Greg McDonald

I’ve always been intrigued by the artifice and histrionics of acting styles from low-budget sci-fi and horror B-movies from the 1950s/60s and earlier. A blonde dame puts her hands up to her head and lets out a primordial scream, shaking her head in a close-up as the giant lizard man approaches her. The non-stop mugging of a grimacing astronaut in a Halloween grade costume being zapped with a laser by the bug-eyed martian. The contorted facial acrobatics of the scared scientist as he battles a 2000-year-old, extinct, dead fish that he accidentally brought back to life. There is something about being so fake, yet totally believable in an unbelievable way that I just love. Once, when casting a project, an actor had on his resume, ‘fleeing citizen’ as a film credit. I could not have been more impressed. When I found the set of Horrified B-Movie Victims toy figurines years ago in an odd shop in Burbank, California, I had to buy it. The figurines are crudely made, cheaply painted and feature big lips and oversized white eyes with black pupils, yet are posed with inspiration. The perfect characters to bring to life and base a photo shoot on.

It completely depends on the competition. I try to spend a decent amount of time looking at the previous winners and finalists from the competition to get an idea of what they like. And I thoroughly read all the information there is about the competition and went through the website. The key is to try to submit your photos that best fit the contest or exhibition.

I came to photography by way of acting and filmmaking. I was an actor, and then I wrote a short script and produced it. After that, I was hooked on creating work rather than being an actor in someone else's project. I loved acting, but creating a work is a better avenue for me as a way to connect to the world.

Photography with people. Photography that reveals something about human nature, whether serious or silly, is what I react to the most.

I think my go-to camera setup changes depending on the project. I like using a current mirrorless camera, which is what I mainly use, but I've also used disposable film cameras as well.

In my winning work, I want a viewer to feel a release from fear.

The most challenging part of my series was getting the models to find poses where you could feel the emotion and feel movement. They had to pose and express themselves in such a way that the viewer could feel the imminent danger.

Film directors have been my biggest influence in photography, such as Federico Fellini, the Coen Brothers, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alexander Payne, Paul Thomas Anderson and Pedro Almodovar.

My advice is to not listen to advice and do what feels right for you and your work. Develop interests in many things and only take on projects that personally mean something to you.

Take a vast interest in as many subjects as possible. Think about what moves you and act on those feelings.

Editing and post-processing are the final steps in my workflow. How much or to the extent my editing varies depends upon the project and the specific shot. Sometimes I do minimal, sometimes I take more time making adjustments.

I see it as helping greatly in reducing the time it takes to do certain tasks, like making selections, removing small, unimportant items in the frame, etc. I don't use it at all for any one-click editing like hitting a button to analyze the whole image and then letting AI make adjustments, or one-click skin retouching. The results I find are usually horrid, and for me, that kind of AI is totally useless. The one AI generative fill feature that I do use when needed is the feature to straighten out a horizon, and then let AI fill in the missing corners to allow you to keep the same pixel dimensions. But the areas to be filled are minimal and are usually just extending what's already there, like the sky, water or land.

Sophia Loren or anywhere in Italy in the 1960s. If I could transport myself inside a Fellini movie during his prime and shoot away, that's what I imagine heaven is like.