Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography

Michael Grecco has a lot to teach you about photography. With clients ranging from Time magazine and People to IBM and ESPN, and famous subjects that have included Hollywood superstars, he is better-qualified to dispense advice about his craft than just about anyone. And dispense advice he does, in page after lavish page of juicy tips and insider know-how, in his book Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography.

Grecco 5 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait speilberg time

The book is both a how-to guide for serious professional photographers, and an exhibition of some of Grecco’s best work. Portrait photographers will not be disappointed by the abundance of pointers and suggestions concerning both the creative and technical aspects of the craft. Grecco’s method is to present one of his photographs, then give the backstory of its conception and creation, complete with anecdotes that illuminate how he dealt with specific problems that confronted him on each shoot. Grecco’s detailed (though concise) account of his experiences should prove extremely useful to professionals who have to handle their own technical, artistic, and practical problems, and are looking for suggestions to hone their skills. Grecco also provides general comments about his preferred styles, techniques, equipment, and so on.

Grecco 7 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait black face white eye

Grecco 8 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait mirror face

To take a random example: On page 90 (“Negative Films”), Grecco writes: “Shooting negative film is a joy because you have so much more freedom if your subject moves around or if the exposure changes slightly in a shot. If you are too busy catching a perfect moment to change your exposure mid-roll, any resulting inconsistency (we are talking slight variations here) can be fixed when you print.” He goes on to explain how he shoots negative film, offering nuts-and-bolts advice about the process: “Next, make sure your temperatures are fairly consistent; if you are processing in very cold weather stick the darn thing under your arm or under you coat to keep it warm…I usually open up two-thirds of a stop from the rated ASA for color neg and sometimes a stop or more for black-and-white neg,” etc. It doesn’t get more helpful than this.

Grecco 3 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait swimmer

Below that how-to advice is a caption to the corresponding photo, which is a portrait of actor Adrian Pasdar for Entertainment Weekly. In the caption, Grecco talks about what happened during that particular shoot: “I shot in the middle of the street in front of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, and rented a bungalow there so we’d have a place to do grooming and wardrobe. I pulled the power from the bungalow and I lit him with a 10 Dyna-Lite head and shot it on Polaroid 665 with my Fuji 680 Camera,” etc. Again, Grecco takes you through the artistic process step-by-step, illuminating possible ways for other professionals to approach their own work, and showing how a technically disciplined, creative mind responds to particular conditions to create original work on every shoot. In many instances, Grecco also furnishes bird’s-eye-view diagrams of how he set up the camera, lights, and other devices to produce the photograph in question.

Grecco 6 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait fighter

The fruits of all this effort are stunning. Grecco’s photos - many of them of movie stars like Laurence Fishburn and Lucy Liu, and other well-known figures like Stevie Wonder, Hugh Hefner, and the co-founders of Google - are dramatic, rich, vivid, and intensely stylish. Grecco dreams up intriguing scenes and set-ups to highlight some aspect of each subject’s personality and image. For one portrait, he had furniture designer Roy Makim lie on the floor, stomach-down, underneath one of his tables. Some of these scenarios involved snap judgments and sudden inspiration; many required elaborate preparation.

Grecco 2 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait space lady

Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait is a goldmine of useful insights, practical advice, and creative guidance. It is also a marvelous collection of dramatically original photos, sure to inspire not only portrait photographers, but photographers of any kind. One almost wonders if Grecco felt that he would be compromised by writing such an embarrassingly helpful book. But he addressed that question in the introduction: “Assistants and other photographers have asked why I would want to give away my secrets in a book. But I don’t see it that way. I am just passing along what I have learned through years of experience, along with some insights about my process that I hope will help you perfect your own…Think of the book as a starting point for your own creative process.”

Grecco 4 photography Michael Grecco lighting dramatic portrait diver