Michael Grecco
Once an award-winning photojournalist, Michael Grecco has turned his lens from hard news to the softer – but no less challenging – world of celebrities, pressing his shutter for Hollywood’s A-list. Caroline Wilkinson talks to Grecco about his signature style and having to become more multimedia words caroline wilkinson / images michael grecco
Pro Interview
Michael Grecco
Michael Grecco Biography Born in 1958, Grecco started learning photography as a child, inspired by Time-Life Library of Photography and blown away by amazing masters like Bruce Davidson and Irving Penn. After studying filmmaking and photography at Boston University, he got an internship with The Associated Press and never looked back. During his career as a photojournalist he won several awards for his work. But seeking more creative control over his pictures, he moved to LA to work for People magazine and rerouted his career to celebrity portraiture. The list of personalities he’s captured reads like a door list to the Academy Awards, as well as colourful characters from the world of reality TV and music. See more of his work at: www. michaelgrecco.com
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bsessed with lighting, extremely collaborative with his subjects and driven by concept, Michael Grecco is a leading Hollywood-based celebrity photographer and it’s easy to see why. His approach to a project or portrait is fresh, often experimental, and yet his lighting and execution are precise and polished. But he didn’t start off this way. In fact, Grecco knew very little about studio lighting before he moved to Los Angeles, but after 20-odd years in Hollywood he’s considered a guru; renowned for his dramatic lighting and portraits. In 1987 Grecco departed Boston and his nine years as a photojournalist, and headed for the thrills and creative-fulfillment of ‘Tinsel-town’. The journey started when People magazine noticed his potential when he outshot their contract photographers at a couple of big celebrity weddings on the Cape (in New England). Tapping into his desires to move west and find creative control over his photographs, a Picture Editor at People offered him a news-based role at the magazine. But it still wasn’t what he wanted to do. “I had grown up having a sheltered life in suburban New York and photojournalism was exciting; I was covering events, travelling and shooting news stories. I once did a very intense story about a woman who was abducted and left for dead, the man had cut off her arms and legs. I spent a day with her, photographing her with her baby, one shot showed her throwing her baby in the air using metal prosthetics. I loved the photojournalism I did, but it wasn’t creative enough for me. “I had been inspired by Annie Leibovitz after hearing her speak in Boston. Her first book on lighting and portraiture in the ‘70s was the first photography book I bought and it made me sure it was what I wanted to do. They [celebrity photographers] are clever, they tell stories 88 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY AUGUST 2010
Opening spread “Lucy Liu leaning on the bannister is one of my favourite photographs.”
Top left
and are a notch above newspapers,” says Grecco. When Grecco migrated to L.A. he continued to scoop photojournalism assignments, and also worked as a film-set photographer. It exposed him to new techniques and lighting styles that would heavily influence his photography. “Good directors of photography are magicians at controlling light, creating pools of light and beautifully-lit scenarios like I’d never seen before.” It was looking at these guys on movie sets, taking workshops and seminars and adapting techniques that got Grecco to his sophisticated moody lighting that he’s now famed for. In the early ‘90s, when Grecco was learning about light, his work was much more rigid than it is today. He became known for his tight, lighting-heavy set-ups that relied on the subject not moving outside of a set pose. He used a lot of tungsten hot lights and grid spots for dramatics,
“I grabbed this picture of Joaquin Phoenix in between takes and it ended up making the cover of USA Weekend.”
Above left “This picture of Martin Landau was originally meant to be in colour but someone blocked the strobe, turning the colour muggy. It worked even better as a black & white.”
Right “Jet Li is the king of martial arts: he didn’t even need a trampoline for this shot. I used a large softbox high here.”
Pro Interview
Michael Grecco
“There’s no magic bullet or three situations I use all the time. I look at the picture and figure out what it needs, based on the clothing, skin, set, the mood or emotional experience you want to have with the photograph” Top “The guys behind Youtube made the cover of TIME. I created the wall of images by attaching images to plexiglass and backlit them.”
Above “This was an advert for a one-day pill for pneumonia, against its seven-day predecessor. I decided to put them in heels to make them look weaker.”
