painting – Page 2 – Greg Urbano

Maia del Mazo: Intimate Focus in Environmental Context

Maia del Mazo’s portrait, taken in City Park, Fort Collins, showcases a sophisticated blend of technical skill and authentic presence in outdoor environmental portraiture. The controlled lighting, tight framing, and engaging gaze create intimacy, emphasizing psychological connection. This work reflects the photographer’s evolving style, merging formal excellence with genuine subject interaction.

Woman with short dark hair and facial piercings looks off-camera in a park, with green foliage softly blurred behind her. — Maia del Mazo is photographed in City Park, Fort Collins, Colorado.

This portrait of Maia del Mazo demonstrates the photographer’s evolving approach to environmental portraiture, where technical control and authentic subject presence converge within naturalistic settings. Created in City Park, Fort Collins, the image exemplifies how careful light management can produce studio-quality results while preserving the atmospheric qualities inherent to outdoor locations.

The composition employs a tight framing strategy that prioritizes facial features and direct eye contact over environmental context. While the verdant park setting remains visible through soft bokeh, it functions primarily as chromatic backdrop—its luminous greens providing color temperature contrast against the subject’s warm skin tones and earth-toned clothing. This compositional choice reflects a portrait philosophy centered on psychological connection rather than contextual documentation, using location as supporting element rather than co-protagonist.

The lighting execution reveals refined outdoor flash technique. Employing a single strobe with shoot-through umbrella, the photographer has created illumination that appears both directional and enveloping. The soft light wraps around facial contours with dimensional subtlety, evident in the delicate shadow transitions beneath the cheekbones and jawline. This quality suggests careful modifier positioning—likely placed to camera left, creating gentle modeling while maintaining even exposure across the subject’s face. The approach successfully mimics the flattering characteristics of window light or late-day sun while providing consistent exposure control impossible with ambient illumination alone.

The subject’s direct gaze creates immediate engagement, her slight smile and relaxed demeanor suggesting collaborative rapport rather than performative posing. The styling elements—including visible piercings, layered chokers, and olive-toned garment—construct contemporary identity markers that the photographer neither emphasizes nor downplays, allowing personal expression to coexist naturally with formal portrait structure. This balance between individual authenticity and aesthetic cohesion marks a mature approach to contemporary portraiture.

Technical choices throughout support the image’s intimate character. The Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens, deployed at wide aperture on the Sony A7II, produces the shallow depth of field that isolates the subject while maintaining sharpness across critical focal planes. The resulting background compression creates spatial ambiguity—the viewer understands outdoor context without distraction from precise environmental detail. Post-processing in Luminar 4 has enhanced color separation, particularly emphasizing the complementary relationship between cool background tones and warm subject illumination.

Within Chapter 4’s examination of portrait methodologies, this photograph represents outdoor work informed by studio sensibility. The technical execution—single light source, controlled depth of field, precise subject positioning—demonstrates principles typically associated with interior photography adapted to location constraints. This synthesis suggests workshop-influenced learning, where traditional lighting fundamentals are studied and subsequently applied across varied environments.

The image also reflects broader developments in his portrait practice. Compared to more environmental portraits that incorporate gesture and setting, this work focuses attention inward, using technical precision to facilitate psychological presence. The direct gaze and tight framing create intimacy despite the public park location, demonstrating how formal control can serve rather than diminish authentic connection.

As part of his Top 100 Journey documentation, this portrait affirms the photographer’s technical versatility while revealing his growing interest in portraiture that balances formal excellence with genuine subject engagement. It represents work where technical mastery becomes invisible infrastructure—present in every aspect of execution yet never overshadowing the essential human element at the photograph’s center.

Kelly: Classical Portraiture in Natural Light

Kelly R. Bienfang’s portrait in Fort Collins’ City Park showcases refined environmental portraiture, merging classic lighting techniques with natural settings. The composition emphasizes psychological presence through thoughtful framing and soft lighting, achieving dimensionality. Using traditional optics and careful post-processing, the image balances contemporary authenticity with technical precision, reinforcing the importance of classical methods in outdoor photography.

Woman with light brown hair stands beside a tree in a park, looking toward the camera with a soft green background. — Kelly R. Bienfang poses beside a tree in City Park, Fort Collins, Colorado.

