Chilluminati is a line of streetwear so we just had to be 100% legit—all hard light and torched vans! Here’s Teemu from our merry gang of models bringing it to Chilluminati.
It so happened that my dear friend and regular partner in crime, Sampo, got together with Vili from Wulf&Supply to think about a line of clothing. You know, tees and hoodies and stuff. Having broad tastes when it comes to popular culture, Sampo set to work designing prints that flirt with the occult, secret societies, and pizza. No! The All-Seeing Eye, I mean.
W&S is known for cool streetwear and the Chilluminati line is no different. When they were done with the designs, they needed plenty of imagery for the launch, which is where I came in.
We wanted to have the usual street stuff, graffiti, bad-ass attitude and all that, sure, but we lucked out in the sense that there had been a couple of car fires right before our shoot. (The owners of the cars, obviously, didn’t luck out.) Say no to crime, kids!
We scouted some locations in downtown Oulu and remembered this old, boarded-up dormitory which has covered in graffiti and grime. Perfect! Vili scoured the models for our shoot and after an afternoon of scouting in my part and planning the lighting, we were set to go one evening.
Hard, gridded light is the way to go with this kind of stuff. I wanted the light to come from camera direction, but still wanted the flash off-camera for elevation and quick angle changes. Most of this stuff is shot with a gridded speedlight on a stand and me photographing the models right next to the stand.
Laura, lit with one gridded spedlight. I pushed the exposure on the skin to just blowing out. No other light here except the flash, the shadow under her chin lets you know where the flash is. And string candy!
A word on the props! Sampo, art designer without prejudice, brought in some pop culture stuff. String candy, sure. Red balloon, check. (There’s a little color story happening with those as well, huh.) Pizza, check. The main focus should be on the threads, sure, but we wanted to make an interesting image as well.
They ALL float, yeah yeah. Calvin here, looking grim. Grim, but cool.
So we wanted to showcase the prints as well as the different items of clothing. There are hoodies, crewnecks and tees so far in the line. Both for guys and girls. Sampo and Vili are inspired to creating more designs, so we should expect more stuff from them after the initial batch.
See? I told you there would be pizza! Couldn’t resist the triangle motif here. Ah, pizza. Sampo the model and Laura here.
Calvin (L) working the camera with Tommi.
It’s not a bad life for a model. You get a cold slice if you play along. Sampo the model here digging in!
Tommi here is sporting one of my favorite prints from the line. The red-eyed monster in the background? Left that shit in just to be spooky.
Sampo the model with the main logo of the Chilluminati line. The torched van was really awesome as a backdrop. The paint bubbled when the car burned which made for super interesting texture. Again, I don’t approve of vandalism and would never condone arson, but if you come across a burnt car, make some images!
The Uni-Cone. Ha!
We did a group shot as well and brought in other balloons that were not as ‘IT’ referential. Two lights for this, gridded speedlight behind the models and then another to camera right.
In the end, I delivered a 100 images to Wulf&Supply for their launch on September 24 in the year of our Lord 2018. All in a day’s work!
Vili put a bunch of them up on their website and I think they worked really well:
Vili also shot video while we were photographing, which was a cool addition and brought a lot of life to the campaign.
So go get some new tees already!