Creating Magic and Whimsy in Postproduction
By: Pixel Magazine
Tags: Advertising, Photography, Art, Film

As the only child of a university art professor and freethinker mother, I grew up surrounded by shapes and images. My love of art grew out of summer vacations filled with trips to galleries, museums, and art studios. At home I often found myself around the dinner table with an eclectic cast of characters — sculptors, writers, painters. They paraded through my childhood and I credit them all with shaping my artistic foundation and forming my eye for the candid beauty found in people from all walks of life. I’ve kind of been chasing characters ever since. I like to tell their stories through their faces, their bodies, even their costumes. I love the adventure and the challenge of making things work — the crawling around, the actual act of creating an image.

And while I like to share my work, to have the images I make — both commissioned and personal projects — find an interested and intrigued audience, sometimes I’m reluctant to give too much away, to walk people through the entirety of my process, or to talk about things in too technical of terms. Are photographs to be seen and not heard? I’ve never been one to geek-out on camera equipment. What I do trust and rely on is relationships, not only with my clients, but depending on the project, I’ve learned that the right post-production artist ensures a strong creative synergy and ultimately the best possible finish. But there always remains that little voice in the back of my head that whispers “doesn’t the magic disappear if you talk about it?”

“Never let ’em see you ache. That’s what Mr. Mayer used to say. Or was it ass? Never let ’em see your ass.” ― Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge

Yet sharing the process — the whole thing — is living on the edge for me. And while I have started to push myself and share more of my process and inspirations from project to project on both my Tumblr and @cademartinphoto pages, for this exercise I went back and chose eight different projects to show more than just images, and to tell of the experimentation and exploration, of technique and tweaking and testing and collaboration. These are my postcards from the edge.

Do keep in mind that for commissioned projects, I oftentimes choose to present a couple of options to the client, once we get in a good place image wise. It’s always a collaborative effort and we listen to the client and tweak to taste to bring it “home”. And as far as the personal projects, sometimes it’s the chicken or the egg scenario in that I get wind of something I want to do and I go do it. Everything evolves once you’re there and the thought process on post production usually happens afterwards when we can play around with possibilities until I get that little tingle — a gut feeling that something is right to me.

Wish You Were Here — The Mississippi Delta

While I love everything about the collaboration that comes with a commercial shoot, when it comes to my personal work, I find I am drawn to the one-on-one with real, every-day people. You can’t make any of it up or direct it — how they carry themselves or have decided to dress for the day is better than where my imagination could take it. I always go out of my way to make the subjects look their best, to present them in the truest, most sincere way- exploring the architecture of their faces, the texture of their clothes and so on.