all the volatility in the markets this week got me thinking of a recent shoot with pete adamson, personal investment manager for oprah winfrey. watching and worrying about the dips, dives and leaps of my very small amount of apple stock, i wondered if the same movements cause exponential angst when you’re managing billions, instead.

my shoot with pete was one of those situations where i didn’t necessarily expect much, but the simplicity of the location and the agreeable nature of the subject came together better than i anticipated. i tend to take a lot of pictures of business-looking people in white shirts and ties standing in conference rooms, and generally speaking these tend to be a little routine. pete had just moved into his new office space, which was mostly devoid of furniture, but had these wonderful green and blue walls left over from the last tenant. that day it was just pete himself in the office, and a couple of computers. it was such a quiet, subdued operation it was hard to imagine he was sitting there controlling the fate of more money than most of us can comfortably fathom.

in addition to the more straightforward things, pete seemed quite willing to be just a little off-kilter for us, too. this is always such a gift to a photographer, and i end up leaving these sorts of shoots feeling tremendously grateful to the subject. the truth is that successful, busy people don’t often feel the need to do much more than show up, stand around looking bored and/or pissed off for a few short minutes and then declare the photo shoot done. when someone actually brings a little extra, when they invest themselves into the process, when they’re willing to play a bit against type it really elevates everything. the thing that’s simultaneously so wonderful about photographing people and so frustrating at the same time is that it’s not ever entirely me that determines the outcome. the person in front of the camera can do so much, or withhold so much. nothing drives me crazier, nothing is more upsetting than someone who just stands there smiling because they’re in a photo. i’d rather have someone be short tempered and brief than someone who puts on a fake grin designed to show nothing honest whatsoever. so when pete just rolled along with us in whatever we asked him to do, it was a real treat. i got the impression he kind of liked the process, too. or, at least, didn’t mind it so much – which is all you can ask, sometimes.

so, watching the stock market go up and down all week, i thought pete could use a laugh. last night i sent him a bunch of out-takes to see. i told him that i hoped all the volatility wasn’t causing him too much stress. a couple hours later, close to midnight, i got a brief response:

“Thank you max. Very thoughtful of you. My kids will get a kick out of these.”

pete adamson, always gracious.

he didn’t comment on the market, but somehow i think oprah will be all right.

dibromochloropropane (DBCP) is a chemical pesticide. manufactured by dow, it was used in the 1970s on crops grown in the US and abroad. DBCP was found to cause sterility in workers at the dow plant where it was manufactured. dole foods, one of the world’s biggest producers of fresh fruits and vegetables, stopped using DBCP on its banana crops in latin america in 1977, when dow ceased production of the chemical. over the years dole (and dow) have settled many lawsuits from workers who claimed to have been affected  by DBCP. a DBCP trial in 2007, though, took a bizarre turn.

dole was being sued by 54 men who claimed to have been made sterile while working in their banana fields in nicaragua in the 70s. michael carter, dole’s general counsel, thought something sounded fishy, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. dole lost that first trial, a jury awarded damages of 5 million dollars to six of the workers. then the weirdness started.

a mystery witness – who they actually referred to as “witness X” – came forward in nicaragua and revealed some surprising things. he said that the whole thing was a fraud put together by the plaintiff’s lawyers. he said that some of the workers suing dole had never actually worked on their banana fields. he revealed that some workers who claim to have been made sterile by DBCP decades ago even had children. witness X alleged that even the judge in nicaragua was in on the scam. carter flew witness X out to LA right away. then he got scared and refused to testify.

carter hired rudy perrino as an in-house litigator to handle all the fraudulent claims. for extra backup he hired ted boutrous, andrea neuman and scott edelman of gibson, dunn & crutcher. boutrous was an expert in dealing with punitive damage awards in litigation, edelman was good with the judges and juries and neuman was good at getting people to relax and be revealing.

