Run's House

It's so much fun to see a project in it's finished layout. I shoot several book covers a year for Gotham Publishing and hitting the shelf this week is a book titled Take Back Your Family by Rev. Run (of Run DMC) and his wife Justine Simmons.
I am a huge Run DMC fan, so this project was especially cool! The shoot was back in February at the Simmons home in New Jersey. Yes...we went to their home, the one you see on the MTV show Run's House. I have worked with a number of celebrities, but this assignment was to photograph Rev and his whole family!!! A Celebrity Family! Yikes...!!! A hip-hop legend, teenagers, a baby and young business tycoons! Talk about pressure!
I was working on the project with Creative Director Ray Lundgren. I have worked with Ray for 3 years now and he always does an amazing job on the book cover design. Also with me were 3 trusty assistants and a digital tech. We had approximately 6 hours to get the shoot done, from set up to breakdown. Justine, Vanessa & Angela went through hair and make-up while we got the lighting in place in the living room. We re-arranged the furniture and moved a lot of furniture out to make room for the lights.
The best thing on this job was the digital set up. When we got the family in place we were able to get immediate feedback and tweak things right away. Rev was very much part of the process, he had ideas of how the set up should be... and so did I... We were able to test a couple of groupings and come up with one that we all agreed on. Once we got the grouping set, it was bombs away! Rev is an amazing personality and really kept the shoot lite and lots of fun!
I can't say enough about the family, they were wonderful, polite and very genuine!
Check out Rev's website to learn more about the book: http://revrun.uber.com/