Keaton Andrew's Got Next

UPDATE: After all of the sour grapes hand wringing over the KA's post production work, he was kind enough to upload the naked version of this photo to his Flickr stream. Check out his aluminum foil slave helpers, too. (Thanks, KA.)
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The first three sentences of photographer Keaton Andrew's Flickr profile pretty much sum up his mission statement:

"Hello, I am Keaton. I am 18. I am determined to become one of the best photographers in the industry."

He just might, too. When I came across his senior portrait of a baseball pitcher, it made me think about motivated lighting in a way that I never had before.

One of the things I like most about the crop of teenage shooters in professional photography's on-deck circle is the fact that they are not bound by convention.

Andrew has clearly studied at the school of Dave Hill, and picked up the idea of multi-shot compositing without going for the whole "heavily post-produced" look.

Take the baseball shot above, for instance. Shot with three AlienBees, the rims would have looked incongruent in this (polarized sky) day shot, which in itself was composited via a series over a darker exposure. So Andrew simply added the stadium lights in, in post, to motivate the effect of the rim lights.

Which never, ever would have occurred to a 43-year-old fart like me. Heck, to Andrew, Dave Hill is an Old Fart, too.

(Ha! You reading this, Dave? You are now officially an Old Fart to someone.)



People like to complain about the different-looking, heavily-post-produced stuff by young guys like fellow teenager Joey Lawrence. But seriously -- take a close look at what these guys are accomplishing at such a young age.

Then take a long, hard, honest look at what you were producing at eighteen years old. What do you think they are gonna be doing when they are 43? Hope I am around to see.

To see more of Keaton Andrew's work, check out his Flickr portfolio and/or his website.