Focusing on the cover

Close up of the outside cover elements: the two oil paintings and their masked stainless steel pieces used for reflection. Click on any photo for a bigger image.

The front cover elements in place in the crowded garage workspace. The camera just visible in the top right hand corner. The sign says it all.

Back cover setup. Here you can see the sheet of stainless steel, and the oil painting that was eventually reflected into it. Note the camera in the foreground.

By the spring of 1986 the master audio tapes had been shipped to France. All that was left was for Jeff to produce the two photographs for the album cover. Which leads us to a few important facts about creating covers like this. In order to do things in the traditional Sacred Blade manner, there are a few prerequesites, the first being knowing nothing about what you are doing before doing it:

1. You must have no knowledge of the art of photography other than "that's a camera, I press this to take a picture".
2. You must have no formal knowledge of the printing or colour separation process.
3. You must have parents who are very tolerant of very angry experimental album cover makers.

Photography

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of the "Of the Sun + Moon" album cover, many of them were profane, as Jeff struggled to grasp the concepts of an artform/science he had little previous experience with. The relationships between aperature, exposure, focus, and depth of field were pretty abstract as he dove into the creation of the first album cover art. After discovering the differences between underexposed and overexposed, and getting the two completely backwards on many an occasion, then subsequently determining lighting factors by excessive experimentation, Jeff continued his home course in photography. Two months of daily shooting, setup, breakdown and reshooting finally resulted in a pair of prints that shared common saturation, colour balance, exposure, and composition. It appeared that the end was near, that the only thing between the final album cover was a set of enlarged prints that colour separations would be made from.

Aside from having to reshoot the whole works after the original negs were destroyed by the filmhouse, and a multitude of reprints at the larger format in order to match the colour density, things were looking good. However a new factor had entered into the equation, this being one of resolution. Jeff had been using 35mm film, which, while looking fine on small prints, tends to get grainy when the print size is increased to the size required for an LP jacket. After consulting with a few people at the print maker's shop about the colour separation process, Jeff was informed that his original print quality would most likely deteriorate in the steps subsequent to enlargement, namely colour separation, plate making and finally printing, as each was yet another generation away from the original.

Jeff was finally persuaded by a photographer's agent that his work was unusable, and that he should have his artwork shot by a professional, which seemed to be reasonable advice. Arrangements were made for the shoot to be set up at a studio in downtown Vancouver. With an impressive array of expensive camera and lighting equipment (and an equally as impressive bill), the professional shoot was executed. The resulting transparencies were sent to a colour separation house, only to have the final separations come out way off colour (purple stars, beige sun...). This was unacceptable, of course, but the bills had been paid in advance, and neither the photographer or the colour separation house would do anything about the job without getting even more money. The photos looked flat and lifeless, without the richness and character of Jeff's original shots. There was something about the lower resolution that enhanced the image...

So much for the professionals.

Jeff was once again back to using his own shots. Another separation house promised to deliver what was expected, this time with the inclusion of all the typesetting (which Jeff's friend Ken had produced) and the inner photo for the album. We would finally have our finished cover artwork, ready to ship to France, and only a month and a half behind schedule! After all the problems we had already gone through, what more could go wrong?

Well...