max s. gerber(the latest shot)

sometimes taking pictures of the boss at a big firm can be nerve wracking. most of the time you encounter very busy subjects who don’t have much patience for sitting in front of a camera and usually aren’t particularly good at it anyway. almost always you encounter a handful of people under the boss who are nervous or just plain terrified of upsetting them in any way. these people always have good intentions, and always come with warnings. sometimes it’s general non-information, as in “he really doesn’t like having his picture taken” and sometimes it’s specific, as in “don’t ask him about vietnam” or “don’t mention his glass eye”. (okay i made those up)

often there’s a tremendous amount of scheduling that goes into these photo shoots which result in countless phone calls, several hours of waiting and about ten minutes of actual time with the boss in front of the camera. by the time we actually get to the ten minute picture-taking part everybody has a tendency to be a bit rattled. at this point, though, i’ve taken so many pictures of so many suits in so many conference rooms that i remain mostly unfazed.

ron olson is the boss at a big law firm in downtown LA called munger, tolles & olson. we set up early. he was our cover subject, so the shot was important. we were duly warned that he might not have much patience. we were prepared for the worst case scenario. out the window of the conference room we could see the helipad on the roof of the building across the street. i desperately wanted to shoot on the helipad, just because it seems like a fun thing to do. of course, that was out of the question. in fact, leaving the conference room was out of the question.

i took just a couple of frames before i stopped to look at the LCD display. it’s amazing how things can look different when you stop time just a little. i was prepared for just another guy in a tie, but it’s quite a gift when you see a subject that can raise the bar a little just by their presence. very few people are actually photogenic, but you couldn’t seem to take a bad picture of ron olson. he just looked great in pictures, and filled the frame with charisma. he’s the paul newman of lawyers.

every once in a while you get lucky, and you get the head honcho to show up and be in a great mood. true, he didn’t care much for having his picture taken, but begrudgingly agreed that it beat working. it seems ron olson had just gotten back from mountain biking in italy. this probably contributed to his good mood, and definitely contributed to my self-esteem issues. the guy’s like forty years older than me and i’d have a hard time mountain biking across the street.

some people confront the camera very directly and i think this contributes a lot to the feeling of charisma or presence in the finished picture. there is a great quote in the norman seef book which i’ll paraphrase since i’m too lazy at the moment to go downstairs to look it up. essentially it boils down to the idea that when you look at a picture of a person it feels as much like they’re looking at you than it is you looking at them. i try to remind nervous subjects of this and when you get someone who really knows how to do the looking it makes a big difference.

one day maybe i’ll be distinguished enough to do that. but for now i just look weird.

thanks as always to corporal bennett for assisting, and thanks to maggie at ALM for all her help in setting this up.