Surging into the future, photography and virtual reality are creating new experiences pioneering innovative applications of this century’s old art form. In the 1800s, the camera was a magical box that captivated the general public with images of the past shared in the future. Photography continues to blur the concept of time as past, present, and future are interactively explored in creating new experiences in digital and virtual reality together with machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and the celestial frontiers of universes.

What Is Virtual Reality?

TechTarget, a leader in defining tech, new applications, and how the digital age of the present meets the future offers a clean crisp definition of Virtual Reality.

Virtual reality, or VR, is a simulated three-dimensional (3D) environment that lets users explore and interact with virtual surroundings in a way that approximates reality, as it’s perceived through the users’ senses. The environment is created with computer hardware and software, although users might also need to wear devices such as goggles, headsets, or bodysuits to interact with the environment.

In a VR computer model exploring a research outcome on a laboratory computer interactive graphics with interchangeable data inputs are a VR Experience. The Photographer, together with designers and choreographers, can create another VR experience by bringing the viewer inside of a 2-D picture and creating a 360-degree experience.

 Stepping into a Photograph

Millions are familiar with the wildly popular Van Gogh, The Immersive Experience which tours the world and invites visitors into a 360-degree exploration of the works of Vincent Van Gogh. It is a beautiful example of the horizons and possibilities of the VR experience. Aside from preserving the past, museums embraced the VR revolution by creating special VR exhibits as well as digitalizing their permanent collections into 360-degree VR tours for online visitors. It is the past using the present to embrace the future.

Integrating VR Into Photography

Throughout Michael Grecco’s career, he has studied the interplay of shadow and light, the focus effects of foreground and background, angles, framing, aperture speeds, and subject positioning to achieve photos that have gone beyond the constraints of the two-dimensional. Michael Grecco is interested in and has been experimenting with how VR can expand the art of photography. As VR is an excitingly intriguing combination of expanding the depths and dimensions of photography, it requires essential skills, knowledge, and disciplines.

In the social media age, everyone is an aspiring photographer with a camera in hand to start shooting from scratch. The age of digital cameras forever changed the paradigm of photography. Digital cameras are a built-in addition to every device, laptop, desktop, tablet, phone, and auto dashboard. These built-in cameras come complete with computerized help including autofocus, auto-correct, light adjustments, and post-snap editing tools.

Digital camera accessories take the guesswork out of taking and posting pictures for all skill levels. Users who become adept at using the auto features in digital cameras start to feel like they are becoming accomplished photographers, but what they are becoming accomplished at is using the powerful built-in photographic tools that are a seamless addition to the built-in digital camera. Even as these words are read, the experience of automatic photography is taking another leap into the future with AI-guided digital cameras.

Back to the Future

In the digital era even the definition of the word, photograph, must be reassessed and redefined. According to the Oxford Languages dictionary,  the word photograph is defined as, “a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally:”

The digital camera has altered that definition. Aspiring photographers can still find and use cameras that require film, but most cameras have replaced film with memory cards. Although digital cameras are a step back to the future in many ways, they do allow those dedicated to learning essential photographic practices the opportunity to start shooting from scratch and turning the clock back to an earlier time in learning fundamental photography. 

Defining The Vision

Photography is an art, or is it a skill? From its earliest incarnation, the photographer has had to grapple with the technical knowledge of how to use a camera to achieve the desired results. Those who are now renowned as artists behind the lens are also expert technicians.

Every era in photography has had unique challenges as the tech of photography evolved. What remains the same is the fundamental essentials of capturing a vision in a photograph. Michael Grecco, a legendary photographer whose career spans over fifty years has witnessed dramatic changes in photography. The constant that he has perfected from his beginning shooting black and white photos with 35mm film is an essential lesson for aspiring photographers who are starting to shoot from scratch. As a photographer, Michael Grecco has concentrated on a vast array of photographic styles defining the vision and applying techniques to produce artistic results.

The news photojournalist, social documentarian, sports, fashion, commercial, and portraits are genres in photography that Grecco has mastered, separately and as a fusion of his unique artistic style. In all of his work, Michael uses his vision to fuse a defining vision of the moment. He has the uncanny ability to combine the techniques of multiple genres to produce art that is immersed in technical expertise.

Michael Grecco Tips for Photographers

Along with writing books to guide the aspiring photographer, Mr. Grecco offers sound advice in interviews and discussions. Books by Michael Grecco include The Art of Portrait Photography, Lighting, and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography,  and a book that features his iconic photographs of the Punk Movement, Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991.

