Tag: art

Entanglement: Portrait as Performance at the Haunt Slam

During the 2025 Portrait Slam in Denver, a striking portrait of a model named Wednesday showcases the photographer’s evolution into theatrical portraiture. The image, emphasizing themes of entrapment and performance, uses sophisticated artificial lighting to create dramatic effects. It reflects a shift towards collaborative photography, merging documentation with creative expression.

Portrait of a person pressing their hands forward through layers of stretched web-like material, with dramatic low-key lighting against a dark background.
Wednesday photographed during the 2025 Portrait Slam (Haunt Slam) at the DCO space in Denver, Colorado.

This striking portrait, captured during the 2025 Portrait Slam at Denver’s DCO space, represents a significant departure into theatrical portraiture for a photographer whose journey has increasingly embraced collaborative, event-based work. The image—featuring a model known as Wednesday—transcends conventional portraiture to become a study in entrapment, theatrical expression, and the controlled chaos of performance photography.

The composition immediately arrests the viewer with its central tension: a figure ensnared in what appears to be synthetic webbing, hands pressed outward in a gesture simultaneously defensive and reaching. The model’s expression—mouth open in what could be read as exhilaration, distress, or performative intensity—refuses easy interpretation. This ambiguity serves the work well, inviting prolonged examination rather than immediate comprehension.

Technically, the photograph demonstrates sophisticated command of artificial lighting in challenging circumstances. Shot with a Nikon Z7ii and illuminated by a Godox AD100 with grid, the lighting scheme creates dramatic chiaroscuro that sculpts the figure from the deep, nearly black background. The gridded modifier produces focused illumination that highlights the face and hands while allowing the surrounding webbing to catch light selectively, creating a three-dimensional mesh that appears to hover in space. This precision lighting transforms what could be simple event documentation into controlled studio-quality portraiture executed in a dynamic environment.

The web itself functions as both literal and metaphorical element. Its physical presence creates visual texture and geometric complexity, the crossing strands forming a secondary compositional structure that both fragments and frames the subject. Metaphorically, it invites reading as constraint, connection, or cocoon—interpretations that align with the “Haunt Slam” context while transcending mere Halloween theatrics to suggest broader themes of entanglement with technology, society, or creative process itself.

Within Chapter 6—”The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—this photograph signals the photographer’s continued engagement with collaborative, community-centered photography. The Portrait Slam format, hosted by Denver Models and Mike’s Camera, represents a democratization of studio portraiture, bringing together photographers, models, and creative collaborators in rapid-fire shooting sessions. That he selected this image for his Top 100 Journey suggests recognition that contemporary photographic practice increasingly exists within networks of creative exchange rather than isolated studio work.

The post-processing in Evoto maintains dramatic impact while preserving textural detail in both skin tones and the surrounding webbing. The color palette—dominated by deep teals and shadows punctuated by warm skin tones and crimson lips—creates visual coherence without sacrificing the image’s raw energy. The photographer resists over-polishing, allowing slight imperfections and authentic texture to ground the theatrical presentation in physical reality.

This work demonstrates evolution from earlier documentary and landscape work toward portraiture that embraces performance, collaboration, and conceptual staging. Yet it retains the technical rigor and compositional awareness evident throughout the Top 100 Journey. As the photographer continues exploring “the road ahead,” this image suggests that path leads toward increasingly theatrical, collaborative work that blurs boundaries between documentation and creation, between capturing moments and constructing them.

Through the Looking Glass: A Meditation on Medium and Moment

A glass sphere is used to refract and invert the final print issue of Digital Photographer magazine in a still life composition that explores themes of perception, preservation, and the transition from analog to digital media. The work reflects on the obsolescence of print, intertwining technical prowess with a thoughtful commentary on photography’s evolution.

Glass sphere placed over a stack of photography magazines, magnifying and inverting the “Digital Photographer” cover through refraction.
A glass sphere refracts and inverts photography magazines, including the final print issue of Digital Photographer, photographed for the 52 Frames “Through the Looking Glass” challenge.

