BRAG // Wayne Coyne
My photo of the Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne is featured on the cover of this week’s issue of Sydney music street press BRAG magazine.
Editor Kirsty Brown and I visited Wayne in his hotel room when he was here on tour a couple of months ago to do the interview and shoot, and I was pretty nervous as the word was that he didn’t particularly like having his photo taken. Happily, that turned out to not be the case – he couldn’t have been nicer, and we had a great time covering the room in confetti & streamers.
It took many attempts to get the timing right on all the different elements in this shot – there would be either too much or not enough confetti, or Wayne’s facial expression wasn’t quite right, or both. I ended up only getting one shot that worked perfectly, and in hindsight, I’m amazed I got anything usable at all! He was a great sport, and tried lots of different ideas to get the shot working. In the end, we abandoned the mini confetti cannons in favour of just throwing the mess over the top of him from the side, which worked a treat.
Wonderful photo Will.
Marvellous colour and perfect lighting and timing.
Makes me feel happy just looking at it.
tim
October 11, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Awesome cover. All the colour, confetti and craziness suit the manic, symphonic pop of The Flaming Lips perfectly.
Now I wonder what Bradford Cox would think!
Lee Tran
October 11, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Hey Will,
Congratulations on the cover! How did you light this?
PaulW
October 12, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Hey Paul,
I used a single Canon 580EXII speedlite on a light stand, triggered with a pocket wizard, aiming into a 42″ shoot-through umbrella on camera right. We were shooting in a corner, with a white wall next to Wayne (camera left), so I aimed the strobe on a 3/4 angle towards him with the idea of getting some decent bounce fill for free.
willreichelt
October 12, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Awesome! Looks so cool!
prettyprettyyumyum
October 12, 2009 at 5:49 pm