dramatic lighting – Greg Urbano

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.

American Beauty: Strawberry Ravecake

The portrait of model Strawberry Ravecake, taken during a Denver workshop, reinterprets film noir and 1940s glamour through contemporary aesthetics, merging historical and modern elements. The striking use of chiaroscuro and vibrant colors challenges traditional conventions, featuring a tattooed model in luxurious settings, creating a dialogue on representation and glamour across eras.

Overhead studio portrait of a tattooed woman reclining on dark fabric, wearing black lingerie under dramatic low-key lighting. — A studio portrait of model Strawberry Ravecake reclining on textured fabric during a themed photography workshop in Denver.

Within Chapter 6’s exploration of recent directions, this portrait represents a deliberate engagement with historical photographic language reimagined through contemporary aesthetics. Created during a workshop at RAW Studios in Denver focused on recreating film noir and 1940s Hollywood glamour, the photographer demonstrates how classical techniques can be subverted and reclaimed through modern sensibilities. The result is an image that exists in productive tension between eras, neither purely nostalgic nor entirely contemporary.

The composition draws immediate lineage to mid-century boudoir photography, yet the execution reveals crucial departures from those conventions. The model—Betty, known professionally as Strawberry Ravecake—reclines against luxurious teal-green velvet that recalls old Hollywood opulence. Her positioning, with head tilted back and limbs arranged in studied repose, references the languorous poses characteristic of 1940s pin-up and glamour photography. However, the extensive floral tattoo work covering her arms, legs, and torso fundamentally transforms the visual narrative. Where golden-age Hollywood demanded unmarked skin as a canvas for projected fantasy, here the body arrives already inscribed with personal history and deliberate aesthetic choices.

The lighting strategy merits particular attention. Deep shadows dominate the frame, with careful modeling that emphasizes dimensional form while maintaining areas of near-total darkness. This chiaroscuro approach—essential to film noir’s visual vocabulary—creates dramatic contrast between illuminated flesh and surrounding void. The photographer employs what appears to be a single key light positioned to camera right, allowing natural falloff to shape the subject rather than filling shadows with secondary sources. This restraint honors noir’s painterly treatment of darkness as an active compositional element rather than merely the absence of light.

Color becomes a strategic departure from strict period authenticity. While classic noir worked exclusively in black and white, the photographer retains the jewel tones of the velvet backdrop and the subject’s vibrant red-to-blonde ombré hair. The black lingerie and bold red lipstick provide chromatic punctuation, creating focal points that guide the viewer’s eye through the composition. This selective use of color acknowledges that contemporary audiences read images differently than their 1940s counterparts; pure monochrome might feel like affectation rather than interpretation.

The workshop context—Portfolio Building for Aspiring Photographers and Models—frames this image as both artistic output and pedagogical artifact. Workshop environments typically emphasize technical mastery and stylistic imitation, yet this photograph transcends mere exercise. The collaborative nature of such sessions, with multiple participants working alongside professional instruction, requires the photographer to synthesize learning in real-time while maintaining artistic vision. That this image earned placement in his Top 100 Journey suggests successful integration of classical technique with personal aesthetic development.

Within Chapter 6’s framework of ongoing exploration, the photograph demonstrates expanded engagement with historical photographic genres. The work reveals an artist comfortable moving between documentary observation, macro intimacy, and now studio-based portraiture. By choosing to engage with noir’s visual language through contemporary bodies and sensibilities, he participates in an ongoing cultural conversation about representation, desire, and the constructed nature of glamour across generations. The velvet wrinkles, the tattoo artistry, and the calculated pose coalesce into an image that respects its influences while asserting its moment.

Ancient Greek Coin, Head of Alexander II Zebina

A macro photograph of a 123 BC Greek coin by Alexander II Zebina captures its historical significance and texture. The artist avoids over-sharpening, choosing selective focus to highlight the coin’s surface. This work raises questions about ownership, memory, and our connection to time, ultimately transforming the coin into a philosophical exploration of history.

Close-up of a worn ancient Greek coin showing a raised portrait, resting on coarse black granular material. — A macro photograph of an ancient Greek coin with a portrait relief placed on a dark textured surface.

