Locked Away - Single Release — Leah Karen Photography

Pete Rawcliffe is an incredible vocalist who is releasing his debut single titled ‘Locked Away’ on 26th November 2020. It’s a song about how we can miss out on so many beautiful things in life if we don’t allow ourselves to be who we truly are. The key to unlocking life’s full potential and enjoying the one life you’ve got is to be at peace with the person you are and follow the path that was meant just for you. Pete shared the song with me and sent me the lyrics too and that really helped me to get a feel for what he was looking for from me. He had a couple of photo ideas which all involved keys but I couldn’t just stop there and I ended up creating five different key related concept images, edited in various styles. I’ve given Pete colour edits, black and white edits, edits with just a bit of colour and altogether he has had seventeen options to choose from.

It was really awesome to be able to bring Pete into my magical world of photoshop trickery and surrealism. This was the first time I’ve created conceptual imagery where I wasn't the subject of the image and the first time I’ve brought someone else’s ideas to life. Usually I know exactly how I want the image to look when it’s finished, so the biggest challenge I faced when creating Pete’s artwork was visualising the image as he imagined it to be. I wanted to do justice to his music and his vision for his album artwork, so it was a big responsibility.

I absolutely love editing conceptual, metaphorical portraits like this. I’ve made roughly 80 different conceptual self portraits so far this year and I keep getting inspired to make more. I really didn’t think it would amount to anything though, it was just a creative hobby for me to keep me occupied during lockdown. But creating the artwork for Pete’s single release has made me realise that I can take my concept work further, it doesn’t just have to be self portraits it can be more album covers, book covers, imagery to promote business etc. I really hope I get to do more work like this in the future.

I feel so privileged to be a part of this journey with Pete as he sends his voice, his talent, his heart out into the world in a way he's never done before. Pete has released some of these images on his social media already. He’s used one as the single front cover (the image that will show on Spotify) and he’s released three other images in the build up to promote the single.

He’s had an amazing team working with him to create and market his debut single. The music was composed by Adrian Benegas, Pete wrote the lyrics and performed the vocals, mixing/mastering was by Jacob Hansen. Then I did the photography/artwork and the marketing and typography was done by Rebecca Brayman. The star of this show though really is Pete and I hope you all check out his single on 26th November. His voice is phenomenal and I’m so glad he’s putting himself out there and sharing his voice with the world, he really has a bright future ahead of him.

Below are ten of the seventeen edits I created for Pete. As you can see here there are five different options but different edits of each, in order to give Pete some choices.
It only took ten to fifteen minutes for me to get the shots I needed of Pete for these photos and I took them all in my conservatory, just using natural light. Shows what you can create from home with just a few clicks.
Scroll down again to see his finished album cover and don’t forget to listen on the 26th!