neuman interviewed some of the plaintiff’s wives, many of whom had stories that were wildly inconsistent with their husband’s accounts. they got witnesses to practically admit to memorizing false testimony fed to them by the plaintiff’s attorneys. in the end, from the one witness X, carter and his team got 27 people to come forward and admit to the fraud.

while this was all going on a documentary was made about the original 2007 trial in which dole was found at fault. the documentary made no mention of the fraud behind the case. dole tried to stop the film’s release, to no avail. in the end the filmmakers gave in somewhat and put a brief text acknowledgment at the conclusion of the documentary that mentioned the allegations against the plaintiff’s attorneys.

it’s always an easy out to assume that the giant multinational corporation is, at its heart, inherently evil and poisoning us. how strange it must be, and how difficult it must be, to turn one’s thinking around and admit that – for once – the giant corporation may actually not be as guilty as we thought.

alex is the VP of business development at media temple, a web hosting company that deals with sites that large numbers of people actually visit. he’s also one of those rare subjects who actually went out of his way to make the photo session easier, more fluid, and more pleasant. this is a rare thing. he even bought us excellent cupcakes at the end.

[ed note: paul just said to his girlfriend "hey, honey, remember that red velvet cupcake i brought you? or did i eat that?" classy.]

alex works in a building that’s cooler than the building you work in. unless your office also looks like a cross between cerebro and a concrete beehive.

thanks, alex.

in many photo shoots there exists a moment when it becomes possible to drastically shift the whole dynamic, tone and message of the picture. sometimes this shift happens in a decidedly weird or silly direction. then again, i’m a big believer in the idea that you can do very absurd things in photographs just so long as you play it totally straight.

i don’t generally like smiling pictures. you may have already noticed this by now. that is to say, i don’t like it when people smile because they’re being photographed. at it’s very best that’s disingenuous. people are usually not particularly happy about being in a picture. at it’s worst it’s just plain insincere. i always tell my subjects that they are absolutely free to smile in my pictures if the smiles are real – if something is funny, let’s say. very often things are funny, i’d like to think my subjects usually end up enjoying our sessions, though at the end i find that the serious pictures resonate with me much more. perhaps this has to do with my inherent cynicism or pessimism. that’s possible. perhaps it’s got something to do with people often grinning like idiots. hard to say.

anyway, we were photographing brandon for a serious publication, for a serious article; about lawyers who had been laid off of their jobs. brandon was recently let go from his firm and instead of going after a new law job he decided to take his legal talents into the music industry as artist management and promotion. the idea was to photograph him at home (where he conducted most of his new work) and see what life was like for the out-of-work lawyer.

once we were partway through the first set up i happened to notice that on the top of his bookshelf brandon had a plastic optimus prime robot helmet. sometimes you just have to ask. i mean, really. you have to ask. you’ve got nothing to lose. so i asked. and brandon said yes. he put the robot helmet on and got back into the same shot, and everything changed. the helmet even had a voice modulator so that when he talked it sounded like a cool plastic robot voice.

paul and i both knew that the magazine was highly unlikely to ever use these pictures. even brandon knew they were unlikely to be published. maybe that’s why he was so agreeable. but damn if that didn’t make the day a whole lot more special than i thought it was going to be when i loaded up the car in the morning. at the very least i thought the photo editor would have a chuckle going through the take.

the funny thing is brandon said he loved wearing the robot helmet. why, you ask? he said:

“i can smile in here, and you can’t tell.”

and just to reassure any current or future clients who may be thinking of hiring me (you’re saints, each and every one of you. . .) don’t worry: i did variations without the robot helmet, too. ultimately one of these were published, as the picture was just one of many in a larger story, and for some totally unexplainable reasons nobody else was wearing a plastic optimus prime mask on their heads. i know, hard to believe.

a couple weeks after these pictures were taken i was at a target and i saw a whole display with about two dozen optimus prime robot helmets. they were $30. i have to tell you, in all honesty, i stopped in front of that display for a very long time and thought long and hard about buying one just to keep in the light case. i mean, you never can tell.

