Top 100 Journey – Greg Urbano

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.

Light Paint Glass Vase: Minimalism and the Democratization of Photographic Practice

A minimalist black-and-white photograph of a glass vase showcases how simple materials can produce sophisticated visual art. Created for a structured challenge, the work emphasizes classical minimalist principles, focusing on light, form, and composition. It highlights the idea that accessible techniques can achieve impactful results through exploration and experimentation.

Black-and-white photograph of a single glass vase standing on a dark fabric surface, illuminated against a black background with subtle light-painted highlights. — A minimalist black-and-white study of a glass vase, photographed using light painting on a dark tabletop and background.

In this austere still life, the photographer demonstrates how constraint and accessibility can yield sophisticated visual results. Created for Week 46 of a structured challenge focused on black and white minimalism, the image features a green glass vase—rendered in monochrome—isolated against absolute darkness. The work’s genesis from dollar store materials and basic light painting techniques belies its formal accomplishment, positioning it as a compelling statement within Chapter 6’s exploration of ongoing practice and future directions.

The composition adheres to classical minimalist principles: a singular subject, centered and vertical, emerges from void. The vase’s elegant silhouette—narrow at neck and base, gently swelling through its body—receives careful illumination from a handheld flashlight, creating a gradient of tones that model the form with sculptural precision. The photographer’s light painting technique reveals selective control; highlights trace the vessel’s curve while allowing shadow to claim significant portions of the surface, suggesting volume through implication rather than complete revelation.

What distinguishes this work within the photographer’s broader trajectory is its embrace of democratic materials and process. By explicitly acknowledging the humble origins of both subject and lighting instrument, he advances a philosophy that technical sophistication need not depend on expensive equipment. This approach resonates with Chapter 6’s theme of exploration—suggesting that the road ahead involves continual experimentation with accessible means rather than escalating technical complexity.

The monochromatic treatment transforms what was originally a green glass vessel into a study of pure form and tonality. This chromatic reduction focuses attention on the interplay between light and surface, on the subtle texture variations across the vase’s body, and on the relationship between object and ground. The black tablecloth and background merge into a unified void, creating the impression that the vase floats in undefined space—a strategy borrowed from commercial and fine art photography traditions alike.

The image’s participation in a weekly challenge framework—Week 46 addressing black and white minimalism—situates the photographer’s practice within contemporary photography’s social and educational structures. Unlike the isolated studio practice of previous generations, his work emerges from dialogue with prompts, themes, and presumably a community of practitioners engaging similar constraints. This context enriches the reading of Chapter 6; the road ahead is both solitary and communal, shaped by individual vision and collective participation.

Post-processing in Adobe Camera Raw represents the final transformative stage, where the captured light painting receives refinement and intentional tonal mapping. The deep blacks exhibit rich density without blocking detail entirely, while the highlights maintain luminosity without burning out—evidence of considered digital darkroom practice.

Within the Top 100 Journey, this photograph stands as testament to fundamental photographic principles: light, form, composition, and tone. Its apparent simplicity masks deliberate choices regarding placement, illumination duration and direction, and subsequent processing decisions. The vase becomes more than household object; it transforms into a vehicle for exploring how light describes volume, how darkness defines presence, and how minimal means can generate maximal visual impact.

In embracing both constraint and accessibility, the photographer charts a sustainable path forward—one where ongoing exploration need not await perfect conditions or specialized equipment, but can unfold through disciplined attention to essential elements.

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.

The Studio as Theater: Classical Portraiture in Contemporary Practice

Jessica Lynn’s studio portrait showcases a fusion of classical portraiture and contemporary technique, created during a workshop at Atelier Alchimia. The photograph illustrates the artist’s growth through collaboration, using refined lighting to enhance the subject’s regal appearance. This work embodies artistic evolution, blending tradition with innovation while emphasizing continuous learning.

Studio portrait of Jessica Lynn standing in a flowing blush-colored gown, posed in front of a dark backdrop with a studio light visible behind her. — Jessica Lynn (QueenJess Rising) photographed in a studio setting during a workshop at Atelier Alchimia in Westminster, Colorado.

This studio portrait from Chapter 6 of the photographer’s Top 100 Journey represents a deliberate engagement with the formal traditions of classical portraiture, reimagined through contemporary technical means. Created during a workshop at Atelier Alchimia in Westminster, Colorado, the image demonstrates how collaborative learning environments can yield work of considerable aesthetic merit while advancing the artist’s technical vocabulary.