This portrait of Kelly exemplifies the photographer’s command of environmental portraiture, demonstrating how classical lighting techniques can be sensitively adapted to outdoor contexts. Created in City Park, Fort Collins, the image represents a refinement of traditional portrait methodology—translating studio principles into naturalistic settings while preserving the intimacy and control typically associated with interior work.

The composition centers on a three-quarter view of the subject positioned against the textured bark of a substantial tree trunk. This anchoring element provides both physical and visual grounding, its vertical mass creating structural balance while its organic texture contrasts productively with the smooth contours of the subject’s face. The decision to place Kelly against this natural backdrop rather than opening the frame to broader park vistas reflects deliberate focus—prioritizing psychological presence over environmental documentation.

The lighting execution reveals sophisticated outdoor flash technique. Employing a single strobe with shoot-through umbrella, the photographer has created illumination that appears to extend rather than contradict the existing ambient light. The soft directional quality—evident in the delicate gradation across the subject’s face and the luminous edge separation along her profile—suggests careful positioning to mimic golden hour sun while maintaining consistent exposure control. This hybrid approach, blending natural and artificial light sources, achieves what purely available light could not: sculptural dimensionality without harsh shadow or unflattering overhead illumination.

The subject’s positioning and expression demonstrate thoughtful directorial collaboration. Kelly’s gaze, angled slightly upward and away from the lens, creates contemplative distance while her hand’s gentle placement at the shoulder introduces subtle gesture without performative emphasis. This combination of turned body and averted eyes establishes a portrait that feels observed rather than confrontational—inviting viewer attention while maintaining the subject’s interior privacy. The styling choice of a simple white garment serves the image’s tonal strategy, providing clean highlight mass that draws focus toward facial features and natural coloring.

Technical choices throughout support this classical approach. The Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens, deployed on the Sony A7II body, offers the compression and shallow depth of field characteristic of traditional portrait optics. The resulting background dissolution—visible in the soft green bokeh representing distant foliage—eliminates visual competition while establishing atmospheric color context. Post-processing in Luminar 4 has enhanced the warm color palette, emphasizing the golden light quality playing across skin tones and hair while maintaining natural saturation levels.

Within Chapter 4’s examination of portrait methodologies, this photograph demonstrates the photographer’s ability to execute formal portraiture outside controlled studio environments. The work shows less interest in contemporary street portrait spontaneity than in translating time-tested studio aesthetics into outdoor practice—a technically demanding approach requiring precise light manipulation and environmental awareness simultaneously.

The image also illustrates evolution in his workshop-informed practice. The confidence evident in both lighting execution and subject direction suggests accumulated knowledge from collaborative learning environments, where traditional portrait techniques are studied and adapted. This photograph represents portraiture rooted in classical principles—emphasizing beauty, technical precision, and dignified subject representation—while acknowledging contemporary preferences for natural settings and authentic expression.

As part of his broader Top 100 Journey documentation, this work affirms the continuing relevance of foundational portrait techniques when executed with skill and sensitivity. It demonstrates how environmental portraiture can achieve the polish and intentionality of studio work without sacrificing the organic qualities that location shooting provides.

Portrait Slam 2024

Portrait Slam 2024 features Frank Graziano posed on a vintage railroad car, showcasing a blend of environmental portraiture and technical skill. The composition balances subject and setting, using light and shadow effectively. This portrait reflects the photographer’s evolution, integrating contemporary styling with Americana themes, and highlights a confident approach to on-location shooting.

Man wearing a hat stands on the side steps of a black railroad car, looking to the side. — Frank Graziano poses on a railroad car at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado.

The photographer captures Frank Graziano in a moment of studied nonchalance, balanced on the step of a vintage railroad car against the industrial textures of riveted steel and weathered paint. This image, created during Portrait Slam 2024 at the Colorado Railroad Museum, exemplifies the photographer’s growing confidence in environmental portraiture—a technical and conceptual evolution clearly marked within Chapter 4 of his Top 100 Journey project.

What immediately distinguishes this portrait is its sophisticated balance between subject and setting. The railroad car’s dark, rivet-studded surface creates a powerful geometric frame, yet never overwhelms Graziano’s presence. The model’s positioning—one foot planted on the step, the other casually lifted, holding a vertical rail—demonstrates a dynamic use of diagonal lines that pulls the viewer’s eye through the composition. His cowboy hat and leather jacket evoke classic Americana, while the contemporary styling prevents the image from slipping into pastiche or nostalgia.

