Smoke and mirrors (and lasers) make for a cool album cover

posted Tuesday, January 12, 2016 at 2:41 PM EDT

Korean photographer Manchul Kim recently worked with the electronic rock band, Love X Stereo, to capture an image for their second album cover.

Utilizing inexpensive laser pointers, acrylic mirrors, and various studio equipment, Kim was able to create a very psychedelic and surreal image. By creating a triangular prism using the pieces of acrylic mirror and placing it around his 50mm lens, Kim created a neat, fragmented effect. His images mirror the musicians and also change the way that the different lasers and colors of light are displayed in the image.

To help the laser pointers show up better, he widened their beam of light as much as possible and also utilized a fog machine. To add the different colors to the scene, he used a gelatin filter on his Westcott ICE Light 2.

In the video below, you can see his setup as well as a variety of the images that he captured during the session.

In addition to the gear he already had, Kim had to spend only around $10 on acrylic mirrors and buy some inexpensive laser pointers to create a fun and unique photo session that produced a lot of awesome images and the album cover for Love X Stereo's new EP, We Love We Leave, Pt. 2. If you liked the music playing over the video, you can pre-order their new album here.

To see more images from this session, see Kim's blog post.

This is not Manchul Kim's first experience with unique portrait lighting. In September, he did a guest post at ISO 1200 covering a job he did for Korean orchestral conductor and composer Minna Choi, who founded Magik*Magik Orchestra.

In the video below, you can see Kim utilizing light painting with strands of LED lights to create very cool portraits of Choi.