Born in Los Angeles, Armando Martinez studied photography, architecture, and graphic design. The early ninety’s found him in Colorado where he worked in advertising, design, and publishing for the first 10 years. The last 18 years with his own company Mando-Matic, a photography, video, and retouching studio, has allowed Martinez to concentrate on the photographic image. An award-winning filmmaker, photo retouching artist, and photographer, he crafts photographs into new visions daily.
In this episode, Armando shares the story and inspiration behind a photograph of former Governor of Colorado and current Senator, John Hickenlooper at a winery. What you learn about this photo might shock you.
- Find Armando at armando.photography
- See the photo from this episode here.
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Transcription was done by Descript or Rev’s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar
Armando Martinez: My name is Armando Martinez, and this is the photo. Photo
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: breakdown is a podcast where I talk with the photographer, sharing the story of a specific photograph technique or business when I’m your host, Scott Wyden Kivowitz and this is the photo breakdown. Let’s break it down. Hello, my name is Scott Wyden.
Kivowitz your host of photo breakdown. And today I’m sitting down with my friend Armando Martinez to talk about a really cool photo that is in his class. In his portfolio and is if you’re listening to this and you go look at that photo, it’s what you’re about to learn is going to shock you. I guarantee it, I guarantee it.
So, Armando. Hello, welcome.
Armando Martinez: Hi, how you doing? Scott? Good. Good. Yeah, you’re ready. Ready to deliver the shock.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. But before, before we get to the shock I’ve got two questions for you that are sort of an icebreaker for our listeners to get to know you. So the first question is, tell me something that you think is true, that almost nobody agrees with you on
Armando Martinez: something true in the world are true about me.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Whatever you want wherever you want to go with this
Armando Martinez: one thing that is true, that some people don’t believe when I tell him is that I used to work for a low rider magazine back in Los Angeles years ago. And which kind of leads up to some of the things we’ll be talking about
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: low rider, like the cars
Armando Martinez: or the cars.
Yeah. For for a while I brought them into the kind of like digital age of you know, color correcting and doing everything digitally in Photoshop.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I just have
Armando Martinez: a bunch of the magazine too.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. I just got like hydraulics going up and down in my head right now. Like, yeah,
Armando Martinez: that was a crazy scene.
Yeah.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So everybody is listening. Who’s checking out your photos, right? Are going to see that you are very good at photography at drone photography and videography and, and photo editing, Photoshop work. You’re just very good at a lot of this photo video stuff. What are you not very good at?
Armando Martinez: I’m not very good at tooting my own horn.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Ah, way to twist it back.
Armando Martinez: Yeah. It was just kind of funny. Cause I have an assistant who will oftentimes be like, yeah, tell him about this or tell him about that. And he never really, you know, he’s just too humble. He doesn’t want it, you know, so yeah. I let the work speak for itself. You know, that’s kind of like where like to, I guess be in my little realm
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: when, when you and I first met many years ago at this point It became very obvious early on that you are very, very good at photo editing and it told me it, it just, it blows my mind sometimes when I see.
You can’t tell it’s been edited, it just looks natural. And that’s a little bit of foreshadowing into what we’re going to be talking about right now, before we dive in this episode is sponsored by my lead generation course for photographers called more leads more clients. Yes. If you would like to increase the leads you’re generating on your photography site, you can use the strategies I teach in my course, access [email protected] slash Lee.
Armando Martinez: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been doing it for probably 19 years, maybe longer. Yeah, I’ve been working in Photoshop since version.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s absolutely crazy. That’s the thing that like that. Yeah. I mean, so, so I’ve been in the WordPress space for so long and, and when I tell people I’ve been using WordPress since version one and how much has changed You know, Photoshop is equally has changed equally as much.
Armando Martinez: Oh, you have no idea. I mean, I actually, I had to develop the techniques that people use nowadays, you know, there was, you know, back then there was no. There was only a couple of books and it was really just basically how to, you know, what this slider does and what that slider does. And what I had to do was kind of create these tricks and techniques to get looks into photographs, you know, and compositing techniques as well.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And at that point you had, you had to buy these disks, these disc things to install Photoshop on your computer.
Armando Martinez: I think I might have floppy sex with
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: oh boy. Oh, that’s so good. All right, so, so,
so let’s break down. The photo.
So first we’re going to talk about what we’re looking at here. We’re looking at a gentlemen, holding a glass of wine and he’s in, he’s in a winery. You can tell him. Wine cellar. Yeah, you can tell. I mean, it could, the barrels could be anything if he wasn’t holding a glass of wine. Right. But we see, we see the wine, so we know it we’re in a wine cellar of some sort.