In this carefully orchestrated still life, the photographer employs a glass sphere as both subject and optical instrument, creating a work that functions simultaneously as technical demonstration and elegiac commentary on the evolution of print media. The composition centers on a crystal orb that inverts and refracts the image of Digital Photographer magazine—specifically, its final print edition—transforming a moment of cultural transition into a study of perception, preservation, and the inevitable passage of analog traditions into digital memory.

The technical execution reveals a photographer comfortable with the complexities of refractive optics. The sphere acts as a lens within the lens, compressing the magazine’s cover into a miniaturized, inverted world that paradoxically sharpens our attention to what might otherwise be overlooked. The purple masthead, readable despite its reversal, anchors the composition with bold color, while the surrounding magazines create a layered backdrop that suggests abundance even as the image mourns scarcity. The decision to flip certain magazines for the “extra credit of refraction” demonstrates a playful engagement with the assignment’s constraints, yet this playfulness does not diminish the work’s underlying melancholy.

What elevates this photograph beyond mere technical exercise is its timing and intentionality. The artist notes he possessed this glass sphere for years before deploying it—a detail that speaks to the patience required in photographic practice, the waiting for subject and tool to find their proper alignment. That this alignment occurred during the week Digital Photographer ceased print publication transforms the image into an unintentional requiem, a visual preservation of a medium announcing its own obsolescence.

Within Chapter 6 of the Top 100 Journey—titled “The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—this photograph occupies particularly rich territory. The chapter’s title suggests forward momentum, yet this image looks both forward and backward simultaneously. The glass sphere, an ancient optical device, refracts contemporary printed matter about digital photography, creating a temporal layering that mirrors the photographer’s position at a crossroads between mastered techniques and emerging possibilities. The work acknowledges what is being left behind even as it demonstrates facility with the tools of the present.

The composition’s formal qualities reward extended viewing. The shallow depth of field isolates the sphere against the deliberately blurred magazine stack, creating spatial hierarchy while maintaining contextual legibility. The lighting, presumably controlled given the studio-like precision of the setup, wraps around the sphere’s curved surface without harsh reflections, suggesting either diffused natural light or carefully positioned artificial sources. The wooden surface beneath provides warmth and texture, grounding the optical trickery in tangible materiality.

Conceptually, the photograph engages with themes of representation and mediation that recur throughout photographic history. The sphere presents the magazine not as it is, but as refracted, inverted, compressed—much as photography itself presents the world not as direct experience but as mediated image. This self-reflexive quality, combined with the specific poignancy of documenting a publication’s final issue, positions the work within broader conversations about photography’s relationship to preservation, memory, and loss.

As the photographer continues his ongoing exploration, this image suggests an artist increasingly interested in photography that thinks about photography—work that acknowledges the medium’s materiality, history, and transformations while demonstrating technical mastery that never becomes mere showmanship.

Stuckey’s Skeleton: Monuments to Velocity and Obsolescence

The photo of an abandoned Stuckey’s along I-76 in Colorado captures the decline of mid-century roadside travel due to economic shifts and infrastructure changes. With documentary clarity, it emphasizes architectural decay and cultural history, inviting viewers to reflect on both nostalgia and contemporary relevance while preserving a forgotten era of American mobility.

Abandoned roadside building with a former gas canopy and boarded storefront, covered in graffiti and surrounded by cracked pavement and weeds under a blue sky.
The abandoned remains of a former Stuckey’s at the Sedgwick exit along I-76 in northeastern Colorado.

In this documentation of a former Stuckey’s roadside station along Interstate 76 near Sedgwick, Colorado, the photographer captures a distinctly American form of ruin—one born not of catastrophe but of bypass, economic shift, and the relentless evolution of travel infrastructure. The image, positioned within Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey, reflects a thematic concern with both literal and metaphorical roads ahead, while simultaneously acknowledging what has been left behind.