In this macro study from Chapter 6 of his Top 100 Journey, the photographer confronts an artifact that predates the medium of photography by over two millennia. The coin—a bronze piece from 123 BC bearing the portrait of Alexander II Zebina—becomes both subject and collaborator, its weathered surface telling stories that extend far beyond the frame. This single exposure, created for the 52 Frames challenge, demonstrates a mature understanding of how light and composition can resurrect history from oxidized metal.

The technical execution reveals deliberate restraint. Rather than employ focus stacking to render every millimeter sharp, he opts for a single capture that honors the coin’s irregular topography through selective focus. The shallow depth of field becomes a curatorial choice: not everything from antiquity needs to be preserved with clinical precision. Some details fade into soft ambiguity, much as memory itself blurs across centuries. The side lighting—achieved through what appears to be a carefully positioned single source—rakes across the relief, transforming corrosion patterns into a luminous bronze landscape. Highlights catch on the highest points of wear, creating a constellation of golden moments against near-black valleys of shadow.

The substrate selection proves equally thoughtful. Black granular material, possibly sand or volcanic rock, provides textural contrast while introducing delicate bokeh spheres that float in the background like suspended time. This environmental choice feels archaeological, suggesting the coin might have just emerged from excavation rather than from a flea market display case. The photographer resists any impulse toward nostalgic sepia or artificial aging effects; instead, he allows the genuine patina—two thousand years in the making—to provide all the historical gravitas the image requires.

What distinguishes this work within Chapter 6’s framework of ongoing exploration is its meditation on ownership and stewardship. The accompanying note reveals this coin represents “the oldest man-made thing I have ever owned,” yet the photograph itself seems to question that possessive relationship. Can anyone truly own such an object, or are we merely temporary custodians in an impossibly long chain of hands? The macro perspective literalizes this contemplation, bringing the viewer so close that individual crystals of corrosion become visible, each one a marker of time the photographer will never witness.

The portrait of Alexander II Zebina—barely discernible beneath centuries of oxidation—emerges as a ghost in metal, features obscured yet undeniably present. This parallel between photographic and numismatic portraiture feels intentional. Both mediums attempt to freeze time, to preserve likeness against entropy’s relentless work. The photograph succeeds where the coin has partially failed, capturing not just the object but the precise quality of light falling upon it on a specific day in 2025, creating a new historical layer atop the ancient one.

Within the photographer’s evolving practice, this image represents a turn toward material intimacy and temporal reflection. The macro lens becomes a tool for philosophical inquiry rather than mere magnification. By isolating this small artifact against darkness and bringing such focused attention to its corrupted beauty, he creates space for viewers to contemplate their own relationship with history, permanence, and the objects that outlive their makers by millennia.

Tomatos

This photographic composition showcases three tomatoes on a textured wooden surface against a dark background, illustrating the themes of light and form in still life art. Using controlled lighting to create a dramatic chiaroscuro effect, the photographer emphasizes the tomatoes’ beauty, merging classical traditions with contemporary techniques.

Tabletop still life of three ripe tomatoes with water droplets on a wooden surface against a dark background. — A tabletop still life of three tomatoes arranged on a wooden surface and lit against a dark background.

In this deceptively simple composition, the photographer demonstrates how the most humble subjects—three tomatoes from a supermarket produce section—can become vehicles for exploring light, form, and the enduring traditions of still life photography. The work sits comfortably within the classical end of Chapter 5’s spectrum, channeling centuries of artistic precedent while employing decidedly contemporary tools and techniques.

The arrangement recalls Dutch Golden Age vanitas paintings, where ordinary kitchen staples were elevated to subjects of profound contemplation. Here, three ripe tomatoes rest upon a weathered wooden surface, their placement casual yet deliberate. The varying positions of their stems—pointing in different directions like botanical compasses—introduce subtle asymmetry that prevents the composition from becoming static. Water droplets cling to the glossy red skin, suggesting recent washing and adding points of light that animate the surface.