So who is this guy that we’re looking at in this photo?
Armando Martinez: This is a former governor Hickenlooper of Colorado. And he actually ran for president briefly in the last election, but didn’t get very far.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: He
Armando Martinez: wasn’t actually on the ballot, but he was, yeah, he was attempting to get on the democratic ticket. Interesting. Yeah, I hope so. And I think he didn’t move to trying to get to the Senate.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Well, yeah, so, so I did look up, he is he’s a Senator now. Correct. Okay, cool. So, where, where is this winery that he’s, that he’s in or in the photo?
Yeah,
Armando Martinez: so yeah, this photo I guess we’ll, we’ll let the shock out is a composite and the, the winery is an I stock land and a was.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Did you just say that the F the, the winery itself. So wait, the winery is an yeah.
Armando Martinez: Well, I’m not sure if it’s specifically I stock, but it’s a stock photo that was handed to me by the agency to produce this photo.
So they wanted Hickenlooper in this setting. So basically I went there to photograph. And had to light him to match this setting and then composite it into this photograph.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. So this is crazy because, so I already knew ahead of time that, because you told me that this was photo-shopped right. I did not expect the background and technically the foreground to be a stock photo, as well as because.
In the same portfolio, you’ve got breweries, you’ve got wineries. Right. So I’m expecting this to be from like the same.
Armando Martinez: Yeah. It could have been. Yeah. I mean, I have photos that are very similar to it, but like in the advertising realm, this is kind of like where they basically want something very specific, which is, you know, it’s very common in advertising that they want, you know, to look exactly like this with these things.
And you know, this.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, that’s so crazy. Okay. So, so the agency wanted you to Photoshop the governor at the time into this wine cellar holding a glass of wine, but you told me something else that, so first of all, first of all, Yeah. So first you told me he doesn’t even drink alcohol or doesn’t drink
Armando Martinez: wine.
He doesn’t drink.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It’s so interesting that, that the agency wants a photo of him holding a glass of wine in a wine cellar when knowing that he doesn’t
Armando Martinez: drink. I’m pretty sure he, I’m trying to remember if it’s similar polos, but I’m pretty sure that he does not drink.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That’s so interesting. And that could be just a political thing to sh to connect more with, you know, Demographic right.
Potentially. So the other thing that’s just mindblowing besides that is that this is completely photo-shopped like, as you said, you actually lit him and you sent me the behind the scenes photo of this, you actually lit him in his office. Right. And you made the lighting match the tone. Like that warm earth tone that you actually see in the cellar itself.
Just so could you talk about how, how do you do accomplish? I mean, you’ve got a good eye for this. This is what you do for a living. You’ve got a really good eye for this. So can you walk through briefly, like,
Armando Martinez: Yeah. Yeah. Well, the first thing is it’s kind of really the kind of look at the lighting, which, you know, if you look at the barrels and, and the shadows kind of like right here, the barrels that are facing him and you see those kinds of Crescent shadows the first clue is that it’s with a pretty good size light because those shadows are soft.
Like, if you’re using a small pin light, you know, like a strobe, you know, without any modifier, those will be really harsh shadows on there. It’d be nice to find. So that could be, you know, it could be from a door from the, into the cellar, it could be a flash photography. But just looking at that, that tells me it’s, you know, a big soft light that basically is lighting that.
And so that gives me the clue on how to light him, you know, and even,
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: and even exactly what direction is coming from. So, so then you had to basically, you know, mimic that big light and from your behind everybody else is not going to see this behind the scenes photo. But what it looks like you’re using like a, was it, is it a saltbox or an octagon?
Armando Martinez: It’s like a, it’s a 64 inch. Okay.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay.
Armando Martinez: So I use that whenever I want that kind of big open window kind of feel to them to have photographs. Right.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And then. Not screens though, just a,
Armando Martinez: just a quiet, you know, just need something to get them cut out, you know, nice and clean. And we actually had a few photos that we needed to get that day.
So we have this one, we also had to do a full size version of him for a cutout that they were going to make because he wasn’t going to be able to be at this event. This is for Colorado wines Uncorked and governor’s cup event. And which is why the governor is in it. Right? And so since he wasn’t going to be at the event, they wanted to create a big life-size cutout so that people can go up and take pictures, you know, at the event.
