"JBL Professional Series Model 4315 Studio Monitor" Brochure Cover
Client: James B. Lansing Sound, Inc.
Designer: Dennis Jewitt
Photography: Peter D'Aprix

The assignment here was not to just photograph the speaker cabiner to show what it looks like, that is enough of a challange, but to show what it does and to make that an interesting and a little different from the usual product cover.

The designer, Dennis Jewitt, wanted a sense of the sound coming out of the speaker cabinet.

To achieve this visually, I used a zoom lens. I shot the cabinet without zooming using flash, then with the modeling lights providing the illumination, I slowly zoomed to get the light areas of the face of the speaker cabinet to streak across the unexposed area of the black and white negative film. This required a dark background. I used a similar technique to achieve the "angel wings" on the Jean-Luc Ponty album cover (see Albums-CDs).

Then some careful burning and dodging was required in the dark room.

The actual product and components were shot on a white background and the white was dropped out in printing.

One of the biggest problems in shooting speaker cabinets is the dark fabric that covers the speakers. Getting enough light onto the fabric to show the texture without having the light spill over onto the cabinet burning out the wood grain or paint is very tricky. Today, with digital cameras whose exposure range is much greater than film plus the tools available in the CS version of PhotoShop, make the photographer's work, in this regard, much easier.