Harry Potter

The Brief: Harry Potter

To celebrate the release of the final Harry Potter movie the author, J K Rowling and her publishers have decided to rerelease all seven books as a special edition set. You have been asked to provide an image for the cover of each book. The books will not have titles or writing on the actual cover, your image must allow the viewer to deduce which book is which purely form the cover art. All the books will be the same height and width only the thickness of the book will vary therefore all your images must fit within the same ratio.

The inspiration for this brief was simple, I wanted to do some still life and Harry Potter seemed a fun way to do it. So I wrote the brief and then began looking at the covers that are already out there. Here are a few.

These are the Bloomsbury 'Adult Covers' by photographer Michael Wildsmith (http://www.milim.com/portfolio-info.php?&id=60 - Portfolio)


I find the dark general darkness of these covers intriguing. They have an illustrative quality to the imagery that which I quite enjoy but wouldn't wish to carry into my own work. The way I had written my brief was so that the books would be marketed at those who already had read the books and would be able to identify with images and be able to tell which book it was. I am aware that my shots are very similar to Wildsmith's the image he used for ' the Deathly Hallows' is of the the same object that I used for 'the Half-Blood Prince' I will explain this later.

These are the original children's covers from Bloomsbury (I am aware these are stamps but it's the only image I could find of all seven together) The First book was illustrated by Luke Heron, the second and third are the work of Cliff Wright, 'Goblet of fire' was illustrated by Giles Green field and the final three volumes were illustrated by Jason Cockcroft. As with most bloomsbury Children's versions the illustrations depict major events from the books (with the exception of Order of the Phoenix). These are very effective covers and certainly do draw you in, these worked on me as this is the set I have. I originally decided that I would try something like this but instead having people facing away from camera, thus not encroaching on peoples idea's of the face of the characters from imagination or movies but lack of funds and willing models but a stop to this idea before I began shooting. 

These are a new set of covers published in 2010 that Bloomsbury call their 'Signature Editions' all the illustration are by linocut artist Clare Melinsky they were released in a bid to rekindle interest Bloomsbury's most popular product. these are actually my favorite published covers for the books, they use Bloomsbury's 'important moments' theme from their children's edition but this time there is no exception. I like these purely for their aesthetic, the images are beautiful and simple and they hold your attention and unlike a lot of book covers they are a work of art in their own right.


(EDIT: I found this page on the Harry Potter Wikia which contains most of the published covers including the once I looked at and the ones I didn't http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Cover_art)

During my research I found this.

This the work of of illustrator M.S. Corley whose blog I found whilst hunting the names of the artists for the Bloomsbury children's covers. These are AMAZING! I love the simplicity of the the three colours and simple layout, they are very reminiscent of a Penguin's Classic cover. I just thought to mention how awesome it is!


Now to my ideas.

... and The Philosopher's Stone.

This one I decided to do very simply and stick with what it says on the tin, the stone, not too adventurous but I decided it would be a chalenge to get the aesthetic I had pictured in my head. The actual photograph is of a large chunk of rose quartz on a black velvet background. I lit the photograph with an off camera flash gun armed with a snoot and honey comb. The red colour was achieved through making the image black and white then doing some extreme split toning to get the desired ruby effect. The glow was added afterwards in Photoshop using a radial blur filter.

... and The Chamber of Secrets.

As soon as I had the idea for this brief in my head this was the first image I decided on, the entrance to the chamber. For those who haven't read the books (shame on you) entrance to the chamber of secrets is gained through a tap in a disused girls bath room, all you have to do to gain entrance is to tell it to open, in parseltongue (snake language). Simple right?..... Well, I decided that the tap was going to be my image for the front of this book, because it's very significant and it appears no one has used it as yet. This tap was lit naturally from the window to the left and the inscribed snake was added using Photoshop.




... and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

I struggled to find an idea for this book, as there are a lot of important parts to it, for example I could have created a Dementor, The Knight Bus, Stag Patronus, a Prison, a Hippogriff or maybe a rat, I could list for a while but I decided on this particular moment because it is one that stuck with me from reading the books. This the point when Harry first sees Sirius, in is dog form of course. Now here comes the practical issues, I need a suburban alley way/ginnel, night time (easy I know) and dog. Ah, a dog. Major issue here, I'm a Cynophobe. I have a phobia of dogs, I can't be in the same rom as one. A photo shoot with one of the unpredictable, smelly, ugly, mangy (yeah you get it) mutts, would be impossible, I'd freak. If once again I had had more money at disposal I would have hired a dog trainer or constructed a prosthetic dog that could just stand there. So once I again I resorted to a photoshop solution, a digital dog insertion (ouch). For this, I used a brush shaped like a dog, and added the dog and created the shadow from the resulting dog. Problem solved, nerves intact.




... and the Goblet of Fire.


Once again a very obvious choice, yet I chose this because I didn't have access to a dragon or a giant maze. Dang. So back to the Goblet it is. Now, in the book the goblet is a plain wooden goblet that is on fire, blue fire, that is why it is impressive, because it's on fire and isn't degrading. In the films they use a rather ornate goblet with crystal sides etc. I didn't like this so I went on a hunt for a wooden goblet to set on fire. I found the particular goblet (above) on Preston market the day before the upload deadline, I'd been to an antiques shop in Lancaster as part of my hunt as well as various shops here and in Yorkshire. The reason this goblet isn't really on fire is because it's nearly one hundred years old and i'm not about to burn a one hundred year old anything! So once again it's Photoshop to my rescue. I would have one made if money was permitting.




... and the Order of the Phoenix.


As some of the illustrators before me have used your instant reaction to this book title is a phoenix, not for me. Once again I got thinking about what went on in the book, and the first half of this book is basically spent in the safe house of the Order, 13 Grimmauld's Place. So the door was an obvious choice so I went on the hunt of a town a house number thirteen and the one I found was the one with the best door on this particular street. I blacked out the wall next to the door in Lightroom to make fit in more with my other images, I also found it rather distracting. The door being black is also apt because the family name to whom the house belongs is Black. This was real.




... and the Half-Blood Prince.


Now this is another point where I struggled to choose my subject, if I had done the text book my entire serties would have been too close to Wildsmith's but I couldn't decided what else I could do, once again I had plenty of options, a crystal cup, dead Dumbledore, the unbreakable bond any of the artifacts of attempted assassination, a blue stripped armchair, a bottle of liquid luck, Slytherin's locket, ummmm. Ah ha I though (at the time) Slytherin's locket! So once again I set out on a hunt for a locket, preferable plain if not patterned this was also very very difficult unless I want to spend like more money than I had. I ended up borrowing one, photographing the back of it and creating the etchings digitally.




... and the Deathly Hallows.


The Deathly hallows have a symbol and this is it, made of three parts symbolising the Elder Wand, (line) Resurrection Stone (Circle) and the Invisibility Cape (Triangle) These were three gifts from death in a story from a book, which would be a wizarding equivalent or something like Aesop's Fables or Grimm's Fairytales. Each of these was a gift from Death to one of three brothers who had cheated death. The wand was the most powerful wand in existence and the other two are fairly self explanatory. It is said that if you own all three you become the Master of Death, the wand to cause death, the resurrection stone to bring people back from the dead and the invisibility cloak to avoid deaths gaze. I chose this symbol because it seemed a fairly obvious choice for front cover that no one had done yet. This was the most fun I had on any of this particular brief, I did this during a painting with light sessions I was doing for fun and it worked, turned out perfect, I was very happy. Two AM photography is the best kind. I shot it using bulb mode setting f22 and a bright torch.