whether it was for shooting movie stars, heavyweight entrepreneurs or jewellery. It wasn’t until he starting shooting colour that his style began to loosen and he employed different techniques. Grecco reveals he never lights exactly the same way every time. “There’s no magic bullet or three situations I use all the time. I look at the picture and figure out what it needs, based on the clothing, skin, set, the mood or emotional experience you want to have with the image. There are a couple of basic instruments and techniques that I tend to use for a portrait though: an extra-small softbox, a small softbox or a small strip light. I’ll also use a medium strip light high-up and almost straight down on the person, with the tip of it over their head and the rest of
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it towards the camera so it fills-in under the face. The boxes are almost always used with tight grids – 30º, 40º and 50º grids – very tight, very close. Then I’ll fill with something innocuous that won’t compete with the other lights, such as a beauty dish through a silk.” For many of his shoots, Grecco uses Chimera softboxes and Lighttools Soft Egg Crate Fabric Grids to make large pools of light that aren’t too harsh on the skin. But if he wants to make a very dramatic picture, he may use a 3º metal grid spot to get the harshest light possible. As important as the lighting is for making or breaking a shot, the concept is Grecco’s motivation. “It might be as simple as an emotional state or a prop, a piece of clothing or the way it’s lit. There’s usually some sort of message
that needs to be conveyed right out of the gate. For instance, the ad campaign I shot for Hasselblad a few months ago was based around a fashion-style shoot in the amazing scenery of Death Valley to create this idea of another world. It was playing with the fact that Hasselblad was the first camera in space and now see how far cameras have come as I used a 50-megapixel HD-4 II 50. There’s always a thought process with every shoot.” Despite his technical savvy, Grecco’s images wouldn’t be as nearly engaging without his ability to relax subjects and have them work with the camera. “When it comes to celebrities, the simple thing to do is communicate what you’re expecting from them and what you want to achieve. I always give the talent the motivation. It might be I need
20 different expressions because the magazine is looking to run a sequence of photographs of you Mr Scorsese. Then out of that comes a picture of him with his hands on his head. Communicate with talent really well; let them know what’s expected of them, how long it’s going to take, what you’re about to do and your vision. “I really enjoy working with talent who get what you’re doing and contribute to the scenario; it excites me because they can take the concept to another level. Will Ferrell’s pictures, for instance, especially the one on the bear rug, would have been dead if he was lifeless. He brings a sense of humour and the interest.” Grecco’s iconic celebrity images have featured on covers of countless magazines including New York
Above “The concept for this Hasselblad shoot was inspired by it being the first camera in space. I shot it in Death Valley as it looked other-worldly and brought in a space helmet. To light the image, I used a beauty dish and grid spot.” Visit Grecco’s website to watch a behind-the-scenes video of the shoot.
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Pro Interview
Michael Grecco
Naked Ambition Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-rated Industry is Grecco’s latest coffee-table book. It takes an entertaining and refreshing look at the people in the porn industry through a collection of non-pornographic portraits of anything-goes professionals. The book accompanies a documentary, directed by Grecco and digitally distributed by Warner Brothers, on the making of the book and the Adult Video News Awards. Visit www. nakedambition.com
Top left “The tattooed girl is one of two nudes in the Naked Ambition book as I meant for the content to be more fine art, nothing too racy. I didn’t want people to mistake my work as porn, so we kept the content conservative.”
Top right “I wasn’t shooting pornography: I was photographing portraits of porn stars. It’s funny that these two girls were fighting during the photoshoot right up to when I asked them to hold hands.”
Centre and Opposite page “Artists like Will Ferrell make a photograph. Without his character, the shot of him on the bear rug would have been lifeless. He knows how to work with the camera and brings humour to the images.” You can watch the making-of video of the shoot by visiting Grecco’s website.
“I really enjoy working with talent who get what you’re doing and contribute to the scenario” Magazine, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly and Wired. And his list of advertising clients is even more impressive, ranging from small to gigantic with the likes of Apple, Walt Disney Company, Paramount, Nickelodeon, Holiday Inn, Warner Brothers, Sony and YouTube. In fact, try typing Michael Grecco into YouTube.com and you’ll be able to learn a thing or two as he relays some of his skill and wisdom via sponsored behind-the-scenes videos. Although Grecco hopes the best of his career is yet to come, amongst his plethora of commissions there is only one shoot that he remarks to be a real high-point. That’s his exclusive cover shoot with Steven Spielberg for TIME magazine, publicising his movie Munich. “I had shot Steven four or five times before but this one was important as he wasn’t doing any other publicity, so the world was watching.” The shoot was veiled under secrecy and being for editorial, Grecco had more creative input and after some debate with the Picture Editor, decided to fittingly recreate the picture of the Black September Terrorist. According to Grecco, there have been many “great moments and tough moments” during his career to date. But the most recent highlight was watching his 2008 documentary Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated Industry hit number three in Apple iTunes’ new and noteworthy section, and Warner Brothers releasing the movie digitally around the world. Naked Ambition: An R-Rated Look at an X-Rated Industry is an example of Grecco’s photojournalism roots entwining with his L.A. photography. The movie,
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co-funded by Playboy, was created off the back of Grecco’s latest photography book and is a portfolio of the project that captured non-sexual portraits of porn stars. The book comprises colour portraits of the stars he met while covering the Adult Video Awards – ‘The Oscars of Porn’ – for a magazine. The accompanying documentary is an insightful, refreshing look at the $12-billion-a-year industry, the personal stories that made people become sex stars, and the awards ceremony. According to Grecco, it was “going to the Adult Video Awards in 2002 and seeing the amazing dichotomy of a gala award show in a posh hotel and porn stars attending – some dressed, some not dressed, some dressed over the top” that inspired him to do the project. “They were giving awards away for the best girl on girl scene and Transsexual performer of the year – so you can use your imagination for who comes to that. It was my fascination for the people going up to collect the awards that sparked me off. A girl goes up having won for the best sex scene August 2010 DIGITAL SLR PHOTOGRAPHY 93
Pro Interview
Michael Grecco
Michael Grecco’s kit Grecco uses a Hasselblad HD-4 II 50 and a Canon EOS 5D MkII. “They’re different tools, one shoots faster and has better autofocus points and the other gives you a better file as you’re using a bigger chip. I’ve used both in the studio and sometimes there are budgetary reasons for using the Canon as it’s easier to use yourself without a capture team. But the Hasselblad at 50-megapixels gives a great file.” Lenses for the Hasselblad include a HC 50-110mm f/3,5-4,5, HC 80mm f/2.8 and HC Macro 120mm f/4; while for the Canon he uses a 24-70mm f/2.8L, 85mm f/1.8 and 135mm f/2, and occasionally the 16-35mm f/2.8L II and 70-200mm f/4L. He also uses Dynalite strobes and Comet battery- operated packs when on-location or a generator for larger shoots.