His lighting strategy proves crucial to the image’s success. Working with a single Godox V1s flash modified by a softbox and grid, he achieves remarkable control over illumination. The grid attachment narrows the light spread, creating focused illumination that emphasizes the tomatoes while allowing the background to fall into deep, theatrical darkness. This chiaroscuro effect—the dramatic interplay of light and shadow—lends gravitas to subjects that might otherwise seem merely documentary.

The wooden surface provides essential contextual grounding. Its rough texture and visible grain contrast beautifully with the smooth, taut skin of the tomatoes, creating a dialogue between refined organic form and rustic materiality. The warm tones of the aged wood complement the rich reds of the fruit, establishing a harmonious yet varied color palette that feels both earthy and sophisticated.

His post-processing approach through Skylum Luminar 4, utilizing a color LUT (Look-Up Table), demonstrates an efficient workflow that enhances rather than overwhelms the captured image. The color grading deepens the reds toward burgundy in the shadows while maintaining natural highlights, creating dimensionality that draws the eye around each form. This restrained digital intervention respects the photographic integrity of the scene while amplifying its visual impact.

Within the broader trajectory of his still life work, this image represents a return to fundamentals—a meditation on how controlled lighting and thoughtful composition can transform the everyday into the examined. Where other works in this chapter might push toward experimental territories, this photograph anchors itself in proven traditions, demonstrating that innovation need not always mean departure from established visual language.

The Sony A7ii captures these elements with clarity and subtle tonal gradation, rendering the tomatoes with sufficient detail to appreciate their imperfect spherical forms, the slight variations in color saturation, and the delicate green stems that signal recent harvest. These details matter; they prevent the image from becoming abstract or overly stylized, maintaining its connection to the tangible world.

Ultimately, this work succeeds through its quiet confidence. The photographer understands that compelling still life photography requires neither exotic subjects nor complex staging—only patient observation, technical competence, and an appreciation for how light reveals the inherent beauty in forms we too often overlook. These grocery store tomatoes, frozen in this particular moment of light and shadow, become worthy of sustained attention.

Powerade Sports Drink

The photographer’s still life study of three Powerade bottles transcends typical commercial product photography through technical mastery and thoughtful lighting. Using a classic triangular arrangement against a dark background, he elevates mundane objects into gallery-worthy art, emphasizing color and light. This work reflects his evolving confidence and duality in art and commerce.

A studio still life of three Powerade sports drink bottles arranged on a reflective surface against a dark background.

The photographer’s exploration of commercial product photography takes an unexpectedly sophisticated turn in this meticulously composed study of three Powerade bottles. Working within the constraints of a domestic setting—his living room transformed into an improvised studio—he demonstrates how technical mastery and thoughtful lighting can elevate mundane consumer objects into subjects worthy of gallery consideration.

The composition employs a classical triangular arrangement, with the three bottles positioned against a stark black background that eliminates all contextual distraction. This deliberate void forces the viewer’s attention entirely onto the subjects themselves: the vivid red and orange bottles flanking a brilliant blue variant. The color palette recalls the saturated hues of contemporary advertising photography, yet the treatment here transcends mere product documentation. Each bottle catches and refracts light differently, creating internal luminosity that transforms the beverages into glowing, jewel-like objects.

His technical approach reveals significant evolution in his still life practice. Utilizing a Sony A7ii with a kit lens, softbox, and flash, he crafts lighting that achieves both commercial polish and artistic dimensionality. The softbox provides diffused illumination that wraps around the bottles’ curved surfaces, while strategic flash placement creates the distinctive highlights and reflections visible across each container. The condensation beading on the plastic surfaces adds textural authenticity, suggesting these are not pristine studio props but objects intercepted in their natural state—cold, recently removed from refrigeration, existing in that liminal moment between commercial packaging and consumption.

The post-processing workflow—Adobe Camera Raw within Photoshop 2018, enhanced with Nik/DXO Viveza—amplifies the inherent drama of the scene. The blacks deepen to an almost velvety darkness, while the colors intensify without crossing into oversaturation. This balance proves crucial: the image maintains photographic credibility while achieving the heightened reality that characterizes effective still life work.