The photographer’s technical execution reveals careful consideration of light and shadow. The overcast sky provides even, diffused illumination that preserves detail across both the subject’s face and the textured metal surface behind him. This soft light wraps around Graziano’s features, creating subtle modeling without harsh shadows—a particularly important choice given the industrial setting’s potential to create competing visual elements. The muted color palette of charcoal grays, weathered browns, and faded blacks creates tonal harmony while allowing the warm leather tones of the hat to serve as a visual anchor.

Within the context of Chapter 4—Portraits Studio, Outdoor & Workshop Work—this image demonstrates the photographer’s ability to synthesize controlled studio techniques with the spontaneity of location work. Workshop environments often push photographers beyond their comfort zones, and this portrait suggests someone working confidently with both the challenges and opportunities of on-location shooting. The inclusion of the “KEEP OFF” text, partially visible in the frame, adds an element of subtle irony: the subject occupies precisely the forbidden space, transforming restriction into creative possibility.

The railroad setting serves as more than mere backdrop. It functions as visual metaphor—the convergence of journey, transit, and transitional spaces that resonates with the photographer’s larger Top 100 Journey project. The industrial heritage embedded in the railroad car’s weathered surface speaks to American mythology and masculine archetypes, themes Graziano’s styling deliberately engages while maintaining contemporary relevance.

From a curatorial perspective, this photograph marks a maturation in the photographer’s approach to environmental portraiture. Earlier works in his portfolio occasionally struggled with the balance between subject and location; here, both elements coexist in productive tension. The composition’s structured geometry—the vertical rails, horizontal platform, the rectangular frames within frames—creates order without rigidity, allowing Graziano’s natural pose to feel both choreographed and spontaneous.

The image’s inclusion in the Top 100 Journey project reflects its successful synthesis of technical skill, conceptual clarity, and visual impact. It demonstrates how workshop environments can push photographers toward their strongest work, combining the pressure of limited time with the inspiration of new locations and collaborative energy. The result is a portrait that honors both its subject and its setting, creating a narrative that extends beyond the single frozen moment into broader considerations of place, identity, and American visual mythology.

Mike Groth: Classical Studio Portraiture and the Language of Formality

Mike Groth’s studio portrait, featured in Chapter 4 of the Top 100 Journey, exemplifies traditional portraiture through controlled lighting and composition. Shot at Old Town Yoga Studio, the image focuses on character and presence, utilizing a classic backdrop and professional techniques. Its formal simplicity highlights the subject’s confidence, making it versatile across various contexts.

Mike Groth is photographed in a studio portrait at Old Town Yoga Studio in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Within Chapter 4 of the photographer’s Top 100 Journey, this portrait of Mike Groth represents a return to the foundational principles of studio portraiture—controlled lighting, deliberate composition, and the timeless formality of traditional headshot aesthetics. Shot at the Old Town Yoga Studio in Fort Collins, Colorado, the image demonstrates the photographer’s facility with classic studio techniques while exploring the psychological dimensions of formal masculine presentation.

The technical execution adheres to established conventions of corporate and editorial portraiture. Utilizing a Sony A7ii with an 85mm f/1.8 lens, the photographer has positioned his subject against a pure black backdrop, eliminating all environmental context to focus entirely on character and presence. A Godox V1s flash paired with a shoot-through umbrella provides the primary illumination—a traditional modifier choice that produces soft, diffused light with gentle shadow gradation across the subject’s features. This approach creates dimensional modeling without the harsh contrast of direct flash, revealing the contours of the face while maintaining a polished, professional quality.

The composition centers the subject in a classical three-quarter view, shoulders angled slightly to create visual interest while the face turns toward the camera. This positioning—neither fully frontal nor profile—has been a cornerstone of portraiture since the Renaissance, offering both dimensionality and direct engagement. The subject’s formal attire—dark suit, white shirt, burgundy tie—reinforces the traditional corporate aesthetic, while his neutral expression and direct gaze suggest confidence tempered with approachability.