The composition employs a wide-angle perspective that emphasizes the structure’s geometric severity against an expansive Colorado sky. The canopy’s angular red-and-white striping draws the eye leftward, while the weathered building facade—bearing faded lettering and graffiti-marked columns—anchors the right side of the frame. Between these elements lies cracked asphalt overtaken by scrub grass, a visual testimony to years of abandonment. The photographer positions himself at a slight distance, allowing the full scope of dereliction to register without sensationalizing the decay.

What distinguishes this work from mere urban exploration photography is its restraint. Rather than fetishizing abandonment or deploying dramatic processing techniques, the photographer presents the scene with documentary clarity. The natural light—diffused through wispy clouds—provides even illumination that reveals texture in the deteriorating surfaces without casting the scene into melodrama. A discarded pink couch in the lower right corner serves as an unexpected punctuation mark, a surreal domestic intrusion into commercial space that hints at the site’s reappropriation by transient visitors.

The Stuckey’s chain represents a specific era of American mobility—mid-century road travel when interstate commerce moved at human speeds and roadside stops functioned as destinations rather than mere interruptions. The photographer’s selection of this subject speaks to an interest in cultural archaeology, in preserving evidence of infrastructures that once defined travel experience but now exist as skeletal reminders of obsolete commercial models.

Within the context of Chapter 6’s “ongoing exploration,” this photograph demonstrates an expansion of the photographer’s subject matter beyond controlled studio environments and collaborative performances. Here, he engages with the built environment as found object, approaching landscape and architecture with the same compositional rigor previously applied to portraiture and experimental lighting. The decision to include this image alongside more technically innovative work suggests an artistic practice concerned with breadth as much as depth—a willingness to move between modes of image-making as the subject demands.

The personal dimension—referenced in the accompanying text through memories of hot dogs and pecan log rolls—remains deliberately absent from the photograph itself. This restraint allows the image to function on multiple levels: as architectural document, as cultural commentary, as landscape study. The photographer trusts the visual evidence to carry meaning without editorial intervention, letting viewers project their own relationships to such spaces.

As part of the Top 100 selection, this photograph confirms that the journey ahead need not always involve technical innovation or conceptual complexity. Sometimes it requires simply bearing witness to what time and economics have rendered irrelevant, preserving in two dimensions what three-dimensional space will not sustain much longer. The road ahead, this image suggests, is also paved with remnants of roads already traveled.

Shan Light: Choreographing Time and Illumination

Shannon Quinn’s photograph, taken at Void Studios, symbolizes the photographer’s exploration of long-exposure light painting in collaboration with a dancer. The composition highlights a figure in black, illuminated by vibrant light trails, merging technical skill with performance. This work exemplifies an ongoing artistic journey, emphasizing collaboration and the evolution of creative expression.

Studio portrait of go-go dancer Shannon Quinn wearing a blue wig and dark outfit, surrounded by curved orange light trails created through long-exposure light painting.
Shannon Quinn (ShanOSteel) photographed at Void Studios Denver during a collaborative light painting and long-exposure studio session.

In this striking image from Chapter 6 of Greg Urbano’s Top 100 Journey—titled “The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—the photographer ventures into territory that merges technical experimentation with performative energy. Shot at Void Studios in Denver during a collaborative session with dancer Shannon Quinn, the photograph represents a deliberate pivot toward long-exposure light painting, a technique the photographer had not previously explored in a controlled studio environment.

The composition centers on a figure clad in black with a blue-toned wig, positioned against a muted backdrop while wielding LED wands that trace vivid arcs of orange and yellow light through space. The long exposure—achieved through rear curtain sync flash combined with continuous LED sources—captures both the frozen stillness of the subject and the kinetic energy of movement, creating a visual paradox that challenges our perception of time. The metallic sheen of the vest catches ambient light, adding textural contrast to the otherwise shadow-heavy figure, while knee-high boots ground the composition in the physical realm even as the light trails suggest something ethereal.

