Photo Breakdown #6 with Mitch Russo

Travel photography is Mitch Russo’s excuse to get out of town, visit crazy, exotic places, and make art. On a normal day, Mitch is an entrepreneur, coach, and advisor to startups. As a CEO Advisor to several companies at the same time, Mitch participates in many different business types, solving many diverse types of problems in sales organizations, marketing, technology, systems, and HR. Mitch has also written top-selling business books like The Invisible Organization and Power Tribes.

In this episode, Mitch shares the story and inspiration behind a Buddha Temple photo from Myanmar.

• Find Mitch at mitchrussotravels.com and mitchrusso.com
• See the photo from this episode here.

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, and other errors, and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.

Mitch Russo: Hi, my name is Mitch Russo, and this is the photo breakdown.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Photo 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. Today, I’m sitting down with Mitch Russo to talk about a really interesting photograph that has a mixture of elements in it.

And well, let’s, let’s dive into this first Mitch. Hello, welcome to the photograph. Thank

Mitch Russo: you, Scott. It’s great to be on your show. It’s great to reconnect with you as well. So here I am. Let’s go.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, it’s been awhile. So before we dive into talking about the photo, I liked. Ask two questions that are going to take you off guard and hopefully get the listeners to get to know you a little bit.

So, who has been the biggest influence in your life

Mitch Russo: when you talk about photography? Of course, right?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It could be anything you want.

Mitch Russo: Well, you know, the, probably the biggest influence would be for a different reason. Well, Ron Rosenstock has been my friend and photo mentor for many, many years. And I’ve learned a lot about composition and seeing for Ron, but more importantly, I.

Had access to the world through runs company. So I’ve been on about 30 journeys with Ron Rosenstock, traveling all over the world and and to this day we’re best of friends and planning another trip to Morocco hopefully early next year or later this year, if, if conditions are oh, wow.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Nice. Great. So my second question. It’s definitely related to photography. If you could only photograph one thing, one thing only for the rest of your life, what would

Mitch Russo: it be? Ooh, that’s a great question, Scott. And it’s going to break the stereotype of what I do. So here’s what I mean, there’s this.

Term that I’ve used. I call it privileged photography. And the reason I say it that way is because people, certain people have access to certain things that you and I would never have access to. So to answer your question, what I would love to be is a live stage rocks photography.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That is definitely different than what you normally do completely different,

Mitch Russo: by the way.

My love of this started in the 19. Late 1970s when I was able to get backstage access to a Frank Zappa concert and extensively photographed Frank and, and the mothers of invention with basically with a Minolta and, and. And black and white film. And I was lucky enough, I brought a tripod onto stage.

Nice. And I got some good time exposures of Frank moving too. So that was sort of like an explosion in my mind. Wow. If I could do this, I’d love to be able to do this like a lot, but I can’t get access. You know, you just, no one could just walk into a rock concert with a whole bag of photography gear, right?

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. It’s these days. It used to be that you could basically create your own press credentials and go, but now, now it’s basically, you got to know somebody to get you in. Yeah. Yeah. But I used to, I used to, to photograph bands live and also, you know, their, their press photos years ago, when I, when I was in bands, I was doing that.

And. What’d he do. He’s a lot of fun. So, I play a bunch of instruments not all of my plate. Well, but the, the band, I played bass in a band. I played guitar in a band. I played keyboard in a band, so I’ve sort of been all over the place, but the band that I toured with for the most part and did a record, a lot of albums with I was playing either keyboard or eventually rhythm guitar.

Well, I think I was even just acoustic at that point. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That seems like ages ago 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.

At Scott widen.com/leads. So let’s break down this. No,

what I am looking at right now is a photo of what looks like a temple possibly. And you’re going to obviously share more about this, but this is what we’re looking at. And again, we’ll be like through this, into the show notes. I’m looking at what looks like a temple on a beautiful night sky.

