Red River Paper Pro Monday – Joel Grimes
Red River Pro
JOEL GRIMES
The Photographer
Joel Grimes is a Los Angeles advertising and commercial photographer whose clients include the Denver Broncos, Kodak, Hyatt, National Geographic, Nikon, Visa, Pentax, Sony and Volvo. He’s shot images in
more than 50 countries on advertising and annual report assignments and has won more than 30 major awards for his work. His coffee table book on the Navajo Indians received national acclaim and he teaches his edgy-lighting portraiture techniques at workshops.
The Client
Personal project for portfolio to show Art and Creative Directors at agencies.
© Joel Grimes
The Assignment
Photograph a swim model in high key using “edgy” lighting.
The Execution
“I posed the subject in the studio against a white background using a Paul Buff 22-inch beauty dish with a diffusion sock overhead and two small soft boxes from the side. I then used a pool image that I had
previously shot with five exposures at one-stop intervals to be combined for a high dynamic range image.”
Post Production
“The subject was knocked out from the background using Vertus’ Fluid Mask (I’ve also used Photoshop CS4 with good results). The five location images were merged using HDR’s Photomatix. Then the two
images were merged creating the composite. While I would like to shoot everything as one shot on location, it is just not always possible to do so because of time, scheduling and other constraints.”
The Output
With over thirty years experience printing in the darkroom, my objective in choosing a current digital photo paper is getting deep blacks and a smooth continuous tonal range across the board. I chose
Red River Ultra Pro Satin paper to print this image because it beautifully handles the subtle highlight tones both on the model and in the background, while retaining excellent detail in the shadow areas. It
truly gives me the effect that I had envisioned.
Contact
Joel Grimes’ web site is at: www.joelgrimes.com. He may be emailed at: [email protected]
His workshop schedule and tutorials describing his techniques in detail may be found at:
http://web.me.com/joelgrimes/Joel_Grimes_Photography/Welcome.html