What distinguishes this work within the photographer’s broader practice is its embrace of restraint. Where other images in Chapter 4 explore environmental integration and spontaneous moments, this portrait strips away context to examine how lighting, posture, and expression alone can convey character. The black void backdrop functions not merely as a neutral background but as an active element, creating psychological weight and directing all attention to the subtle details: the catch lights in the eyes, the texture of facial hair, the precise fall of shadow along the jawline.

The post-processing in Luminar 4 maintains the studio’s carefully controlled atmosphere. Skin tones are rendered with natural warmth while preserving texture and detail. The lighting reveals itself as directional yet forgiving, highlighting the subject’s facial structure without creating unflattering shadows. This balance between revelation and flattery characterizes effective professional portraiture—honest without being harsh, polished without appearing artificial.

Within the context of Chapter 4’s mission to document studio, outdoor, and workshop methodologies, this image anchors the studio component with particular authority. It demonstrates that contemporary portrait photography need not abandon classical techniques in pursuit of innovation. The photographer’s choice to work within established conventions reflects an understanding that certain approaches endure precisely because they succeed in their essential task: revealing the subject’s presence and character with clarity and dignity.

The formal simplicity of this portrait allows it to function across multiple contexts—editorial, corporate, archival. This versatility speaks to the photographer’s understanding of portraiture not merely as artistic expression but as functional communication. As part of the Top 100 Journey, the image represents a technical benchmark, showcasing the fundamental competencies upon which more experimental work can build. It is portraiture in its most distilled form: light, subject, and the photographer’s ability to orchestrate their interaction with precision and purpose.

Vertical Ascension: Modernist Form in Downtown St. Petersburg

The black and white photograph of the Signature Place high-rise in St. Petersburg captures its architectural monumentality through a minimalist lens. Stripping color emphasizes form and texture, while a dynamic composition highlights urban development. The work reflects the photographer’s evolving vision, merging documentary and artistic interpretation within contemporary architectural photography.

Black and white low‑angle photograph of the Signature Place condominium tower in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, showing strong geometric lines and modern architecture. — Black and white architectural study of the Signature Place high‑rise in downtown St. Petersburg.

In this striking image from Chapter 2 of the photographer’s Top 100 Journey, the Signature Place Condominium tower emerges as a study in architectural monumentality and photographic restraint. Shot in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, the photograph transforms a contemporary residential structure into something both documentary and abstract—a meditation on verticality, light, and the geometric language of modern urban development.

The decision to render this scene in black and white proves essential to the image’s success. By stripping away color, the photographer directs attention to the fundamental elements of architectural photography: form, texture, and tonal gradation. The building’s repetitive window pattern creates a rhythmic grid that draws the eye upward, while the dramatic contrast between the illuminated facade and the darkening sky suggests a specific moment of transition—likely the golden hour, when natural light rakes across surfaces to reveal dimension and depth.

Technical execution demonstrates thoughtful consideration of both optics and exposure. Working at 35mm on an 18-35mm lens mounted to a full-frame Nikon D610, he selected a narrow aperture of f/18 to maximize depth of field and ensure crisp detail throughout the frame. The resulting sharpness allows the viewer to appreciate the building’s material qualities—the interplay of glass, concrete, and steel that defines contemporary high-rise construction. A shutter speed of 1/8 second at ISO 100 suggests the use of a tripod, essential for maintaining clarity at this exposure length while preserving clean shadow detail.

The composition employs a low vantage point that accentuates the tower’s dramatic thrust skyward. This perspective, common in architectural photography but executed here with particular effectiveness, creates a sense of imposing scale while maintaining architectural integrity. The building’s angular crown punctures the upper portion of the frame, while a lower podium structure grounds the composition and provides contextual anchoring in the urban landscape.

Within the broader framework of Chapter 2—Florida Landscapes & Cityscapes—this photograph represents an important counterpoint to the state’s more commonly photographed natural environments. Rather than beaches, wetlands, or subtropical flora, the photographer turns his lens toward Florida’s built environment, acknowledging the contemporary reality of rapid urban development along the Gulf Coast. St. Petersburg’s downtown skyline, transformed dramatically over recent decades, serves as a compelling subject for examining how modern architecture reshapes regional identity.