There’s greenery around there’s other, some other structure. It’s got cool light on it. And there’s a Buddha in the center inside of this temple like structure. So first where was this photographed

Mitch Russo: in? My Inmar was in Bagan as resting. There are 3000 of these temples scattered all over the area. And, you know, they’re wide open there’s no, there’s no admission.

There’s no doors. You just walk in. And you know, particularly the time we were there, we were just about, I mean, they were, they were photographers there, but they were snapped shooters. They were not folks with serious equipment to tripods. So when when I arrived there, you know, I did it with a flashlight and I got to see this place.

And I thought to myself, look at that incredible Buddha. And I went back to the car and we had candles. And so we started placing the candles all around the Buddha. It was, it took hours to set this up, but it was so much fun.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So you said there was a lot of these around are they all, not obviously being handmade like this?

They can’t be identical, but are they all pretty much? They look like this or they all look.

Mitch Russo: They’re all different, but they look they’re in this style. Okay.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, so you illuminated the, the Buddha around the Buddha inside of this temple structure with candles. But what is also interesting is you have gorgeous blue night sky with stars.

You have trees that are illuminated that are green. You have trees that are sort of reddish illuminated. So it seems like you did some sort of light painting. As well. So this month, this obviously had to have been a little bit of a longer exposure. Can you share some of the equipment that went in where’s involved with this?

Sure. Let me,

Mitch Russo: let me break down the, the technical aspects of the photo itself. So the final photo, the last piece was shot outside as as we. The temple itself. Now, if you scroll down that page on my website, you’ll see the actual Buddha inside the temple and the lighting setup. And that that image is titled at night alone with Buddha.

And what we did is we placed these candles all around. And what we were doing is measuring the amount of light that it would take to fully eliminate the temple. And of course the Buddha, but once we got our first set up done, we realized that the whole back of the Buddha was, was completely dark. That alcove was dark.

So we had to go back and put more candles behind the Buddha, which you can’t see, right. It was on the floor. You can act now that I told you that you could see the shine of the Campbell’s right. And and so, we were able to add some beautiful texture to the rear of that cave. And then finally, I mean, look this took hours to set up, but the final image was then shot.

And of course when we shot it, the the candles were already out. And we had already been packing up the lever. I turned around and saw the temple and how beautiful the temple was. And so I, I set up my tripod and I started making exposures at different, at different exposures. So, I, I use a Sony at the time I was using the Sony a seven or three and and what I was doing is taking several.

Exposures based on, of course, sharpness was the key element for me. So I stopped down probably to about F eight. And then at that point I got a beautiful, beautiful exposure of the sky. Then I made another one with a flashlight to eliminate the temple softly by itself. And then of course brought that into Photoshop and I blended the interior and the exterior.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Nice. Yeah. And so the, the, the sky also just, it just pops off that, you know, off the background of the sky, the temple, does it just definitely, definitely has. That the detail, the contrast, the illuminance to make it all pop. What, what is the structure on the right? Is that another temple of sorts?

Mitch Russo: It is. And it’s far larger and it posed a problem too. You know, my goal was to try and make it, you know, secondary to the main image. But it was, it was. There was a lot of stray light on it. So it took a little bit of processing to sort of, you know, just basically tone it down, but still keep some of the detail in that beautiful stonework.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. You can tell, especially the bottom of it. You can see where it’s brighter. You can see how much how much there is going on in, in the, in the stones. Yes. Even even the, the, the, the temple with, with the Buddha. I mean, there’s so many little intricate details in that architecture.

Mitch Russo: It’s gorgeous.

It is it. You should go, Scott, you love. Oh, I’m sure I would, if we could ever travel again. Yeah.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Oh boy. Yeah. So, you know, have you, did you consider photographing this in, in portrait instead of landscape to, to get rid of that extra, that other I did temple. I did do.

Mitch Russo: Yeah. And I didn’t like it. Interesting.