What distinguishes this work within the photographer’s evolving practice is its collaborative foundation. Unlike many studio portraits that position the photographer as sole author, this image emerges from a dialogue between creator and performer. Quinn’s background as a go-go dancer informs the dynamic posture and confident spatial awareness visible in the frame. The choreography of light becomes inseparable from the choreography of the body, suggesting that technical mastery alone cannot produce such results—it requires a willing, skilled collaborator who understands how to perform for extended exposures.

The technical apparatus employed here—a Nikon Z7ii paired with Godox TL30 LED wands and an AD100 strobe—speaks to a hybrid approach that balances ambient light sculpting with decisive flash illumination. Rear curtain sync ensures that the sharpest rendering of the subject occurs at the end of the exposure, allowing motion blur and light trails to accumulate before the final moment of clarity. This reversal of typical flash timing creates a sense of forward momentum, as though the figure is moving into her frozen state rather than away from it.

Within the context of Chapter 6, this photograph embodies the spirit of its subtitle: ongoing exploration. The photographer’s willingness to attempt unfamiliar techniques in a new setting demonstrates an artistic practice that refuses stagnation. Rather than retreating to established strengths, the work here shows someone leaning into uncertainty, using collaboration as a catalyst for discovery.

The color palette—dominated by warm oranges against cool blues and deep blacks—creates a retro-futuristic aesthetic that recalls both 1980s cyberpunk imagery and contemporary LED performance art. Yet the image avoids pastiche. Instead, it synthesizes influences into something distinctly contemporary, a visual language appropriate for documenting this moment in the photographer’s trajectory.

As part of a curated selection representing his strongest work, this image signals not arrival but continuation. It captures the photographer mid-journey, experimenting with new tools and partnerships, documenting not just a subject but a process of becoming. The road ahead, as the chapter title suggests, remains open—and this photograph marks one compelling point along that route.

Northern Hotel Lobby: Architecture as Stage in the Contemporary Photographic Journey

The photograph of the Northern Hotel lobby, taken during Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk, captures the interplay of light, architecture, and human presence. Elevating the viewer’s experience, it harmonizes historical preservation with contemporary exploration, highlighting the importance of collaborative practice in photography and the evolving narrative of space and community.

View of the Northern Hotel lobby from an upper staircase, showing patterned tile flooring, hanging lights, and two people walking across the open space below.
The Northern Hotel lobby in Fort Collins, photographed from the top of the staircase during Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk.

In this commanding architectural study, the photographer positions his lens at the apex of a staircase, transforming the Northern Hotel’s lobby into a theater of light, geometry, and human scale. Captured during Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk in Fort Collins, the image represents a significant entry in Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey—a section devoted to recent work and ongoing exploration. Here, the photographer’s evolving visual language finds purchase in the interplay between preserved historical space and contemporary documentary practice.

The composition demonstrates a mature understanding of spatial dynamics. Shot from an elevated vantage point, the frame encompasses the lobby’s full vertical reach, from the patterned terrazzo floor below to the arched balconies above. Two fellow photographers occupy the lower portion of the frame, their dark silhouettes providing crucial scale against the expanse of white walls and geometric flooring. This human element prevents the space from becoming merely an exercise in architectural documentation; instead, it anchors the viewer’s experience in a moment of shared discovery.

The photographer’s technical execution reveals deliberate choices regarding exposure and white balance. The warm incandescent glow from wall sconces contrasts with cooler ambient light filtering through windows, creating a subtle temperature gradient that enhances the lobby’s dimensionality. Pendant lights suspended from the ceiling echo this interplay, their cylindrical forms acting as vertical punctuation marks in the composition. The decorative tile borders running horizontally along the walls establish rhythm, while the radiators beneath provide industrial counterpoint to the space’s ornamental flourishes.

What distinguishes this work within the context of Chapter 6 is its relationship to process and community. Unlike the more introspective or solitary work that might characterize earlier chapters, this photograph emerges from collaborative exploration—a photowalk that brings practitioners together in shared discovery. The photographer’s decision to include his companions becomes a subtle commentary on the social dimensions of photographic practice, acknowledging that contemporary image-making often unfolds in dialogue with others.

