Executive Portrait, Photojournalistic Style

I got an email from an old friend and co-worker of mine, Julie Booth last week. She' s working for a PR company in St Petersburg and needed a photograph of a CEO to run alongside an ad they were working on touting his company, Proggex, a project management company. She said they wanted something that would look like a news photograph. I said, "perfect". That's exactly what I do best: Photojournalism.

She showed me an article that had been written about his company earlier this year. There was a photograph of him with that article, but if you can envision EVERY portrait of a CEO you've ever seen before, that was it. He was standing in an office, window partially shaded behind him and a reflective desk in front of him.

It was a fine photograph, but lacked the impact that makes a person LOOK at a photograph as opposed to simply turning the page.

Photographs, at their worst, are simply window dressings for publications. They fill space, they show you what the person looks like, they provide graphic design capabilities.

Photographs, at their best, give you an insight to the person's personality, they evoke a feeling, a mood, an emotion. They make the viewer actually LOOK at the photograph, study it for its nuances and maybe even come back to it after turning several other pages.

They have lasting impact.

That's not an easy thing to do when shooting a CEO. Many of them like their photos done in their offices, behind their big desks, with their awards on the wall behind them.

Jim Stroh was having none of that.

When I drove in to his office complex along US 19 north, I noticed that his building was way back off the road. A long roadway to get there was covered with a canopy of lush, green oak trees. I knew right away that's where I wanted to shoot him. The canopy would provide a nice, colorful backdrop and frame him so that there was no question as to who the subject of the shot was. The other thing I liked, visually speaking, was that the building was made of glass. I knew I'd also use that in the portrait. The shot of Jim looking up at me was made after he told me that there was a courtyard there as well. I found a location which would allow me to shoot down on him, as well as "hide" the umbrella and lights.

Jim was an amicable man, a former photographer who knew what I was looking for and more than happy to oblige me. Those things can make all the difference when photographing a person...a willingness to let me take control for a while. Him being a former photographer made it a little intimidating, but also gave us common ground to form a bond.

All of these photos were shot with a white, shoot-through umbrella triggered by pocket wizards camera left, exposure f 5.6, 1/250th of a second on a D200 Nikon.