Yeah, it did not work for me. First of all, it looked too isolated. That way. And the second of all I, I don’t generally like vertical images. They’re hard to display. And they, they don’t work well. I don’t think they work well for me when I’m showing my photos. So if I’m in, like, for example I speak at events or I used to and I’ll do a slideshow and the verticals are they just like over the top of the stage?

You know what I mean? They’re just not, or you have to make the screen so small. So I prefer if possible. To continuously to use to use horizontal. Now I do what I, when I create HDR panels at night, I do of course, shoot vertical and then stack them into a horizontal. Yep.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. That’s definitely a good method to do for those, for sure.

Yeah. So, so this was purely just to confirm this was purely a multiple exposure with masking and blending rather than a pure HDR. It was more of a fine fine tune with masks.

Mitch Russo: Yes. Because the HDR, even if you were doing three stops, so neither side could not have handled the contrast, but, but the other problem is I disclosed earlier.

We had already blown out the candles when I realized how powerful the temple was. So yeah. I didn’t want to go back and rewrite all the candles, so yeah. But, but the, and the, you know, the blending part was relatively easy. I mean, you know, again, Photoshop, I’m not very adaptive Photoshop, but even I could do this in Photoshop.

So it wasn’t hard at all. Yeah.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And if you, if you have a camera on a tripod, it definitely makes that process way simpler. Cause you don’t. Align everything up. It just, just there. The, what I find most interesting in this is that just from a architecture architectural standpoint in the photograph is that it looks small.

Right, right. But if you do look at that photo that you also have in the same gallery of just the boots. It’s big.

Mitch Russo: Yes, sir.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: This bill, it’s just you know, it’s, it’s gorgeous. This photo is gorgeous. The temple is gorgeous. The it’s just so cool, especially when you put them side by side, the, you get, so you’ve got, you’ve got basically two photos, one showing the scale just because it’s from the inside and you can see simply how big it really is.

So it’s a really, really, really cool Yeah. So thank you so much for breaking down this photo with me. So one last question is what should I have asked you, but

Mitch Russo: didn’t you should’ve asked me what the hell are those wires doing too, in the left side of the frame

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that received them, but that requires them wanting to take it out and Photoshop and you know, not everybody wants to.

Yeah. You

Mitch Russo: know, my, my basic philosophy is. Clarity. And I have to say, I, I think I, I I could have done that with ease and I, and I, and I didn’t, and I, I, I think I can and should go back and clean this up just a little bit more,

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: but at the same time, at the same time leaving them in their shows, ancient and modern times together,

Mitch Russo: most people don’t.

They don’t, I don’t think most people make the connection. But you’re right. I mean, there’s no doubt about it. When I look at a photo, at least from my photographers, I I’m looking to take something of pristine beauty and isolated in its native area, which is what this is. I have isolated this in its native area, using lighting and set up.

And to me, the, you know, in secondarily looking at this requires to me, Subtract from the overall performance of that image. And I, like I said, I don’t think it’s hard to fix, but I noticed it while we’re talking more than ever before.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, so do you go back to it? It’ll a ticket, like 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes to get rid of them and done.

Cool. So where can our listeners connect with you online?

Mitch Russo: Well, they can go to Mitch Russo travels.com. Right now that site is is basically bouncing directly to my smug mug gallery because we’re working on a beautiful brand new site as we speak. Great.

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. I can’t wait to see it. Your, your your business website you’re outside of photography is, is, is quite beautiful.

So, I can imagine that your new photography site is going to be. Equally as awesome.

Mitch Russo: It will, it will be incredible. And I got to tell you, I’ve been building websites with the same partner now for over a decade and he’s built all of my sites. I have. Four or five different business sites promoting different services and products of mine.

So, and he’s basically built them all and it’s re it’s ridiculous. How, how, how much I love this guy in the work he does. So you’re right. It’s going to be awesome when it comes

Scott Wyden Kivowitz: out. I can’t wait to see it. Thanks. Thank you for listening to photo breakdown for the show notes and to see the photo that Mitch shared today.

Visit photo breakdown.com.