Dione's Rapture

This image is part of a pair that I made after working for 6 months or so with Muse on their album 'Black Holes and Revelations'. As you will see later in this section, quite a lot of work was made and never used for one reason or another. Some of the work I made I decided would make great prints so I made two - This image and the next.

You can Purchase this print here

The Birth of Erebus

A lot of the work we did for Muse was obviously based on stars and space, and a lot of planets and moons in our solar system are named after greek gods and godesses. Dione (previous image) is one of Saturns moons and in Greek mythology Dione is considered to be the equivalent of Gaia the Earth mother.

Erebus is actually a volcano on Antarctica, not a planet, but I liked his Mythic form as the son of  the God Chaos. He represents the personification of darkness and shadow. again you can buy this print here

 Knights of Cydonia

This was a departure for me, the first time I had tried to make images from photographs of smoke. Muse were really happy with this new direction and we went on to make more CD's and DVD's in this style.

When it came to the next single - Invincible, We had the task of creating an iconic image that could be made and read easily in smoke. I made images of a Rapier and a Helmet as metaphors for protection and invincibility.

Unfortunately it was felt that the images were too "King Arthur" so it was back to the drawing board and they never got used.

It was suggested that because the lyrics were about being invincible when two lovers were together, that a couple embracing or kissing would be a good image. I was unsure whether I could make faces out of smoke, but I tried and it worked well.

Each release had two versions a CD and DVD. This made life quite hard because we needed to have two images that were different but answered the same brief. Here hands were used to replace the faces of the CD cover.

Muse played a Huge gig at Webmley arena and needed an image to use for merchandising - posters and tee shirts etc. I was asked to make portraits of the band. I was apprehensive once more; it was one thing to make anonymous faces in profile from smoke but quite another to be able to produce recognizable portraits. After much trial and error this was the result.

When the DVD of the wembley gig was due for release, Muse wanted a cover that communicated the fact that they had played Wembley. Making Wembley out of smoke was out of the question so we tried to make images that echoed the set they had used with a hint of the wembley arch in the background.

We went through many different options and I made a lot of images. This again is a graphic representation of the stage set.

At one point in the gig acrobats hanging from blue planet like orbs were hovering over the crowd. This image was a graphic nod toward this part of the show.

Unfortunately none of these images were ever used, I think finally a photographic image of them on stage was used as the cover.

By this time I had a lot of unused new work, the graphic depictions of the set and acrobats had inspired me and moved the work on, so I made use of it and made the two prints at the start of this series.