my thanks to the indefatigable maggie for continually hiring me despite silly things like this. you’re a saint among saints, indeed.

ruben is the CEO of propaganda global entertainment marketing. that means he’s responsible for you seeing in movies the things you desperately want but can’t afford (like a lamborghini, or robot cell phones). that means that ruben’s LA office is full of cool things that you desperately want but can’t have. like motorcycles, fake newspapers from gotham city, and an american flag made of 25,000 swarovski crystals. (okay, maybe i don’t want a motorcycle or a crystal flag, but it would have been great (in a geeky sort of way) to get a copy of the gotham city newspaper.)

ruben is the coolest guy in the room. especially if that room only contains cpl. bennett, ruben and myself. he has handmade italian sneakers. he has a custom painted macbook (blue, perhaps to match the sneakers). he rides around town on a motorcycle that transforms into a robot (well, with michael bay’s help, at least). he lives in switzerland. that makes him more neutral than you, at least, and possibly cooler than you.

i left ruben’s thinking seriously about purchasing custom made clothing, pondering why i wasn’t nearly as suave as i should be, and wondering if i could take better care of handmade italian sneakers than i could my $25 skechers. likely not. custom made shirts, though, there’s something to think about. especially when you’re me and nothing in a store actually fits you. also, pocket squares seem like an important thing that i’m missing. that’s just plain classy. i’ll have to look into that.

see the full article here, and my thanks to scott at businessweek for the gig.

jeremy is the manager of new business development for best buy. this is a title that probably means a lot more to you if you’re not a photographer and you work for a real company. to me, it could mean nearly anything. three things i know, though:

first, the inside of a best buy store is a terrible place to try to take pictures. it’s busy, full of distracting patterns that are not aesthetically pleasing, and garishly lit.

second, best buy and ikea probably keep the blue exterior paint business going and the outside of the store was a much more pleasant location.

three, when in doubt – and if they’re available – add balloons to your executive portraits. my deepest thanks to jeremy for having the patience to put up with our silly requests, and for trusting that it would all look good in the end. i’m always amazed when subjects let go of their tensions and just go with what seems like a silly idea. either it’s trust, or they’re just sick of having their picture taken at that point and they figure if they do what i say they can go home sooner.

my thanks to scott mlyn at businessweek for the assignment, and to bennett for helping out.

the latest shot recession special: two CEOs in a row, now that these have both finally gone to press.

jay flaherty is CEO of HCPI which, as far as i understand it, invests in real estate. you’d think that’d be a recipe for disaster right about now but jay didn’t seem too concerned. they build medical offices and hospitals, and if those vultures at anthem blue cross are indicative of the industry as a whole they’ve got plenty of money to buy buildings.

hell, i think i’ve financed a building for blue cross all on my own. those crooks raised my health insurance rates twice in one year, to mind boggling levels and are constantly up to dirty tricks in an attempt to boot me off to the ranks of the uninsurable. this guy is pissed off enough, and he’s paying only a quarter of what i’m paying. let’s hope obama can do something about the asinine pre-existing condition laws, but i’m not holding my breath. a couple weeks ago i actually had a health insurance agent suggest i marry a government employee. that’s my only option?

anyway, jay seems to think that the health care real estate game is fairly stable. i guess people always get sick, no matter how bad the economy is.

good luck to us all.

i don’t meet many CEOs who share my encyclopedic knowledge of 80s movies. if fact, with just a few rare exceptions this encyclopedic knowledge has mostly been met with derision from my friends. it’s not really my fault that i memorized the entirety of legend, it just seemed to be on TV every fifteen minutes and the whole dungeons and dragons element didn’t hurt. tim curry as a minotaur? mia sara? ridley scott? sign me up! tom cruise? well, i’m willing to overlook some things.

