My Favorite Photographer
There are so many to choose from… we live in a time where digital art knows no boundaries. Nobody seems to how amazing this is! I have been trying to think who really influenced my style and methodology, and who’s process is reflected by my own, especially today. Of great influence to me were a couple of personal friends in Colorado (sounds like a great topic for an article, Downbeat!) but if I were to name-drop someone who many of you know, it would have to be Joel Grimes.
Joel was banging out award-winning sports photography when I was trying to figure out what what an f-stop was. His finished works are not just commercial-friendly, they are paintings with light. But what really intrigued me was when he started doing classes for CreativeLive, and revealed that most of his modern work is a blend of studio and background images… in other words, composites.
I was starting to get comfortable with studio lighting, and getting photos that were pleasing, but the idea of mixing studio and outdoor background photography terrified me. Really. And, back in the days before fire was a thing, it was a lot of work to isolate your foreground model from the background, and to do so convincingly.
But Joel was talking the talk, and walking the walk, in front of audiences, and his process showed it was possible. This was a cool cat, my friends! If he could do it, I could do it, with a lot of failures first. In fact I still fail from time to time, but I have gotten a lot better with the workflow, and understand a little better while putting together a project, what the final result will look like. At this point in my artistic journey, compositing is yet another in a growing bat utility belt of… utilities.
The featured image is the final photo of a piece that I wanted to show could emulate Joel’s style. Instead of using real photography, with real photons, models, and mosquitos, I decided to try to do this in Secondlife, which, as some may not know, is a 3D virtual world simulator. Oh, you say… you just did that in Secondlife! Well… that is like saying, you just did that in Blender. It takes a few times working with the software to get it looking acceptable.
This is the image that Joel created which I wanted to emulate:
The lighting, the composition, the drama… I loved this image. (grabbed as a screenshot from Joel’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=joel%20grimes%20photography)
I set out to do a similar thing… and the goggles really stuck out in my mind. I decided to go with a swimmer theme, at the beach. My good friend Rena, who has modelled for me many times, helped me out for this shot. (She has become a photographer as well, though she would deny it! Her Flickr, which includes some mature photo material is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/131573351@N05)
The elements that I used were the background:
And the model in the foreground. Note that I fussed extra until we got some swim goggles!
How I did the compositing is the subject of another article, or maybe even a video!
Anyway, I have been wanting to express my admiration for Joel and his work for a long time, and this was the chance to do it! Please take a look at his site and find some of the same admiration I have experienced.