Athletic photography is regarded as a specialty. Capturing sporting events in motion requires specialized equipment along with a skilled photographer. The difficulties of capturing action and emotions underwater are magnified by the environment.

Capturing the tapestry of nature is an important artistic endeavor of photographers. There are professional photographers who gravitate to underwater nature photography and those who gravitate to human competition in the water. Water offers a kaleidoscope of textures and colors to the photographer that is both an ally and a nemesis.

The unique environment of photography in water presents similar challenges for all photographers who focus on nature as well as sports. Action and emotions permeate both, however, those photographers who set their apertures to photograph the live action of sports are adding instantaneous reactions to their tool belt of skills.

Equipment, Technique, and Skills that Challenge Underwater Photography

The equipment challenges of underwater photography are met by a camera manufacturing industry that competes. To best their competitors there is an inflow of capital, time, and research into developing underwater cameras and the apparatus to use them. Today the underwater photographer has freedom of movement and a choice of equipment that has never been enjoyed for underwater photography.

Photographic equipment available for underwater use includes waterproof cameras, housing, lights, strobes, and the equipment necessary. Everyday sporting events on fields, courts, tracks, courses, and raceways attract thousands of photographers who try to capture a gem among the millions of images that are taken.

Along with learning the intricacies of the latest equipment and its limitations, underwater photographer needs to challenge their own techniques and skills to capture action and emotions underwater.

The skills that shape a photographer are constant. They need to understand and use the interplay between shadow and light, negative and positive, foreground and background, and framing and perspective. These difficult skills are made more difficult to master by the challenge of water and its effect on clarity, distortion of distance, and refraction of light.

Using the Fluid Dynamic of Water to Enhance Action and Emotions

The underwater photographer must recognize the how and why of the fluid dynamic of water and its unique interplay of shadow and light on the subject. Water can be used as a foreground, background, or a combination of both to enhance action and emotion in the underwater photograph.

Michael Grecco has decades of experience beginning with 35 mm black and white photography for leading news organizations. He has developed techniques and skills that are intrinsic, intricate, and essential in creating photographs that join the forces of framing, lighting, and environment.

Each year as he tackles a new discipline in his photographic adventures his understanding of light and shadows, framing, and perspective is sharpened. Whether photographing in black and white, on the field, or in the water, Michael Grecco is skilled at capturing athletic action and emotion.

Capturing actions and emotions underwater requires Michael Grecco to apply his photographic skills to compensate for the environmental challenges that water brings to the photograph. Along with his other photographic accomplishments, Michael Grecco has mastered the art of photography that captures underwater actions and emotions.

Photography’s influence on modern advertising goes beyond a moment in time. Beyond just an image, a photograph has the power to tell a story, create a brand, capture a feeling, create desire, and influence the viewer. The photographer is the Influencer of the digital advertising age.

The “Golden Age” of advertising is defined as the decades from the 1950s through the 1980s, however its power, and influence, did not end when the year turned 1990. Advertising continued to evolve. Those that are familiar with the American Television series “Mad Men” where treated to a “behind the scenes look at the boom time of the ad men.

In New York City, the glamour of the ad agencies and the people behind the ideas became a culture onto itself that was mimicked in every city and town across the USA and throughout the world. It began as the era of the grey flannel suit, the two-martini lunch and advertising men pushing businesspeople out of the spotlight in financial news. This gave way to the decadence of a counterculture that revolutionized society and all forms of art including photography. The process continues.

Photography Advertisers the Advertising

The lead character in Mad Men, Don Draper was a composite of the people who glamorized the sales pitch. The army of ad execs who inhabited Madison Ave and similar districts around the world took the ordinary and turned them into the extraordinary that people did not need but were made to want by advertising.

Beyond the ad script and pitch, the ad men of the 1950s through the 1980s relied on the images that were the prime focus of the ad. For this they relied on photographers who were also evolving in their storytelling power.

The Story as a Picture

“Every picture tells a story”, and “A story is worth a thousand words.,” are cliches that drip truth. Photography’s influence on modern advertising goes beyond image to the photographer’s gift to create and tell a story in moments captured in time. Michael Grecco has developed and refined the gift of storytelling through photography by embracing its evolution.

Michael Grecco learned the craft of photography by rising through the ranks as a photojournalist telling a story with each click of the shutter. Newspapers and magazines were the beginning of turning the craft of photography into a lifetime pursuit of the art of photography for Mr. Grecco.

Photo to Art, Art to Photo

From his early days of selling photos of news events to the Associated Press (AP) Michael Grecco became captivated with the nuances of lighting, framing and storytelling. Every photo he shot was a captured moment and an experiment in photographic excellence.

In the late 1960s Andy Warhol grabbed the golden ring of fame for turning the art of still photographs into art. Today, Michael Grecco, a Photographic Influencer in the heart and soul of the digital age is melding his photographs to tell stories, create desire, influence, and push the boundaries of commercial advertising as art. Michael Grecco is redefining the focus of photo to art and art to photo.

Photography has been a passion for Michael Grecco since the age of twelve, and this passion grew as he started doing creative experimentation in professional photography later on. He turned his first 35mm camera into a lifelong passion for creative experimentation of photographic techniques and innovations. Less than a decade after receiving his first camera Michael Grecco became a “stringer”, a freelance photographer for Associated Press (AP). Stringers were only paid for the photos that the AP considered good enough for publication. It was the ultimate test of shooting photographs that were a cut above the rest.

In photography, it sharpened the lens for the pursuit of excellence. It meant breaking from traditional framing and lighting and developing innovative techniques that would be noticed above the dozens of other stringers who were turning in photos. During these early days, Michael Grecco experimented with lighting, framing, and unique angles when shooting photographs. His style was noticed, and he moved up the ladder. He was hired as a staff photographer at a Boston newspaper, rock magazine, and radio station.

Lighting, Lenses, Developing and Framing

Each new career opportunity enabled him to creatively experiment with different lighting techniques, new lenses, innovations in processing and film. Michael Grecco was breaking the mold with each advancement as a professional photographer. From capturing news events to documenting the early days of punk, each adventure in lighting techniques, advancements in equipment, developing techniques and framing the shot was the creative experimentation in professional photography that would set the next challenge.

Today in the world of photography Michael Grecco proudly wears the moniker “Master of Lighting”. Throughout his long storied career Michael Grecco has combined an experimental approach to perfecting the technology of professional photography. His personal artistic vision leads him to explore all the genres and applications of his passion of professional photography.

From news to pizza ads starring iconic country stars, Michael Grecco is equally at home photographing, high fashion, action sports, advertising and the depths and nuances of life and the universe. He embraces the challenges of creative experimentation in new technology, lighting, lenses, camera equipment, framing and presentation and whatever technology will offer next.

The Photographic Signature of Michael Grecco

Michael Grecco continues to challenge himself and his vision to experiment with all the tools that a professional photographer can use in the era of technological advancement. Using a drone, computer, telescope, satellite, or old-fashioned box camera are all part of the photographic signature of the creative experimentation in professional photography by Micheal Grecco.

Mr. Grecco sees no limits to the boundaries that have opened in the art of photography by technology. VR, AR, and AI are all challenges in breaking the mold by using creative experimentation in professional photography. Michael Grecco looks forward to embracing them all and integrating them into the art of creative experimentation in professional photography.