Rangefinder Magazine
August 2002

Richard Pahl: by Julie Miller and Bill Hurter
Notes on Being a Senior Photographer

“Door to My Future” Marsha’s natural atheletic abilities shaped her into a nice ”S” shape. We used this photo as a base for a competition treatment, created with a little Bryce 5 thrown in.

RICK PAHL IS WELL KNOWN in print-competition circles. Until recently he has been remembered for his digitally manipulated imagery and perfect (100) scores in WPPI, IWPPA and PPA print competitions. But he is also an accomplished senior photographer and this probably stems from his love of kids, of all ages. Rick sees senior-age kids as being at the pinnacle of their physical attractiveness. “On a Darwinian level,” says Pahl, “seniors, especially girls, are at or are very close to their physical primes. This is when girls are most attractive, physically ready to prove that they are worthy of competing to be the mothers of the next generation. Men are usually considered their best at around 25, but senior boys are most definitely showing signs of physical maturity.”

Rick has not been a professional photographer for all that long. He began playing around with his father’s new Kodak 35mm camera when 35 was the “new” format. “I was fascinated by slides,” he recalls. “When I was in my early 20s, I purchased a Mamiya 500 TL (35mm SLR), which produced two contest winners (a first and a second place) and an ensuing ‘cover.’ I stayed an avid amateur until I was almost 50 and ready for a career change. I spent three years filming and editing wedding videos and produced a best-seller on the scenery of California’s Northwest coast.”

Mike is a high school senior, who was, until this shot came out, considered a bit “book-wormish”. This has turned into quite a popular image among the teens and women of Okeechobee.

Rick and Kathy, his wife, moved from shooting and editing wedding videos into being videographers/unofficial wedding coordinators and soon decided to scrap that career and take up still photography as a profession. “We shot weddings for a few years then went on the road,” says Rick. Even though the couple owned a beautiful home right on the ocean, on a couple of acres, “we were house-poor,” Rick recalls. “So we decided to sell all, buy a motor-home and live full-time on the road, shooting scenics and writing magazine articles. Over a five year period we naturally progressed toward Florida, and decided to settle in South Central Florida in a very pleasant cowtown, Okeechobee.” By then the couple were members of WPPI and PPA, and were beginning to score well in print competitions.

It was at this time in Rick Pahl’s career that he forged two very important relationships: Photoshop and Monte Zucker. Rick spent literally thousands of hours with Photoshop, learning nearly every facet of this powerful program. He had developed a number of “tricks” that his friend Monte Zucker found fascinating. This led to the pair coinstructing many classes together and was the beginning of a lasting friendship.

Now considered a master in Photoshop, Rick continues to refine his digital craft and through his friendship with Monte, continues to refine his knowledge of lighting, learning from Monte on every occasion. A significant “secret weapon” is Rick’s post-production work in Photoshop. “I can and do easily ‘tweak’ the light values until the image has near-perfect lighting. That’s as easy for me to accomplish as it is for Monte to know where to place his lights,” says a confident Rick Pahl.

Between Rick’s love of portraiture, acquired and refined through his friendship with Monte, and his mastery of Photoshop, the path was clear. He was destined to become a portrait photographer and kids, particularly seniors, were a natural choice to be his favorites.

	“Beloved Infidel” We placed a bright red cape over our student model’s head. The black and white was a composite of the red channel and blue channel, each separated and converted to grayscale. The final touch was returning the image to RGB and adding back her blue eyes.

One of Rick’s mandates photographically is to capture the beauty and physicality of teens for posterity. He communicates well with seniors and on that topic he says, “I spent a few months this year as a teacher for middle school and some time in our high school. In all matters regarding the ‘generation gap,’ it is a matter of attitude, both on the part of the elder and the teen. I was a ‘favorite’ substitute teacher. I met teachers who actively dislike children. Guess who the kids disrespected the most?”

Rick sees the posing of his seniors as relatively easy. He says, “Kat, my wife, helps greatly with the positioning of the teens, and we work as a team with the models. We refer to all our clients as ‘models.’ We treat them as such. Since I shoot completely digital, I have no restrictions as to film rolls, developing and proofing costs, etc. I will shoot, on the average, 60–90 images per hour, many of these in sports mode (on the Canon 1D), which is ripping off a couple of dozen shots in a burst, because hair is being blown in the wind, or the model is animated, etc. This also gives me an unwilling choice of lighting, as my flash units can’t keep up with the camera, so I’ll get some with half-flash and some without flash, or perhaps one or the other of the two flashes will take the next shot off.

“I can ‘light-table’ all views of the shoot for the client in a great program called ‘iPhoto’, which is for Macs,” Rick says. “We can be selecting images from a 500-image shoot in five minutes, marking the possibles as we go along. I can zoom in on each image, demonstrate crops, show them as a slide show—it’s very flexible.

“In a half hour or so, we’ve moved the possibles to a new folder, and still within iPhoto, we’re going through the same process, except now we’re tossing out what the client doesn’t want.

“Once we have the imagery selected, one of our people will write up the order on the spot and collect the money at that time. Clients are very excited and as a result of this instant feedback they purchase freely.

	This is a senior image with a new car on a virtual background, which we made as a prom theme background (Paris in Springtime). According to Rick, “We made this virtual background in Bryce 5 on speculation, following the senior prom’s theme of Springtime in Paris. I went back to Bryce and changed the virtual lighting to match the parking lot shot, then we just lifted the car and girl and put her in the fantasy.”