Within the broader context of Chapter 5’s exploration from classic to experimental tabletop photography, this image occupies an interesting middle ground. It adheres to established commercial photography conventions—the product-forward composition, the dramatic lighting, the emphasis on color and form—yet subverts them through its gallery presentation context. Removed from their intended commercial environment and reframed as objects of aesthetic contemplation, these sports drinks become something more: symbols of contemporary consumer culture, studies in color theory and light behavior, or perhaps meditations on how photography itself mediates our relationship with everyday objects.

The work also demonstrates his growing confidence in minimal staging. Rather than elaborate props or complex narratives, he allows the bottles themselves to carry the visual weight of the image. The slight rotation of each container, the variation in liquid levels, the casual yet deliberate spacing—these subtle decisions reveal an artist increasingly comfortable trusting in restraint.

This photograph ultimately succeeds because it occupies dual territories: it could function effectively as commercial product photography while simultaneously inviting the slower, more contemplative viewing that gallery work demands. This duality, this ability to straddle commercial and fine art sensibilities, marks a significant development in his still life practice and suggests promising directions for future experimentation.

Pears: A Chromatic Triptych in Measured Light

A still life photograph features three pears, highlighting the photographer’s evolving technique in transforming everyday produce into subjects for aesthetic contemplation. Using controlled lighting and a focused composition, the work emphasizes color variation and organic authenticity. This piece bridges classic and contemporary styles, encouraging viewers to appreciate the beauty in simplicity.

Tabletop still life of three pears arranged side by side on a wooden surface against a dark background. — A tabletop still life of three pears arranged on a wooden surface and lit against a dark background.

This composition of three pears exemplifies the photographer’s evolving approach to still life, transforming quotidian supermarket produce into subjects worthy of sustained aesthetic contemplation. Arranged in strict linear progression across weathered wood, the trio presents a study in chromatic variation and volumetric form that speaks to both classical still life traditions and contemporary minimalist sensibilities.

The technical framework mirrors the controlled approach evident throughout this body of work: a single Godox V1s strobe modified by softbox and grid, captured with a Sony A7ii paired with an 85mm f/1.8 lens. This choice of focal length proves particularly significant. Unlike the wider perspectives often employed in tabletop work, the 85mm compression subtly flattens spatial relationships while maintaining separation between subjects, creating a stage-like presentation where each pear occupies its designated position with theatrical clarity.

What distinguishes this image within the chapter’s trajectory is its bold embrace of color as primary subject matter. Where the earlier onion and garlic study operated within a narrow tonal range of earth and amber, here the photographer orchestrates a chromatic progression—verdant green, deep crimson, oxidized copper—that reads almost as a color theory exercise. Yet the natural imperfections of each fruit prevent the composition from becoming merely schematic. Surface blemishes, stem variations, and subtle textural differences assert the subjects’ organic authenticity.

The lighting strategy reveals sophisticated control over shadow placement and tonal gradation. The grid attachment concentrates illumination on the subjects while allowing the background to fall into near-absolute blackness, a technique borrowed from Old Master painting that isolates forms in dramatic relief. Light wraps around each pear’s curved surface with mathematical precision, creating highlight-to-shadow transitions that define volume without resorting to harsh contrast. The wooden platform receives just enough illumination to establish spatial grounding, its grain and weathering providing textural counterpoint to the fruits’ smooth skins.

Compositional decisions demonstrate a rigorous formal intelligence. The three pears, though similar in scale, exhibit distinct silhouettes—the green pear’s upright verticality, the red pear’s compressed roundness, the copper pear’s elongated diagonal lean. This variation within repetition creates visual rhythm while avoiding monotony. The spacing between subjects appears carefully calibrated, neither crowding nor isolating, allowing each fruit to maintain individual presence while contributing to the unified whole.

Post-processing through color grading has intensified chromatic saturation while preserving naturalistic tonality. The resulting palette suggests both heightened reality and painterly intention—colors feel amplified yet believable, enhanced rather than fabricated. This balance between documentation and interpretation positions the work at a productive intersection of photographic traditions.

