Raising the Bar – Stunning Environmental Portraits. For the Love of It.

by Gavin Seim: I received an email from a PPS listener Jonathan Bielaski of Light Imaging in Canada. He just started a great personal project called For the Love of It where he’s finding interesting people and doing environmental portraits that tell something about them. I wanted to share because he’s doing it quire well.

Another twist is that he’s staying away from heavy Photoshop work and working with tools we had from the darkroom days like burn and dodge. Way to go Jonathan. As you clearly know, good light and the basic tools work like nothing else.

It’s a neat project and they’re making some beautiful portraits from it. Jonathan says they plan to have a gallery showing of the results in the future. I think it would make and amazing series of wall portraits to really showcase these people. That’s the beauty of an environmental portrait. It’s a portrait and a piece of art and those are the sort of items that become heirlooms.

It’s not that personalized portraits are new, but Jonathan is getting out and taking on something unique. Trying to achieve a quality that separates him from the crowd. That’s Raising the Bar and since I talk about doing that so much. I thought it deserved sharing…. Gav

 

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About the Author

Glad you're here.

I'm from WA State USA and started studying photography in 97. I started work as a pro (using that word loosely because I sucked) using film at age 16. I learned fast but was not as easy to find training then. Sometimes I beat my head against the wall until I figured stuff out.

As digital dawned I went all in and got to study with masters like Ken Whitmire. In 09 I founded the Pro Photo Show podcast. I started promoting tone-focused editing. When Lightroom arrived, I started developing tools to make editing and workflow better.

20 years of study and photography around the country earned me a Master of Photography (M.Photog) from PPA. I got to see my workshops and tools featured in publications across the industry. Once I even won the prestigious HotOne award for my "EXposed" light and tone workshop.

Wanting something calmer, I moved to Mexico in 2017. It's a land of magical light. I'm here now exploring light and trying to master my weak areas. I make videos of that for my Youtube channel, sharing what I learn. I hope you'll stick around and be part of Light Hunters Tribe... Gavin

Gavin Seim

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