The Northern Hotel itself, with its restored early twentieth-century details, offers fertile ground for examining how historical architecture persists in contemporary life. The stained glass transom above the entrance door, the ornamental ironwork of the balcony railings, and the carefully preserved floor pattern all speak to preservation efforts that transform commercial spaces into cultural touchstones. The photographer approaches this material not with nostalgia but with documentary clarity, allowing the space’s formal qualities to assert themselves.

In the broader trajectory of his Top 100 Journey, this image signals an openness to environmental portraiture and architectural narrative. The “ongoing exploration” referenced in Chapter 6 manifests here as a willingness to work within structured events and communal frameworks while maintaining individual vision. The photograph neither dominates its subject with excessive intervention nor withdraws into passive recording; rather, it strikes a balance between observation and interpretation.

The Northern Hotel lobby becomes, under his lens, both subject and metaphor—a preserved space that hosts contemporary seekers, a historical vessel filled with present-tense activity. This duality resonates throughout the photographer’s recent work, suggesting that the road ahead involves continued negotiation between tradition and innovation, solitude and community, documentation and artistic expression.

Shannon Quinn Creative Red Mesh 01: Portraiture as Transformation

The portrait of model Shannon Quinn, captured with red mesh fabric, highlights the photographer’s creative departure during a commissioned headshot session in Denver. This image explores themes of identity and concealment, merging fashion and classical techniques. It reflects a sophisticated understanding of light and invites viewers to contemplate the complexities of photographic representation.

Studio portrait of model Shannon Quinn standing against a dark background, partially draped in red mesh fabric with hands raised and visible through the translucent material.
Model Shannon Quinn photographed in a studio portrait using red mesh during a creative headshot session in Denver, Colorado.

Within the context of a commissioned headshot session, the photographer discovered an opportunity for creative departure—a moment when commercial purpose yielded to artistic exploration. This photograph, featuring model Shannon Quinn enveloped in crimson mesh fabric, exemplifies his ability to recognize and pursue unexpected visual possibilities within structured professional environments. The resulting image transcends its utilitarian origins, offering instead a meditation on identity, concealment, and the transformative potential of portraiture.

The composition centers on the subject’s steady, outward gaze, her expression poised between vulnerability and defiance. She holds the translucent red fabric above her head with both hands, creating a canopy that simultaneously reveals and obscures. This gesture—part unveiling, part self-protection—establishes a compelling psychological tension. The mesh filters light across her features while maintaining visual clarity, creating a liminal space where the subject exists between states: seen yet veiled, present yet ethereal, contemporary yet somehow timeless.

The photographer’s handling of light demonstrates technical sophistication and restraint. Working against a dark, neutral background, he allows the ambient illumination to bathe the subject’s face in warm tones that harmonize with the red mesh. The fabric itself becomes an active participant in the lighting scheme, casting subtle patterns and chromatic shifts across her skin and clothing. Her black attire—a textured top with bow detail—provides essential contrast, anchoring the composition while allowing the red fabric to command attention without overwhelming the frame.

What distinguishes this work is its navigation of multiple photographic traditions simultaneously. Elements of fashion photography appear in the subject’s confident pose and styled presentation, while the dramatic use of fabric recalls classical painting techniques where drapery conveys narrative and emotional weight. The dark background and controlled studio lighting situate the image within portraiture’s formal conventions, yet the unconventional use of the mesh material disrupts these expectations, injecting contemporary conceptual sensibility into an otherwise traditional setup.

Positioned within Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey—”The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—this photograph signals the artist’s ongoing investigation into portraiture’s evolving possibilities. The chapter’s emphasis on recent work and exploration finds perfect expression here: a commissioned session becomes a laboratory for creative experimentation, demonstrating that artistic vision need not be confined to personal projects alone. Professional practice and artistic development exist not as separate domains but as mutually enriching pursuits.

