Jonathan Grado

Inside Grado Labs with Fast Company

Fast Company recently stopped by Grado Labs to spend some time with my dad and me for a feature on the family audio business. Following our interview with Mashable, we had a great conversation with FastCo. We talked about our history, our process, and what it's like to work in a company that's been shipping headphones and cartridges from Brooklyn since 1953.

Behind the Scenes of an Editorial Photoshoot

Photographer James Chororos and producer Eddy Vallante came along to document the day. This was the first major photoshoot I've been a part of. The main thing I was told to do before the day of shooting was to put together a few different outfits. There was only one rule though, no stripe patterns.

The reason for avoiding finely striped shirts or pants is due to an effect called moiré (pronounced similar to mwah-ray). Moiré shows up like a weird, wavy rainbow, and occurs when the camera's sensor struggles to pick up tightly spaced lines. The pattern frequency messes with the pixel frequency of the camera and causes aliasing, with moiré being the visual result.

So now that the reason why I couldn't wear stripes (which I didn't own in the first place) is out of the way, I still needed to pick an outfit. Going into any photoshoot, I'd recommend bringing at least two to three outfits of your own. Especially if there's no wardrobe being provided to you. Since this was just photographing my family and me at work, that definitely wasn't happening. A lot of the time waiting between being needed for photos was spent being nervous, getting my normal work done, and trying not to mess up my hair or wrinkle my shirt. Looking back I probably shouldn't have had anything on that I would wear on camera in my downtime. I should've just left the next outfit hanging up instead of assembling headphones while wearing it.

James and Eddy were great to work with, and helped us feel at ease while posing. The first few shots were to see how the scene looked, while the few after helped get the lighting to the right intensities and positions. They captured some beautiful moments, a really nice mix of candid and behind-the-scenes. James and Eddy were trying to capture scenes that reflect what we see at Grado Labs every day, a workshop with a living history.

The story goes into how Grado has stayed small by design, why we’ve never advertised, and how headphones and cartridges still see the same workbenches my great uncle set up over 70 years ago. It also touches on what it’s like to grow up in a business like this, and how we gradually make changes as needed while staying true to the original vision.

Big thanks to FastCo for the thoughtful piece, and to James and Eddy for the beautiful visuals. Some of their shots from the day are below.