As always, we went through a couple of versions before settling on the final cover for the Low Ground album. Thought it might be fun to share them so you can see what the album could have looked like! Version 1 - Airplane
The first version we experimented with was a picture taken by a colleague who is an avid amateur photographer in her spare time. The picture had a dark mood to it that I liked, but in the end we couldn't find a version of the picture in high enough resolution to be printed, and also we weren't entirely sure it suited the concept of the album so eventually we starting looking elsewhere.
Version 2 - People in the night
Anders mentioned that when listening to the album he got the mental image of a city with blurred silhouettes of people. Don't ask. I didn't. Instead I went on a hunt across Flickr and came up with the picture above, which I believe is taken somewhere in Germany? (I am sorry, I seem to have lost the username of the photographer...If any knows, write a comment!)
However, we didn't feel completely comfortable using something that wasn't more...."ours", and so another couple of days passed as I began rummaging through my old photo archives.
Version 3 - Final
We finally settled on using a photograph taken by me on a trip to Kyoto in Japan, showing a view of the city, famously surrounded by mountains, right after sunset. The photo was taken from "Kiyomizudera", a more than 1000-year old buddhist temple which itself is set on top of a mountain.
The temple is well known for having a large stage protruding out from the mountainside. It was traditionally believed that if you could survive the 13 meter jump from here, you would be granted a wish. The practice is now (obviously) prohibited, but in the Edo period more than 230 jumps where registered, of which about 85% actually survived the fall!
Anyway, we thought the atmosphere of the picture suited the music well, and were happy with the fact that it was something entirely of our own making, thus it ended up being the one we stuck with. Listen to the album here and judge for yourself whether we made the right choice! :)