The subject, Jessica Lynn, is presented in a flowing blush-toned gown with dramatic bell sleeves that cascade to the floor, creating a silhouette reminiscent of Renaissance or Pre-Raphaelite painting. An ornate collar necklace in gold and green adds a regal quality that justifies the image’s title. The photographer has positioned her in a classical contrapposto-inspired stance—weight on one leg, torso gently twisted, one hand raised in a gesture of contemplation or perhaps benediction. This pose, combined with the upward gaze and theatrical lighting, evokes both historical portraiture and contemporary fashion photography’s ongoing dialogue with art history.

The technical execution reveals careful attention to studio craft. A single key light with barn doors, visible in the frame’s right edge, provides directional illumination that sculpts the subject’s features and creates tonal gradation across the fabric’s folds. The mottled canvas backdrop transitions from warm browns to darker tones, providing depth without competing for attention. The lighting setup, developed collaboratively with studio owner Jonny Edwards, demonstrates the photographer’s increasing comfort with controlled environments—a marked evolution from earlier work in the series that frequently engaged with natural light and outdoor settings.

What makes this image particularly relevant to “The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration” is its frank acknowledgment of artistic development through structured learning. Shot during a workshop led by Eric Brown, the photograph embodies a philosophy of continuous growth and technical refinement. Rather than presenting only work created in solitary practice, the photographer includes images born from educational contexts, recognizing that mastery often emerges through collaboration and mentorship.

The choice to work with studio lighting represents an expansion of technical range. The careful balance of exposure—maintaining detail in both the luminous fabric and the darker background—suggests growing confidence with artificial light sources. The warm color palette creates cohesion between subject, costume, and environment, while the visible studio elements (backdrop clamps, light stand) provide documentary transparency about the image’s construction.

Within the broader arc of the Top 100 Journey, this portrait signals a willingness to explore different photographic modes. Where earlier chapters emphasized environmental and location work, this studio piece demonstrates versatility and an interest in controlled aesthetic experiences. The theatrical quality—the visible apparatus of image-making—invites viewers into the creative process rather than presenting a seamless illusion.

The photograph succeeds both as a study in classical beauty and as evidence of artistic evolution. It captures a moment of learning translated into accomplished execution, showing that the road ahead need not abandon traditional craft in pursuit of innovation. Instead, it suggests that mastery comes through accumulation—building new skills atop established foundations, always remaining open to guidance, collaboration, and the timeless appeal of light falling gracefully upon fabric and form.

Suspended Between Earth and Sky: A Study in Geometric Embrace

The photograph of Jennie Parks in a sandstone crevice at the Colorado-Wyoming border conveys a powerful interplay between human form and rugged landscape. The composition showcases Parks as both an integral part of the environment and a symbol of human vulnerability, enriched by graffiti that connects ancient rock with contemporary existence.

Model Jennie Parks posed barefoot within a narrow sandstone rock crevice, surrounded by weathered stone walls with graffiti and lichen. — Jennie Parks positioned inside a sandstone crevice at the Natural Fort rock formation on the Colorado–Wyoming border.

In this striking composition from Chapter 6 of the photographer’s Top 100 Journey, the human figure becomes a graceful counterpoint to the harsh geometry of desert stone. Shot at the natural fort rock formation straddling the Colorado-Wyoming border, the image captures model Jennie Parks wedged within a narrow crevasse, her body forming a living bridge between two massive limestone walls that tower overhead.

The photographer demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of environmental portraiture here, positioning his subject not merely within the landscape but as an integral element of its architecture. Parks’s extended pose—one arm reaching upward, legs braced against opposing walls—transforms the human form into a line of tension that mirrors the vertical thrust of the surrounding stone. The patterned fabric of her dress introduces rhythmic visual complexity against the textured, graffiti-marked surfaces of the rock, creating a dialogue between organic movement and geological permanence.

Technically, the composition exploits the natural framing device of the rock formation with considerable skill. The converging walls create strong diagonal lines that draw the eye upward toward the narrow strip of overcast sky, while the low vantage point emphasizes the vertiginous scale of the formation. The photographer has worked with available light to maintain detail in both the shadowed crevasse and the brighter upper reaches, a challenging exposure balance that preserves the dimensional quality of the weathered stone surfaces.