“Because of a great tip we got at the last year’s WPPI convention, we avoid posting on the web, as the clients can get ‘satisfied’ by looking at those images and not purchase anything. Trust me. It happened to us once and we couldn’t figure out why we had no sales of a family reunion shoot. After we heard that tip, we knew why.”

Rick saves the direct files from his camera on a hard drive, and when the business of selecting images for enlargement is done, nothing is kept on the HD except what he calls “the final culls.” These are then burned onto a CD and filed in a safe place. The other 270 images are trashed. Rick says of his workflow environment, “We are fully digitized, have three computers in a LAN (Local Area Network), have plenty of storage media and a couple of apprentice Photoshop operators, so we can run a lot of images through here in a day. On a typical hoot, we may take 150 shots. We can show the senior his or her shots in five minutes, simultaneously sending the imagery to another computer where the final pictures will be prepared.”

Rick shoots with a Canon 1D with a 1 Gigabyte Micro drive, which holds around 300 images in the RAW format, which is all he shoots. “I can download the image files to my Mac in a minute, erase the disk and have another three hundred shots available,” Rick says with a smile.

Rick Pahl’s senior images are full of life and fun. One reason for that is that Rick genuinely likes “his kids.” He says, “I really like teens! All the teens I shoot become one of ‘my kids.’ I’ve learned that full and honest respect for someone between 13 and 17 years of age is essential. I talk to them as though they are adults. I kid with them in the same way. All my kids become part of the year’s ‘Dream Team’ and a copy of their portrait hangs in a place of honor in our town’s best art gallery.”

Coincidentally, this is good business for both the gallery and Pahl, as it brings families with teens into the gallery and puts his work out there, before families without teens.

Lisa is a housewife, mother of two, cowgirl and former model. She is also a photography student of mine.

On a shoot, especially with a girl, Rick’s wife Kathy, who works as a paraprofessional teacher of special education kids, is at Rick’s side, assisting the posing, brushing hair, holding reflectors and more. Rick lets the kids look at the images on the back of the camera, which encourages them to relax and work with him. It’s yet another advantage Rick Pahl sees in shooting digitally. “I do not restrict any of my shoots,” he says. “I keep tripping the shutter until I think I’ve covered the job. If it takes five shots or 150, I don’t care. We try to begin at a set point, usually at a time and place of the subject’s choosing, then let the shoot flow. Often I’ll see something that needs to be pursued, like a shawl over a girl’s head, or the one of the class bookworms shedding his shirt for a “beefcake” shot that constantly amazes the females in our little town.”

Speaking of Okeechobee, one of the highlights of this town’s social arena is the high school graduation. According to Rick, “For about two weeks, the seniors of Okeechobee are treated like royalty. Everyone, and I mean everyone, gets behind these kids to congratulate them for getting through and succeeding. This attitude carries right into our studio. One of this year’s graduating seniors, for whom we did a senior portrait session months before, came by to show us her graduation present, a new car. Lots of ‘my seniors stop by to chat with our assistants, who are their age, or just to say ‘hello.’”

On his shooting regimen, Rick comments, “I usually don’t begin to get good shots until we’re around the 10th exposure or so. By then, smiling and posing is ‘old hat’ and we can start getting down to business. I shoot where and what the kids like—a clothes-oriented girl gets a fashion shoot in a car dealership’s foyer. An aspiring male model gets a jeans ‘ad.’ The ‘horsy’ set gets horses, and western kids get old corrals and Western gear. Almost all my kids want a sunset shot by the lake (Lake Okeechobee).”

Rick’s post-capture experience has taught him how to “work” the image for maximum drama. He never considers the captured image the final image. “I finish off the lighting of a given image in Photoshop. One of the main items on my checklist is to bring up the entire subject’s light values a bit. If the overall image’s levels average, say, a 5 on a scale of 10 for intensity, I ‘select’ the human form of my model and enhance the light levels of the selection to about a six. This subtle change isn’t readily apparent, but it greatly helps ‘identify’ the subject in a complex image.”

The title of this image is “I get Misty.” It is a “candid” taken during a senior “friendship” session. We used a 100–400mm EOS IS lens while Lori’s attention was elsewhere. A bit of Photoshop was applied.

Although a fan of Hollywood glamour lighting, Rick will tweak an image in Photoshop until he’s happy. He’s even been known to add the shadow of a “branch” across the faces of two lovely women, in order to introduce an element of mystery. “I like to play with the images. I like to soften images and have developed a method of making a ‘variable’ softening effect, so that some of the image may be softened to a degree and put her in the fantasy.”

Although Rick Pahl obviously loves shooting seniors, he always has one eye on print competition, which he really enjoys. “Every time I press the shutter, I’m thinking competition. That means I’m working to compose the whole image in the frame properly. I’m checking the exposure. I’m thinking of what message is being conveyed. I know when I shoot something if it’s going to compete well or not. If it is, I run off a dozen or so variations of the same theme to ensure that I capture a perfect expression and pose. My ‘models’ love the work I do, and that’s the bottom line.” Rick’s fine sensibilities have been and continue to be honed by competition and he sees the process as producing “grades” by which one’s skills can be compared and contrasted. “If you don’t compete and the guy across town does and he can brag about a couple of high scores or even a couple of first places, who are the clients going to go to first for quality work?” You can view more of Rick Pahl’s work at www.richardpahl.com.

Richard Pahl is one of the most successful print competition entrants in WPPI history. He has scored three perfect 100s and several 99s and has received numerous first place awards in various WPPI and IWPPA print competitions. He has written many articles for Rangefinder and has been a featured speaker at the WPPI convention and trade show in Las Vegas.