The image also speaks to the photographer’s evolving vision throughout the Top 100 Journey. Where other selections might emphasize natural wonder or environmental preservation, this work demonstrates equal comfort with urban subject matter. The modernist aesthetic—clean lines, geometric precision, monochromatic palette—suggests an appreciation for architectural form as a legitimate subject for serious photographic inquiry.

What elevates this photograph beyond mere documentation is its atmospheric quality. The graduated sky, rendered in smooth tones from deep black to luminous gray, provides a canvas against which the building performs. The partially visible vegetation at the frame’s base hints at the subtropical context without overwhelming the primary subject. This careful balance between architectural documentation and artistic interpretation positions the work within a tradition extending from early twentieth-century modernist photography through contemporary fine art practice—a lineage that recognizes buildings not merely as structures to be recorded, but as forms to be interpreted.

Burning Sands: A Meditation on Ephemeral Beginnings

The 2014 photograph from Greg Urbano’s “Burning Sands” captures a sand sculpture at Treasure Island, Florida, portraying the transient nature of creation. It juxtaposes themes of existence and decay through an overcast atmosphere, intricate details, and a solitary figure, emphasizing the cycle of beginnings and endings inherent in art and life.

Detailed sand sculpture on a beach under an overcast sky at the Sanding Ovations event in Treasure Island, Florida, photographed with a Nikon D7100 at 11.5mm. — A 2014 photograph of a sand sculpture at the Sanding Ovations event on Treasure Island Beach, Florida.

In the opening chapter of Greg Urbano’s photographic journey, “Burning Sands” stands as a profound meditation on the transient nature of creation itself. Captured in 2014 at the Sanding Ovations event in Treasure Island, Florida, this image transcends its origins as documentary photography to become something altogether more contemplative—a visual poem about the delicate threshold between existence and dissolution.

The photograph presents an intricate sand sculpture rendered in monochromatic tones, its draped forms suggesting both shelter and sorrow. A solitary figure crouches within an arched doorway, while skeletal remains sprawl at the sculpture’s base, creating a narrative that feels simultaneously ancient and immediate. What elevates this work beyond mere documentation is the atmospheric haze that envelops the scene—that distinctive quality the photographer describes as having a “Burning Man vibe.” The overcast morning has transformed the beach into an otherworldly playa, where the sun becomes a pale disk suspended in a beige firmament.

Urbano’s technical approach demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of environmental photography. Shot with a Nikon D7100 at 11.5mm, the ultra-wide angle encompasses not only the foreground sculpture but also the secondary forms receding into the atmospheric distance, creating layers of depth that pull the viewer’s eye through the composition. The aperture of f/6.3 maintains critical sharpness across the sculptural details while allowing the background to soften naturally into the haze. At 1/1600s, the shutter freezes what is essentially a meditation on impermanence—an irony not lost on the careful observer.

The positioning of this work within Chapter 1—Beginnings feels particularly apt. Sand sculptures exist in perhaps the most precarious state of any art form: they are born from the beach and inevitably return to it, whether through wind, tide, or the simple passage of time. There is something profoundly instructive about beginning a photographic journey with such ephemeral subject matter. It suggests an artist already attuned to photography’s essential purpose: to preserve the fleeting, to honor what cannot last.

The sculpture’s symbolic vocabulary—the draped archway, the protective figure, the bones suggesting mortality—reads as universal rather than specific. These are archetypal forms that resonate across cultures and epochs. Yet the photographer’s framing transforms these symbols into something fresh. The ropes cordoning the installation, visible in the foreground, serve as a subtle reminder of the boundary between art and observer, between preservation and inevitable decay.

What makes “Burning Sands” particularly compelling within Urbano’s broader body of work is its early demonstration of his eye for the liminal—those in-between spaces where conditions create unexpected beauty. The hazy atmosphere wasn’t planned or controlled; it was observed, recognized, and captured. This sensitivity to environmental gift-giving would become a hallmark of his photographic practice.

In the context of beginnings, this image offers a paradox: it documents creation while simultaneously evoking dissolution. The pale sun, the encompassing haze, the skeletal remains—all suggest endings as much as beginnings. Perhaps that’s the deeper wisdom captured here: that every beginning contains within it the seed of its own conclusion, and the artist’s task is simply to bear witness to both with equal reverence.