Commercial photographer Steve Barao poses in his Arcade Avenue studio standing next to his view camera with a digital back, which is directly connected to his computer.

Steve Barao has been taking pictures for a long time. Though his father had been a photographer, Mr. Barao started out his career as a truck driver, but eventually, his photography hobby became more important, and he chose to make it his full-time job

"One day, I quit cold turkey," he said. "I worked out of my house for eight years."

Now, more than 25 years later, Mr. Barao has moved into his own studio and has gone from taking family portraits to commercial photography, with a client list that has ranged from Dunkin' Donuts and Ocean Spray to the military. And in that time, not only has his focus changed, but the way professional photographers take pictures has come a long way.

Old school, new school

One of the biggest changes is the move from film to digital photography.

"In film days, you were charging the client for the rolls of film," he said, adding that he has not used a roll of film in 10 years in his work. At first, convincing people to trust the quality of digital photography over film was a tough job.

"I really had to sell the concept," he said. To help with that, he carried around a large digital photograph of a calculator that had been blown up many times its actual size, along with a smaller photo of the same calculator. The larger photo showed detail down to fibers on the keys.

"[Today], if you're not shooting digital, you don't get the job," he said. And while it's true that digital photographs can mean taking more pictures in the long run, Mr. Barao said the camera is just one tool in the photographer's arsenal.

"I'd rather spend hours getting the lights right," he said. "It's not the tool...it's knowing where to put the light." He said his experience has made him able to look at a subject and know exactly where to put the light in order to reduce shadows. And new technology makes photography even less about the camera.

"You need computer skills," he said. "No digital file that comes out of the camera raw is ready to be handed over to the client." And since digital cameras are betting cheaper and better all the time, many smaller commercial clients are now using their own tools to create art, leaving larger clients to use professionals.

That's classified

One memorable job involved photographing a C130 plane, which military contractors wanted shot loading and unloading in all kinds of weather conditions and situations. It entailed Mr. Barao flying around the country for eight days in the aircraft. At one point, a missile was loaded onto the plane.

"That was an intense shoot," he said. Another photograph showed a product used in the Pentagon, though for security reasons Mr. Barao was not able to identify it specifically. In the future, he is planning to assist a friend in a job that will involve shooting Morgan Freeman and George Clooney on the beach.

Sometimes, it's the ones that got away that he remembers most. Once, representatives for the famous actor Anthony Quinn wanted Mr. Barao to travel to Mr. Quinn's home and photograph his artwork. Mr. Barao said he wanted them to bring the paintings to his studio, where he could have better light, but the representatives said no.

"That would have been fun," he said of the job.

But Mr. Barao has moved on to other fun projects. One new concept is splash photography, where a photographer fills an acrylic box with water. Special strobes and a laser trigger are lined up along the sides of the tank, and when an object triggers the laser, the strobes come on, allowing the artist to pick up tiny details, down to small splashes of water that are caused by the object. Several companies are interested in this concept, with which Mr. Barao has already started experimenting.

The details

Mr. Barao says he can have several jobs a week, but some of those assignments can take days to properly complete. He brought out a catalog that included photographs of a six-foot-tall crystal chandelier. It was a tough job, because every crystal had to be faced perfectly towards the camera. If anything was off, the client could have rejected it.

"Each candle has to be completely straight," Mr. Barao added. "Something that large might take a couple of days to shoot." A catalog of medical devices took weeks to complete, since everything had to be individually shot. Food shoots can be fun, but can also take a lot of preparation and can be costly.

For instance, fake ice cubes made of glass don't float like their real counterparts. Acrylic "ice cubes" that will float cost approximately $80 each. "Crushed ice" that looks like the real thing but has a consistency of Jell-O is a polymer that must sit for 24 hours. Ice cream can sometimes be made of something else if it isn't the focus of the ad, but if the ice cream is being featured as a product, it must be the real thing, as is the case with anything else. In that case, someone who is an expert with those foods may be present in order to keep that perfect scoop of ice cream looking perfect under hot lights.

Things have come a long way since Mr. Barao's dad was a photographer for the military during World War II. He thinks his father would have liked to see the transition to digital photography, and he has been restoring some of his father's old photographs, including a beautiful shot of his mother.

Though the new has replaced the old in many ways, making the "dark room" in Mr. Barao's Seekonk studio defunct, there's nothing that can replace years of experience. A sign hanging in his studio says as much.

"It didn't take me 25 minutes to take this shot," Mr. Barao quoted. "It took me 25 years."

By Kimberly Harper

kharper@eastbaynewspapers.com