Michael Grecco’s Tips include:

• No matter what device, learn it well. The tool of choice should be mastered whether it is a smart or tablet camera, a DSLR, or mirrorless. Michael Grecco points out to aspiring photographers that they must become familiar with the basic functions of the equipment, shutter speed, aperture, focus, breath, and depth of the lens and its limits. He encourages experimentation to get to know the camera. Take the automatic settings off and shoot in manual to learn how settings affect the image.
• From the earliest days of his love of photography, Michael was focused on the effects of shadow and light. In experimenting with the light, he also incorporated foreground and background coupled with focus and angles to produce unique images that captured not just images but moments in time.

His advice includes experimenting, observing, and seeing the world through the viewfinder of your own unique style. Michael Grecco says that shooting from scratch is the best way for aspiring photographers to capture their vision of the world.

Portrait photography is one of the earliest uses of the camera, especially in a studio setting. Among the earliest-paid jobs for photographers were mug shots, which were studio portraits. Mug shots as portrait photography did not really happen in the “studio”, but they were staged so they can still be classified as a studio portrait.

The size and weight of earlier cameras were restrictive so basically all the earlier photographs were, in fact, “studio portraits” whether the setting was on the sidewalk, in an office, at home, or actually at the photographic studio.

Defining Studio Portraits

Definitions are important in any discussion. The word “studio” is rigidly defined by Oxford Languages Online Dictionary as “a room where an artist, photographer, sculptor, etc. works.” On its face value that is true, but times have changed, and the word “studio” can be more broadly defined especially for the photographer to include any number of spaces. So, it is better to define “studio” in terms of the photographic portrait as a “controlled environment.”

The mug shot portrait photographer of the 1800s was in a controlled environment whether at the police station or jail., so there is no doubt at all that these pictures of which there are thousands are, in fact, studio portraits. If the accused were photographed while committing the crime, then they could be classified as “street portraits.” In the digital age of instant photography, these could not be considered portraits at all. Today’s photographic process allows for capturing “action” in a photograph.  The camera equipment and film in the 1800s could not capture action except in a blur or in the hands of an enlightened expert-studied photographer.

Defining Studio Portrait vs Street Portraits

How can the “studio” portrait be defined as opposed to the “street” portrait? The studio portrait is photographed where the photographer has control of the environment. In a “studio setting”,  the photographer controls the warmth, color, and texture of the lighting. On the set, or a “street portrait,” the photographer must have the skills to compensate for the lighting. The street portrait requires the photographer to frame and focus on the spot. Unlike in a studio where a portrait photograph can be planned, the street portrait requires a knowledgeable skilled photographer.

 

Now we have a defined difference between the Studio Portrait vs. the Street Portrait. It is the difference between a controlled environment and a spontaneous one. The photographer plans the Studio Portrait, everything is determined before the shutter clicks. Lighting, aperture, background, foreground, angle, and focus are all predetermined by the controlled environment of the studio.

Professional Studio and Street  Portraits Can be Equalized

The studied professional portrait photographer can plan a studio portrait and adjust to the spontaneity of a street portrait. Every photograph including studio and street portraits is equalized by the knowledge of the photographer.

 

As a celebrity photographer, Michael Grecco has taken studio and street portraits of actors, musicians, sports figures, politicians, people, and events in the news for over fifty years. At this stage of his career, he possesses an intrinsic understanding of capturing photographs. Michael shares his knowledge for those interested in portrait photography in his book, The Art of Portrait Photography: Creative Lighting Techniques and Strategies. Understanding the use of lighting is crucial to capturing illuminating portraits of any genre, studio, street, and even action.

 

The Role of Photography in Social Movements

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the role of photography in social movements is pivotal to inspire, influence, and be a call to action in social movements. The digital age has made the art and medium of photography instantly accessible to everyone. Although Kodak brought photography to the masses with the introduction of the Brownie camera, most people did not carry their camera around 24/7.

Those that looked beyond the Brownie and became hobbyists investing in the latest camera equipment, and lenses were more likely to have a camera at the right time and place to capture an image that became iconic in social movements. Always at the ready with cameras in hand were freelance professional photographers.

The Photography of Instant

The digital age is a unique era in photography. It is a time when every person on earth carries a phone 24/7. It is not just a phone; it is a computer more powerful than home PCs. It is a phone that has the most advanced cameras embedded, complete with video recorders, micro, zoom, and wide angle lenses along with powerful instantaneous editing programs.

In the digital age, a photograph can be snapped, edited, and posted on social media platforms, and websites and sent to the most widely distributed news outlets instantly. Within minutes millions of minds can be influenced by photography. A time when a photograph is worth not thousands of words, but volumes.

It is the age of the photography of instant. An age where a photograph can influence the thoughts and actions of billions of people within a 24-hour day.

The Photography of War

The American Civil War is a subject for the history books that seems so long ago that there could not be photographs. It was one of the earliest times when the role of photography influenced a social movement. Taking a photograph was cumbersome, time-consuming, and dangerous during the U.S. Civil War. The photographers were some of the earliest news and freelance photographers to work for newspapers, magazines, and the political pamphlets of the day. They were the influencers of their time.

