Hi!
The title of this post is a pun, did you get it? I’m not covering her songs, I’m going to recreate her album covers.
Why?
Because I am a fan and I want to. I love everything about Kate Bush. I love her old albums, I love her new albums, her style, I love her voice, her face, her album covers.
The idea came to me when I was switching the Pink Floyd albums hanging on the wall (also a pun?) for other albums. This time, I’d like to look at Kate Bush for a while until I switch them for other albums.
I chose to recreate “the Sensual World”, “Hounds of Love” and “the Dreaming”. Are those the easiest covers to recreate? Yes. But I don’t have a lion suit or a giant kite lying around for “Lionheart” and “the Kick Inside”, so here we are.
The plan
For “the Sensual World”, I needed a big rose. I went out to get it,, but the florist around the corner was on a lunch break. Tried again later and they didn’t have roses that were big enough, so I got another kind of flower.
This picture is also very dark and the light is coming from the side. I am thinking of just using the bright light from our south-facing windows and have a fast shutter speed. It will be fine.
For “Hounds of Love” I needed a pair of dogs (or hounds, actually). I don’t have dogs, so I’ll use my cat. Maybe I’ll take the effort of photoshopping her in twice. Maybe not. We’ll see.
I also need al lot of lilac fabric, but I don’t have something like that, so I’ll use dark purple fabric instead, which I do have. The colour scheme is different from the origional anyway because of my white cat. I also have a purple top I made from said fabric I can use perfectly instead of Kate’s lilac one. The dark colour will be better for my picture because my white cat will stand out more, and my hair is lighter than Kate’s, so there will be approximately the same amount of contrast as in the original. It will be great.
For “the Dreaming” I need my boyfriend to pose with me and a ring in my mouth. There’s hedera in the background and there’s a hedera hedge right next to our house. So I have to almost kiss my boyfriend with a ring in my mouth in a public space, which will only be awkward if someone passes us. I also have to try and recreate Kate Bush’s makeup, And fluff my hair. I think I can take the picture and pose just fine, the makeup is going to be a problem.
The execution
“The Sensual World” was not a problem shooting. I didn’t even need the black background curtain because it was dark enough, which I expected and hoped. But it was late in the afternoon and the light wasn’t as bright, except in the corner behind our couch. I used that light and it worked.
“Hounds of Love” was more difficult. I couldn’t get the right angle and draping my hair correctly was difficult with one hand. Cleo worked with me perfectly, as always. She enjoyed it and was purring along the way.
I thought I had a lot of purplr fabric left, but it turned out there wasn’t as much as I thought I had, so I used out white bedlinnen instead.
“The Dreaming” was a huge failure. I tried one shoot and I had to look into the sun, couldn’t get my eyes open and Nander didn’t want to be there. My pose was wrong and then Nander pointed out Kate Bush had a key in het mouth, not a ring. Of course she does, because of the lyrics in her song “Houdini”.. I should have known. My mistake.
Later, I managed to get Nander in a nice shirt and blazer, and we found a small key, belonging to our mini, to put into my mouth. The light this time was much better.
Still, I’m not very happy about my hair, which didn’t do what I wanted to do today. It looks nothing like the 80s look that Kate Bush had.
Editing
I didn’t have to edit much of the picture for “the Sensual World”. When I was done, it looked like this, and I am happy with the result.
I played with the white balance and colours in Lightroom to get the effect that I wanted for the “Hounds of Love” cover. Later, I decided I still wanted to add a second Cleo, so I tried that with Photoshop. It worked, there are two cats now, but cat hair is terrible to select so it’s super obvious. It doesn’t matter, I like the result.
I leaned how to do the sepia effect to geth the “the Dreaming” picture right. I thought that would be just a one-click job but it wasn’t. Thank god for youtube tutorials. I couldn’t do the orange effect that Kate Bush has on het eye shadow and the key. I left the picture how it was because even if I did figure out how to get the right effect, my hooded eyes don’t really show my eyeshadow anyway.
I really enjoyed doing this project and I’m happy with how the pictures turned out. I will definitely do projects like this again in the future.
Let me know what you think!