location actually had some beautiful natural light. Most of my previous shoots with the band had been much more heavily lit, but for this particular scenario I wanted to use as much natural light as possible. This served a double purpose as it helped us to move a little more quickly (see above about not wanting to have my son born in jail) and it gave the photos a feeling of authenticity.
I love photographing bands because of the collaborative nature of the photos. All of my projects are collaborative, but band photography really does extend that collaboration by merging music with photography. We take the creativity of the music and bring its visual form into existence.
That same creativity and process can be applied to all the work I do. There is creativity all around us. It’s in our schools, hospitals, backyards, local pub, etc. It’s everywhere and I see my job as being that of explorer, and of problem solver. Each place presents its own unique set of problems and my job is to solve that problem. It’s like a mathematician working out an equation, a writer doing research for a character, or a dancer choreographing a new dance. You look at the pieces already in place, sort them out, and turn them into something that didn’t exist before. Here is the result of the problem we solved this time.
