A couple months ago my wife and I were about an hour and a half from walking out the door when I got an email form the Art Director at the OC Weekly with an assignment for that evening. Anyone that has ever done work for an alt-weekly knows sometimes you fly by the seat of your pants.  Assignments can come up super last minute and you have to fly.  Since we already had tickets for a movie I was leaning toward turning the assignment down but as I read the brief I knew that would be stupid.

The assignment was to go down to Lake Forrest and photograph Curtis Young and Eric Wright Jr. working on an album.  Sounds pedestrian until you throw in their lineage. Curtis is the son of Dr. Dre and Eric is the son of Eazy-E and the studio where they were working out of belonged to Snoop Dogg (don’t ask me about the name change, the wall in the studio said “Dogg”).  Needles to say I was in and owed my wife a rain check on our date and a big thank you for her patience and understanding.

The fellas are working on a tribute album to their fathers.  As I understand it they are still in the beginning stages of the album.  You can read about the project at the OC Weekly’s Blog HERE.

Most of what I shot that night was reportage, which I really enjoy but don’t shoot that often. I was however dead set on getting a few minutes for some portraits. There were a lot of people in the studio that night. A couple people were handling the talent so I engaged “super nice guy charming mode.”  I had a little bit of resistance but I remained polite but adamant and I got a couple minutes with each of the guys.

I threw up two speedlights in a sound booth no bigger than a coat closet which by the way was occupied by a full size statue of Bruce Lee…not kidding.

I used two hard light sources. One gridded speedlight camera left and one small square softbox with the diffusion removed directly above.  It was quick but I was very happy with the results.  This is one of those situations I wish I could have had more time but I’m very happy with the results.  Here are a few of the portraits we got.

If you want to check out all the photos from my evening at Serious Pimp Studios (actual name not kidding.) You can see them on my website.

Best

KMR