It was the horrors and atrocities that were photographed and published that began to turn the tide of blind support for blue and grey. The pictures told the story of human inhumanity. The Civil War photographers were the earliest photojournalists to change public opinion. The photographers of every war now impact social movements.

Instant Karma

War photography impacted anti-war movements along with every social movement as the power of the photograph took center stage. As stringers, freelance and news photographers became permanent fixtures in political campaigns, the role of photography in social movements loomed larger.

Political, social, economic, freedom, music, and independence movements to name a few were all influenced by a photograph. The role of photography in social movements is obvious when iconic images can be recalled and instantly tell the story of the time and place. The picture of a naked Vietnamese girl running from the flames of napalm, the tens of thousands of civil rights marchers at the US Capitol, or the riots in American cities instantly invoke the memories, stories, and truths of social movements.

The Beatles walking off a plane in NYC, Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, Woodstock, and Poison Ivy of The Cramps against a graffitied wall all tell stories of social movements. They are photographs that play music without sound. The role of photography in social movements is not new. In the digital age, it is instant karma.

The Role of Photographer in Social Movements

Photography has long been a catalyst in driving social movements, and David Turnley’s work during the South African apartheid era is a testament to this fact. David Turnley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer renowned for his committed documentation of global events and human stories. Over a span of 12 years, Turnley’s compelling images documented the intense struggles and profound human experiences during and after apartheid. His work, notably his iconic photo of Nelson Mandela’s release in 1990, not only celebrated the end of apartheid but also galvanized global support for a new South Africa.

His dedication to capturing the heart of the struggle helped bring international awareness, influencing perceptions and fostering a global consensus for change. This momentous capture and others like it underscore the significant role photographers play in advocating for justice and human rights.

Photography in museums and archives is a unique medium for preserving the past. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, animation, virtual reality, and augmented reality each have their place in depicting and preserving the past in museums and archives. Photography is a unique depiction of moments in time.

Photography as an art and documentary medium earned its place in museums and archival records in the first quarter of the 1800s. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a scientist in soul, is credited with producing the oldest surviving photograph from a camera. It has been anointed with the title, View from the Window at Le Gras. It is a heliographic image which is discussed in a short essay The First Photograph by Barbara Brown, Head of Photograph Conservation, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

The Challenges of Preserving Photographs, the Windows to the Past

The Window at Le Gras is a window to the past that challenges the present and future to create a solution for preserving photographs. Bob Dylan said, “inside the museum, infinity goes on trial.” Preserving the exhibitions for infinity is challenging. At barely 200 years old, the photograph is a relatively new addition to museums and historical archives that presents unique preservation challenges.

Museums and archives face similar challenges in preserving their collections and exhibition items. Light, time, temperature, humidity, catastrophic events, and accidents are the enemies of art, artifacts, documents, and photographs.

Protecting Photographs and Their Negatives

Museums and archives continue to add massive amounts of photographs to their collections. It requires a plan and continued funding for preservation, storage, and display. Photographs, like all art, need to be protected for infinity from the ravages of time, temperature, humidity, and dangers. The process of creating a photograph is inherently fragile. The negative from which it was printed, and the paper on which it’s printed are all susceptible to the elements and time.

The age of microfilm was seen as a solution for storage until it became clear that it too was susceptible to the damages of time and temperature. As each new storage solution comes online, museums, archive boards, and curators must have a plan to transfer photograph collections to the latest storage techniques so that infinity may judge the past, present, and future art of photographs.

Storing digital files in the Cloud is seen as a solution. Like storage innovations of the past, the Cloud will reveal its flaws. Corrupted files and damaged hardware are just two things that can go wrong with storing photographs in the cloud. Redundant copies of digital collections secured at multiple sites may be a practical solution.

 Photographers as Curators

Photographers should plan to preserve their work in the digital age with redundancy at multiple cloud storage enterprises around the world. Living photographers are the ultimate curator of their work even when showing or placing their photographs in the care of museums and archives.

Michael Grecco curated and made preservation contingency plans for his muti-media show featuring work from his “Days of Punk” period. The show was at the Centro Cultural de Cascais, in Cascais, Portugal from October 15, 2023 to January 28, 2024. It was produced by the D. Luís I Foundation, with the collaboration of the Cascais City Council.

This exhibit was made possible because of the care that Michael Grecco took to preserve his past as a photographer with intimate access over fifty years ago during the early days of the international punk era. The Days of Punk exhibit at Centro Cultural de Cascais featured over 100 high-quality prints from the thousands that Michael Grecco shot and carefully preserved for infinity and summarized in this short video.