“Digital has changed everything. Instead of using a lab, I have a full-time art director/retoucher in my studio. It’s made things faster and very controllable” Above “Mel Brooks was shot for People magazine. The Photo Editor wanted to show his likeness to Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding, so with that in mind I made the set black & white, but as the contemporary version of Fred, I kept him in colour.”
Top right “Steve Martin had finished writing his memoirs. It had taken him a very long time to do. The vines were make to look as if they’d grown around him.”
and crying ‘I have to thank my mum and dad for this award’. How can I not make it for the basis of a project!” Grecco believes that a good portrait leaves you with some questions and that’s no where more true than in the his Naked Ambition book. “We weren’t taking the obvious lascivious or lude portraits. The first thing all these porn stars wanted to do was stick out their tongue or stick their fingers in their mouth and look like they were in rapture. I tried to shut that down as quickly as I could as I wanted to find an emotional connection, the sadness in their eyes, their depth. I started saying stuff like ‘hey, find me through the camera’, ‘look into the lens’, ‘bare your heart to me’ – but it didn’t work – it was my first assistant who said just tell them ‘not sexy’ – they’ll get it. They got it! After the success of his first documentary, Grecco is in talks about others and pitching a music television show. “Not only am I looking to do multimedia pieces now, I’m looking at bigger projects to coexist with my photographic projects,” he says. Grecco is no newbie to new media.
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In 2001 he became the spokesperson for the Kodak DCS Pro back. “It was the first back I felt had the resolving power that, at 16-megapixels, I wouldn’t have to worry about using on a job. But at the same time the colour wasn’t very good, the skin tone wasn’t very good, it didn’t look very good. So it was something in our kit so that if someone said they wanted us to shoot digitally or ‘how do we get these pictures tomorrow’, we’d pull it out and we’d touch it up.” It wasn’t until 2005 that Grecco went totally digital with a Leaf back and a Canon EOS-1Ds. “Digital has changed everything. Instead of using a lab, I have a full-time art director/retoucher in my studio. It’s made things faster and very controllable. We’re still taking pictures with similar concepts and ideas of lighting but the workflow has changed; I don’t FedEx packages of film anymore. Even if we’re not doing the retouching, which is the case a lot of the time, we’ll do preliminary tweaks so the client can see a nice-looking file. You couldn’t do that with transparency and barely with colour printing.”
Although Grecco doesn’t do a lot of the Photoshop work himself, he raves about Nik Software’s black & white conversion and is always the one to do the final touches to a shot. “I’m the guy who comes in at the end and does the final exposure manipulations and I always do it through a layer mask and relatively selectively. I’ll do the final burn and dodge and the final colour change. What we tend to do with the files in general when we’re processing is add a little vignette on the corners, I still have the myopic love of bringing my focus right to the centre of attention.” For the past five years, Grecco has also been shooting behind-the-scenes videos of his shoots with a Canon EOS 5D MkII. “It gives a client a sense of what goes on and a video to put on their website,” he explains, However, none of it is video footage, instead he has his editor stitch together images from the shoot with stills from the Canon on time-lapse, and animated in After Effects. Although Grecco has started using HD Video on the Canon EOS 5D MkII to shoot videos for clients’ websites,
he still sometimes opts for the Red Camera for better slowmotion quality. The convergence of video and photography hasn’t happened yet though says Grecco. “We haven’t seen how a still and video can be put together in a hybrid of what is going to be the next generation of magazine. People are touching on it, but we haven’t seen how it will evolve. “It’s good news for us pro photographers though. Right now there is very little separation between us and the amateur who picks up a camera and can take good pictures, because the camera is good. In the minds of a lot of clients they think why pay for Michael Grecco when the Art Director can do it That’s because the Art Director is no longer shooting chrome and he can screw it up, he’s now shooting with a camera that can do a great job. But very shortly that will change again. You’re going to have to have photographers with creative solutions and that shoot multimedia, can edit video or direct an editor to edit video, and come up with something that’s on another level. There will soon be a next generation image-maker.”
Above left “Chris Rock had just played the role of the first African American US president in Head of State, so I staged the shot with two bodyguards and lit the image from the ground to add drama as well as humour.”
Above right “I was shooting Hugh Hefner and his bunnies for Direct TV and it was funny to watch the six girls fight over who gets to stand closer to him based on who’s slept with him the most.”
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