What distinguishes this work within the context of “The Road Ahead: Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration” is its synthesis of earlier themes with new formal rigor. The image continues the photographer’s established interest in the relationship between human vulnerability and natural grandeur, yet demonstrates an evolving sophistication in how that relationship is articulated. Rather than placing the figure as a small element overwhelmed by landscape—a common approach in environmental portraiture—he positions Parks as an active participant in the space’s geometry, neither dominated by nor dominating the scene.

The inclusion of graffiti on the rock faces introduces an unexpected documentary element. These colorful marks of human passage—blue and turquoise abstractions, faded pink tags—situate the timeless geological formation within contemporary reality. Rather than diminishing the image’s aesthetic power, this urban palimpsest enriches the reading: the rock has witnessed countless human gestures, from ancient weathering to modern spray paint to this moment of choreographed grace.

As representative of ongoing exploration, the photograph reveals an artist continuing to refine his visual vocabulary while remaining open to chance encounters and improvisation. The natural fort formation itself suggests the kind of site-responsive work that characterizes mature landscape photography—locations discovered rather than constructed, where the photographer’s role becomes one of recognition and revelation rather than wholesale invention.

In the broader trajectory of the Top 100 Journey, this image marks a moment of confident synthesis. The technical command is assured, the conceptual framework clear, yet there remains an element of spontaneity in how Parks inhabits the narrow space. It is work that looks both backward to established concerns and forward to possibilities yet unrealized—precisely the balance one expects from a chapter titled “The Road Ahead.”

Jonny Edward — Portrait

In this sixth chapter of the visual odyssey, Jonny Edward’s portrait embodies the blend of environment and identity, created in his studio, Atelier Alchimia. The image emphasizes texture and iconography, showcasing a stylistic marriage between traditional garments and modern tattoos. It marks a pivot to evocative, symbolic portraiture, exploring the philosophy of aesthetic existence.

Portrait of a person wearing a black hat and round glasses, seated indoors with tattooed arms, dressed in a vest, shirt, and tie against a textured studio backdrop. — Portrait of Jonny Edward photographed seated in his studio, wearing a hat, glasses, and layered clothing, with tattoos visible on both arms.

In the sixth chapter of this ongoing visual odyssey, the photographer explores the intersection of environment and identity, moving beyond the mere capture of a likeness to conduct a sophisticated study of texture and personal iconography. This portrait of Jonny Edward, captured within the subject’s own creative sanctuary, Atelier Alchimia, serves as a cornerstone of the “Recent Work & Ongoing Exploration” phase. It represents a pivot toward a more layered, atmospheric approach to portraiture, where the subject and the space they inhabit become indistinguishable components of a singular narrative.

The composition is a masterclass in the management of complex visual information. The subject is positioned with a calculated stillness, his gaze direct and piercing through circular frames that provide a geometric anchor for the viewer. There is a profound intentionality in the styling: the marriage of classic haberdashery—a wide-brimmed felt hat, a patterned cravat, and a structured waistcoat—against the modern, intricate cartography of extensive tattoo work. The photographer skillfully navigates these disparate elements, ensuring that the elaborate patterns of the skin and the plaid of the vest complement rather than compete with one another.

Technically, the image excels in its tonal range and tactile quality. The lighting is deliberate, casting a soft yet directional glow that carves out the contours of the subject’s face and highlights the physical relief of the ink on his forearms. There is a tangible weight to the textures presented: the coarseness of the waistcoat’s weave, the smoothness of the felt hat, and the weathered patina of the background wall. This background, reminiscent of a Renaissance fresco in its muted, distressed tones, provides a timeless quality that lifts the portrait out of a specific era and into a more permanent, artistic realm.

As a significant entry in the “Top 100 Journey,” this work illustrates the photographer’s evolving mastery of the “creative workshop” environment. By collaborating within a space designed for artistic alchemy, he has successfully distilled the essence of a fellow creator. The image functions as a dialogue between two artists—one in front of the lens and one behind it—resulting in a portrait that feels less like an observation and more like an excavation.

In the context of Chapter 6: The Road Ahead, this photograph signals a refined direction. It moves away from traditional, literal portraiture toward a more symbolic and evocative methodology. The hands, clasped in a gesture of quiet strength, draw the eye to the lower third of the frame, grounding the composition and reinforcing the sense of grounded presence. It is an exploration of the “modern alchemist,” capturing a figure who is both a product of and a contributor to the creative landscape of Colorado. This portrait does not merely record a face; it documents a philosophy of aesthetic existence, marking a high point in the photographer’s continued pursuit of visual excellence.