Sherbert, “Worst Friend”

Sherbert, "Worst Friend"

My first collaboration with Michelle Sullivan, for her band Sherbert’s debut single on legendary Pittsburg garage rock label Get Hip Records. “Worst Friend” was pressed to a limited run of 300 7″ records on random colored vinyl. You can still buy a copy off their Bandcamp page for seven bucks.

“I’ve got a bad way of knowing what’s next.”

All of our photos at this point has a vague ice cream theme, because they named their band “Sherbert.” Not after the dessert, but after the Alex Chilton record, Like Flies on Sherbert. So, I guess putting an ice cream cone on Michelle’s head seemed like the most obvious thing to do. We shot in her kitchen, which fortunately had one blank white wall in it that we could use as a backdrop.

The ice cream is completely real—there was no photoshop or clever tricks here. We literally just popped an ice cream cone on Michelle’s head and hoped for the best.

The hard thing about shooting with actual ice cream is that you have a really short window of time to get the shot. And if you want to try it again, your subject has to wash their hair before you can reset. We did as many test shots as we could before plopping an ice cream cone on Michelle’s head, planning the right pose, wardrobe, and whether or not there would be enough time for her to light a cigarette. In the end, there were a couple of usable shots for the cover of the record, but this was the obvious best of the bunch. (The cigarette lighting looked fantastically goofy, though.)