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