I I had never noticed they were on the floor until I watched the video and they are rolling up the carpet. I always thought they were standing around something looking into down into that space thing.
Another Blue Note album cover. Photo by Francis Wolff, cover design by Reid Miles, for the Amazing Bud Powell - The Scene Changes LP. That's Bud Powell's son btw.
The very definition of cropped. Edit: Makes sense that someone pointed out it was a fake considering the time period. I don't think they could crop that much with clarity. The shadows on the steps seem different for one. Can anyone else confirm?
That's just the original photo cut out and photoshopped over a current photo of the original location. It's also taken from a different angle, just take a closer look at the stairs. So yeah, fake.
There was no Photoshop in 1965 when MGM Records' art department first fashioned the LP cover for that Best Of compilation; in those days airbrushing, rubber cement, and literal cut-and-paste. And besides, the full photo looks like a different one taken at the same session that yielded the pose on the album. But the stairs are still a giveaway.
As I said, the photo of the location (sans band) is clearly a digital one, going by the look of it. The lighting also doesn't match – see how the boys cast a soft shadow on the wall to the left of them and how they don't in the photoshopped one? How did you come to the conclusion that it was a vintage photograph? Besides, even if they would have used a large format camera in 1965 (the old-fashioned ones which yield negatives up to 8 by 10 inches, like these), cropping SO MUCH would have still resulted in a grainy and slightly blurry image. And if that isn't enough, the boys clearly have the same pose, but the angle is different. Do you think they could have held the same pose (and same facial expression) for that long while the photographer moved his big tripod-affixed camera from one point to the other?