So we had a few different types of things to accomplish in that in the short time I was.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That’s really funny. Like this event basically has his name on it, but he wasn’t there and, and there was a cardboard cutout. That’s good. You can’t make that stuff up.
Oh boy. So you know, what’s, what’s really cool. On top of it all is. Not only does it look like he was actually there? I’d imagine you in the composite and you probably did some extra work to sorta like bleed him in even more than just the cutout. Yeah. Yeah.
Armando Martinez: I mean, you know, once you, you know, I try to get, you know, the basic setup for the light, so a little reflection on his dark side there to fill it in just a bit.
And. Get the main source, that’s a soft light, but then also bring it into Photoshop and then kind of match the warmness match the blacks. You know, just the tone, just, you know, you don’t want it too bright, too dark.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. And he’s, he’s very clear in here. The texture in his skin is, is perfect that, and that, that highlight on the glass of wine that he’s holding just basically restate.
The original lighting in the photo that you added to? Oh, I guess it is. Yeah, because it’s rectangle versus round
Armando Martinez: doorway or something out to the
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that didn’t even click. I thought we’re just talking about around, you know, light modifier, and then it’s a rectangle didn’t even click see that. That’s how good I hope everybody goes and check this, check this out to see. You know, you can do a composite. That is something for fun, you know, for you to play with, for you to make art with.
And it could be great, but then when needed, we needed to do something that’s for an, for, for ads, for an agency, whatever it is, it has to be flawless. And you totally nailed it. I mean, I said to you this, when we were talking, I’m like, what photo you want to do? And, and, and I picked one. And I’m like, there’s gotta be a cool story here and look at this story.
Armando Martinez: Well, and you know, what’s ironic. This is the only composite photo in my entire. You can look at every other photo and you pick the one photo that is positive.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That’s so funny. It’s so funny. But so, but to me, but that’s there to
Armando Martinez: show like what can be possible, like what could be done? So I can say, well, yes, you know, like we had to utilize a person that we all have very short access to and, you know, photograph them in a way so that we could create this end result.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, so this was also, I guess my last question about this. This was so he’s no longer the governor. This was probably photographed before Photoshop came out with. Select subject. Correct. So, you know, like Marquis it’s manually.
Armando Martinez: Yeah.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. Yeah. So do you think that select subject would have sped up your process or do you still prefer doing things by hand?
Armando Martinez: The select subject is, you know, like anything I taught Photoshop for years, you know, in Lightroom. And the one thing I would always tell people is if there’s an auto function in Photoshop, it’s not. Magic it fails most of the time it does decent on something. So you kind of have to like say, okay, well, if I tried it, it would probably work like, and get maybe 90% there and then I would have to kind of clean it up and finish it up.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I, whenever I use select subject, I oftentimes have to go in and add the additional masking or remove some of the masking or whatever.
Armando Martinez: Yeah. It’s yeah. There’s no magic. Alison there it’s it’s got its limitations.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Armando, thank you so much for breaking down this photo with me.
I’ve got another question for you. That’s going to catch you off guard. What should I have asked you? But didn’t.
Armando Martinez: Well, typically I think in this situation, it’s kind of more like what inspired you to be, you know, to do this kind of work.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: All right. So let’s, let’s go there. What inspired you to do this kind of work?
Armando Martinez: You know, I just, I love making imagery. I love making things that just look really cool. And, you know, oftentimes I, especially when I’m photographing something.
You know, I have this vision in my head when I see it, you know, before we even take the picture of what I want it to look like. And I just love kind of getting it to that point, which goes into the whole, you know, who I was teaching white room and Photoshop was, I was just trying to show people how to use these tools to execute your vision.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right, right. Super, super hard to. Comfortable and familiar enough with the tools to get there, but it’s possible hundreds,
Armando Martinez: lots of practicing.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: My my photography professor in college said practice makes permanent not perfect permanent. So that’s one of my favorite, favorite quote ever. It stuck with me ever since the first day he said it.
Armando Martinez: Yeah, I do like that. You know, like there’s nothing perfect, but if you can. Close enough to your vision, then you’re happy.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yes. Yup. So where can our listeners connect with you online?
Armando Martinez: Well, they can find me on Instagram. I’m at Mondo. And that’s M a N D O M a T I C. Outside of that you know, my website, if they just want to see some, some of the work that I’ve done otherwise Instagram is going to be where they’re going to find me to, to see some of the latest stuff I’ve been doing, you know, or Facebook.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you for listening to photo breakdown for the show notes and to see the photos. Share today, visit photo breakdown.com.
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