Within the chapter’s arc from classic to experimental approaches, this image occupies transitional territory. Its formal rigor and single-light methodology align with classical practice, yet the chromatic boldness and almost Pop Art sensibility of three isolated, colored forms hint at more conceptual concerns. The photograph demonstrates that experimentation can emerge from treating simple subjects with exacting attention rather than through technical complexity alone.

The work ultimately asks viewers to reconsider the aesthetic potential residing in everyday objects, a question central to still life practice across centuries. By isolating these supermarket pears in dramatic light and formal precision, the photographer transforms the ordinary into an opportunity for visual meditation on color, form, and the enduring power of careful observation.

Onions and Garlic: A Study in Chiaroscuro and Culinary Stillness

The photograph captures a still life of onions and garlic on a wooden surface, showcasing classical principles through contemporary techniques. The controlled lighting and asymmetrical balance create depth, while post-processing enhances tonal richness. This artwork engages with historical traditions, revealing how ordinary subjects can convey significant meaning through careful observation and technical precision.

Tabletop still life of whole onions and garlic bulbs arranged on a wooden surface against a dark background. — A tabletop still life of onions and garlic arranged on a wooden surface and lit against a dark background.

In this deliberate composition, the photographer demonstrates a mastery of classical still life principles while working within the constraints of contemporary digital tools. The image presents three bronze-skinned onions accompanied by two heads of garlic, arranged on weathered wood against an impenetrable black void—a setup that immediately recalls the Dutch and Spanish still life traditions of the 17th century, where humble kitchen subjects were elevated to objects of contemplation.

The technical execution reveals a sophisticated understanding of light modulation. Working with a single modified light source—a Godox V1s paired with a softbox and grid—the photographer has created a tightly controlled illumination that wraps around the subjects’ curved surfaces while maintaining crisp shadow definition. The grid attachment proves essential here, preventing light spill into the background and preserving the dramatic contrast that gives the image its gravitas. This economy of means, using just one light to achieve such dimensional modeling, speaks to both practical skill and aesthetic intentionality.

What distinguishes this work within Chapter 5’s progression from classic to experimental tabletop photography is its conscious dialogue with art historical precedent. The photographer acknowledges drawing inspiration from a tutorial source, yet the resulting image transcends mere technical exercise. The onions’ papery skins catch light with a luminosity that suggests both fragility and age, their dried stalks creating gestural elements that break the otherwise spherical regularity. The garlic bulbs, positioned in the lower quadrant, provide tonal counterpoint—their pearl-white surfaces reflecting light with greater intensity than the warmer onions above.

The compositional arrangement follows classical principles of asymmetrical balance. The three onions occupy distinct spatial planes, their positioning creating depth through overlapping forms and subtle scale variation. The leftmost onion’s dramatic upward-reaching stem introduces vertical energy, while the garlic anchors the composition’s base. This triangular organization guides the viewer’s eye through the frame in a measured, contemplative rhythm appropriate to the subject matter.

Post-processing choices, implemented through color grading in Luminar 4, enhance the image’s tonal richness without sacrificing naturalism. The warm amber-to-sienna palette suggests candlelight or late afternoon sun, though the lighting setup confirms neither. This ambiguity of light source contributes to the image’s timeless quality—it could as easily have been captured in a 17th-century Dutch kitchen as in a contemporary studio.

The weathered wooden surface provides crucial textural contrast to the subjects’ organic forms. Its rough grain and worn patina introduce narrative suggestions of use and time, transforming a simple backdrop into an active compositional element. The wood’s horizontal planking creates subtle linear structure beneath the curved biological forms above.

Within the broader context of this chapter’s exploration, this photograph occupies the “classic” end of the spectrum—demonstrating that traditional approaches retain their power when executed with technical precision and compositional intelligence. The work proves that experimentation need not always mean formal rupture; sometimes it involves mining established vocabularies with fresh attention. Here, the photographer engages in a centuries-old conversation about how light reveals form, how arrangement creates meaning, and how the ordinary, when carefully observed, achieves a quiet monumentality that rewards sustained viewing.