Appearing in this month’s EGM is Randy Pitchford, CEO of game developer Gearbox and professional magician. These look different from some of my other recent work, so read on for some thoughts on the creative process I use for making pictures.
I’m a subject driven photographer. Rather than trying to force every subject into a style box I’ve made for myself, I aim to adapt my style to them. While I do have an extensive library of visual methods built over the years, this keeps things authentic while telling the story. In this case, I tossed some ideas back and forth with Tom Russo who would be interviewing Randy and we decided to try something with playing cards to call attention to his magician skills. This would be interesting visually and possible in the time allotted.
After this I sat down to think about the photographic aspects – the composition, the lighting, colors, mood etc. I sketched out a few designs in a book I keep. I decided to go with something dramatic on total black with no environment, almost like stage lighting. This was a location shoot, so the set had to be compact yet flexible to allow for movement. I also like to keep my designs open enough for unscripted things to occur. Knowing the unpredictable nature of the shot, I let the lens flare and ignored the mixed strobe recycle times. Randy was a great subject and very enthusiastic about the different approach we were taking. After seeing the images on the screen, he came up with several more things to try, even postponing a meeting until we got it.