The red mesh functions as both literal and metaphorical element—a physical barrier that paradoxically enhances rather than diminishes our connection to the subject. This duality speaks to fundamental questions about photographic representation itself: what do we truly see when we look at a portrait? How do layers of interpretation, context, and visual mediation shape our understanding of another person’s presence?

In Shannon Quinn’s direct gaze, there exists a knowing quality, an awareness of the camera’s scrutiny and the complex transaction occurring between subject, photographer, and eventual viewer. This consciousness elevates the image beyond mere technical accomplishment, transforming it into a collaborative exploration of visibility, identity, and the porous boundaries between commercial and fine art photography. It stands as evidence of his commitment to finding artistic merit wherever circumstances allow, refusing to separate professional obligation from creative possibility.

Light Paint Egg: Precision and Wonder in Contemporary Still Life

The photograph “Light Paint Egg” showcases a white egg balanced on crossed forks, illuminated through light painting techniques. This work exemplifies the artist’s blend of traditional and contemporary methods, capturing a balance between stasis and motion. It represents an innovative departure in still life, emphasizing creativity and technical mastery despite simple materials.

White egg balanced upright on crossed metal forks, photographed against a dark background with blue light trails created through light painting.
A white egg balanced on crossed forks, photographed using light painting techniques for the 52 Frames Week 11 “Egg” challenge.

In this meticulously crafted photograph, the artist demonstrates a masterful command of light painting technique, transforming an ordinary subject into an object of contemplation. The egg, positioned at the composition’s center, becomes a luminous focal point—its pale, almost ethereal surface contrasting dramatically against the deep black void that surrounds it. This is not merely documentation of an object, but rather an exploration of form, light, and the delicate balance between the tangible and the abstract.

The technical execution reveals a photographer working at the intersection of traditional still life aesthetics and contemporary experimental methods. Inspired by demonstrations from the lighting equipment company Adaptalux, he pursued this vision independently, relying on his own resourcefulness and understanding of photographic principles rather than specialized gear. This approach speaks to a fundamental confidence in craft—the knowledge that compelling imagery emerges not from equipment alone, but from vision and technical literacy working in concert.

The light trails that sweep through the frame possess an almost calligraphic quality, their cool blue tones suggesting both movement and stillness simultaneously. These luminous threads create a complex spatial environment, establishing depth and dimensionality around the egg while reinforcing its solidity and sculptural presence. The waves beneath appear to cradle the subject, while the diagonal streaks above suggest trajectory, momentum, perhaps even flight. There exists here a visual tension between stasis and motion, weight and weightlessness—themes that resonate throughout his broader body of work.

Positioned within Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey—”The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration”—this photograph exemplifies the artist’s willingness to embrace technical challenges and aesthetic risks. The chapter’s title suggests forward movement, continued evolution, and the photographer’s commitment to expanding his visual vocabulary. Indeed, this image represents a departure from more conventional approaches to still life, demonstrating how constraints—in this case, a weekly theme challenge—can catalyze creative innovation.

The composition adheres to classical principles while subverting expectations. The egg, that most ancient and universal of symbols, is elevated beyond its associations with fragility and potential. Here it becomes something simultaneously organic and otherworldly, as though suspended in a dimension where the laws of physics bend to artistic intention. The photographer’s choice to work with long exposure and moving light sources transforms the medium itself into a drawing tool, blurring the boundaries between photography, painting, and performance.

What distinguishes this work within his oeuvre is its synthesis of technical precision and poetic sensibility. The execution required careful planning—controlling exposure duration, choreographing light movement, managing ambient contamination—yet the final image transcends its methodology. It invites meditation on form, on the nature of photographic representation, and on how familiar objects can be estranged and renewed through careful observation and technical intervention.

As part of his ongoing exploration documented in the Top 100 Journey project, “Light Paint Egg” signals a photographer unafraid to experiment, to respond to creative prompts with rigor and imagination, and to push the boundaries of his practice. It stands as evidence that profound imagery can emerge from simple materials when vision, patience, and technical mastery converge.