Photography is a general term that describes genres of distinctive styles, techniques, and finished products. Exploring photographic genres includes taking a dive into documentary, art, fashion, commercial, historical, and personal snaps of the shutter.

The result of every photographic genre is unique in purpose, form, and result. The principal fundamentals of photography are necessary for effective photography whether it is a personal social media post or an iconic image.

A Dive into Photographic Style and Technique

Michael Grecco has decades of study and performance across a diversity of photographic genres. As a news photographer, Mr. Grecco became practiced in a fundamental understanding of the essentials of darkness and light. Along the way, he became intrinsically aware of the importance of focus framing and using depth of field.

In the iconic color photograph of Quentin Tarantino at the Hollywood Grill in 1995 essential photographic style and techniques are clear. The fundamental use of shadows and light, combined with framing, focus, foreground, and background are features of this photograph along with a personal style and technique that Michael has developed and perfected over the decades.

In his book Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography, Michael Grecco shares the style and technique of his art. In this tome, Michael goes into the details of turning portraits into photographic art.

He also explains the use of essentials for the hobbyist as well as the professional photographer. He touches on how the use of, exposure, shutter speed, depth of field, focal length, sharpness, camera settings, composition, and editing affect the interplay of light and shadow of a photograph.

His lessons are clear in another iconic image that he snapped in 2006, Martin Scorsese Poses on a Roof.

 

Crossing Genres into Art

The photos of Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino can be pigeonholed as “portraits.” Michael Grecco has moved the art of photography beyond the traditionally defined with an experienced professionalism driven by an innate inquisitiveness and experimental personality that crosses genres into the realm of art.

Each of the photographs tells multiple stories that cross photographic genres: art, fashion, commercial photography, etc. They are documentary photographs that capture historic moments from the lenses of Michael Grecco’s cameras.

The Genres of Michael Grecco Photography

Sports, music, fashion, portraits, documentaries, and commercials are often cited as distinctive genres of photography. Over the last half-century, Michael Grecco has studied, practiced, explored, photographed, and produced iconic images that span every genre of photography.

He has not been to space to conquer celestial photography, but that may come. In black and white or in color Mr. Grecco is a perpetual student and pioneer of the craft, art, and science of photography in all its forms.

Michael Grecco is a perpetual student and recognized expert in celebrity portraitures with an uncanny eye for capturing iconic moments. His three-plus decades of learning and mastering the techniques and innovations of photography give him an uncanny ability to capture the essence of moments.

A portrait is defined as an image of a person or group of people while a portraiture is the art of making portraits. The digital age has an insatiable desire for images, and visuals fulfilled by a camera in every hand. These portraits fill the desire for social media, separate and apart from the art of photography.

The Essence

Throughout his thirty-plus-year career as a photographer, Michael Grecco has developed a unique style and discerning eye that has captured iconic moments in history. The art of Michael Grecco relies on his ability to see and capture the essence in his celebrity portraitures.

As a photographer who began as a photojournalist, Michael Grecco appreciates and explores the techniques of capturing essence beyond the physical. These include the use of light, framing, focus, depth of field, aperture speed, and innovations in equipment. He is recognized in photography as an expert in lighting which combines his understanding of the technical as well as artistic.

The celebrity portraiture delivered from the photography equipment of Michael Grecco captures the spirit, charisma, and allure of the subject that goes beyond the physical into the realm of essence.

The Portraiture Personality

Leonardo da Vinci was captivated by the interplay between light and darkness in his work. The Renaissance technique known as chiaroscuro was pivotal in art. It did not disappear with the Masters of the Renaissance, it evolved as a technique and crossed over to sculpting, photography, cinematography, (Fellini as an example) and even set designs for opera and theater.

Michael Grecco began his life journey of exploring the interplay between light and darkness in his photography at an early age. Like da Vinci, and Fellini, his intrigue with using chiaroscuro continues to this day. The interplay between the dark and light is fundamental in the celebrity portraiture personality art of Michael Grecco.

Mr. Grecco has photographed Hollywood legends, music moguls, athletes, models, and a who is who of entertainment industry personalities. Each photograph sets Mr. Grecco apart with his ability to delve deep into the psyche of his subjects, revealing layers of personality. He transcends the superficial glitz and glamour often associated with celebrity photography. Using all the photographic tools in his arsenal, Mr. Grecco aims for a portraiture that encapsulates personality, essence, spirit, and charisma.

The Reality of Fortune and Fame

Mr. Grecco has set himself apart in the world of photography by continually learning and applying new techniques, innovations, and advancements in technology to his craft. After more than three decades he continues to approach each photograph with dedicated enthusiasm. Photography is not just Michael Grecco’s career, it is his life. In a Michael Grecco celebrity portraiture, the viewer is offered a glimpse of the heart, soul, essence, personality, and humanity of the rich and famous.

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.