2016 has been a terrible year for celebrities. We’ve lost some good musicians in the past few months. Nothing will ever be quite the same. Music is changing, art is changing, and even the way we communicate seems to be changing. One of the most inspiring artists for me was Prince. I’d like to dedicate this photo session to a great artist who inspired many.

Prince was a very unique individual with many talents. In this photo session, our focus was to bring out the Art Official Age inspired look. The third eye was a focal point to this. Prince wore these very stylized sunglasses with an extra lens by the forehead, and so we acquired those in these shots. We lit our beautiful subject with Profoto D1 lighting heads using the Profoto Beauty Dish as our main light modifier. We added the galactic vision in post using photoshop. The results were very satisfying.

Next we went low-key for a nice purple pop, as we lit the afro just enough to give it some depth. All these images were shot with a Nikon D800 and a Nikkor 24-70mm lens. Prince was a stylish dresser, and I can only imagine how much his outfits must have cost, but for these photos, we kept things rather simple.

The lighting made these images buttery smooth, and the highlights added some great detail. I was very happy with how the gold appeared from the lighting. Once we had the look down, getting the feel of the Prince motivation followed. Listening to the old Prince albums really helped move things along, and you can see it in the results.