my parents were in show business. they had a TV in every room, including their bathroom. every TV was always on. they slept with the TV on. if i went in and turned it off in the middle of the night they’d wake up, turn it back on and go back to sleep. my dad claimed he couldn’t sleep unless something he wanted to watch was on. the point is, i saw every 80s movie many, many times over. can’t buy me love? just one of the guys? the flamingo kid? coming to america? doctor detroit? gotcha!? howard the duck? once bitten? check. all of ‘em. my father actually took my brother and i out of school to see the very first show of indiana jones and the temple of doom. when my mom took me to a special industry-only screening of superman II, i burst into tears in the theater when superman lost his powers. my very first date ever was with lani miller and my sister drove us into westwood to see ferris bueller’s day off. (lani, you were adorable and i was scared to death. thanks for going to the movie with me.)

my point is that wade bradley is a CEO. a real CEO. he wears ties, and nice suits and commands power and respect and wealth. he can say “Yes” and actually make things happen as a result. and he knows all this crap, too. that means somewhere in the world an important CEO has filled up some part of his brain with the same useless trivia that i have, and actually is happy about it, too. wade spent time as a venture capitalist and eventually started a company called indievest, to make independent movies.

so all i lack is that venture capital background, nicer suits and ties, any sort of business sense at all and credibility. oh, and any desire to make movies.

i’ve been meaning to post these pics for a while now, but i’ve been struggling to figure out how to explain the story concisely. in the end, i think i gave up trying to explain it. there was (is?) an ongoing pension scandal in the city of san diego with city workers, but the story is very convoluted and a little hard to follow and likely not particularly interesting unless you really, really enjoy being a securities lawyer.

for my money, even though i didn’t really understand the legalese involved, i found the key players to be very interesting to talk to. the main subject in the story is san diego city attorney mike agguire (above). the son of a boxer, he’s called a “bulldog” by his enemies. aguirre seemed to be the driving force behind the pension investigation that – and i know i’m going to screw this up – i think involved many people getting overinflated pension benefits illegally, while at the same time robbing the system of sufficient funds to finance those pensions. regardless of my inability to be a lawyer, mike aguirre was one of the smartest guys i’ve gotten to talk to in a long, long time. he’s one of those guys who immediately seems fiercely intelligent the second he opens his mouth. i left there with a very good impression of the guy, and i always admire someone who’s so open as a photo subject. in his defense, we shot these pics on a sunday. he was still at work, but with shorts and sandals. hey, it’s san diego.

other key players, also working with aguirre were don “the rat” mcgrath and bryan vess. don is the assistant city attorney, and all of us at the magazine spent some time trying to figure out why he was called “the rat”. there was speculation amongst the photo department that he might look rodent-like, perhaps, though this proved not to be the case. the real reason: it was a nickname he had in college (no explanation why, and also no explanation as to why he would choose to keep it many, many years later). bryan vess is an outside attorney hired to help with the investigation. this has been ongoing for a long while, you can see all the document boxes surrounding bryan. in case you all think being a lawyer is glamorous, imagine having to go through all that paperwork just to find something that might help your case. no thanks! wait a second, though, lawyers get to bill in 15-minute increments, right? maybe that’s not so bad.

i just heard from bryan vess that mike aguirre just lost the election and is no longer the city attorney in san diego. i wouldn’t count the guy out, though. he’s got some fight in him. all i know is if someone’s suing me, i want that guy on my side.

i get to meet people who do a lot of different things, some of which seem very enviable. i mean, really, who wouldn’t want the title “venture capitalist”? it seems like it’d be great for once to be the guy able to give out the money instead of being the guy trying to get the money. i find it funny, then, that many people i get sent to shoot see me lugging a whole bunch of gear around in the summer heat and comment on how great it seems to them to be a photographer. i guess this falls under the “grass-is-always-greener” umbrella.

andre has an investment blog on the side, called dealflow diaries. he was also extremely patient with my requests to move out to the empty rooftop parking lot instead of the original plan to shoot inside a much more boring office space. i’m a sucker for arrows and directional signs. there’s something comforting about being pointed in the right direction.