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March 17, 2006
Robert Houser - Index Artist
Shooting portraits of business people for the past 10 years, Robert Houser moved his work away from the stylized lighting of the late 90s, and the post-dot-com era hard light ring-flash look, to a more natural light approach.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Business Magazine Redesigns – No More Stale Posed Suits
San Francisco - January 20, 2006 – After a redesign with David Armario Design in San Francisco, CFO Magazine’s design intent was to have images that depict CFOs in a more fresh, natural look. They were looking not the formalized lit portraits of other business publications, but images that reflected a natural edge to the subjects. Carol Lieb, photo editor for CFO, assigned Robert Houser, San Francisco Bay Area photographer, to shoot the October cover of Pacific Gas + Electric’s CEO. “Bob’s portfolio had the natural fresh imagery that encompassed this redesign.”
Shooting portraits of business people for the past 10 years, Houser moved his work away from the stylized lighting of the late 90s, and the post-dot-com era hard light, ring-flash look, to a more natural light approach. Moving away from the style direction of some of his previous clients like Wired and Business Week, he pushed himself to put away his lights and study his subjects and their environments from what they offered, both for lighting and personal engagement. “Compositionally, I liked the hyper-reality, modern edge imagery that we were seeing in the early part of this decade, but I couldn’t get past the way the images felt so devoid of emotion.”
In the business portraiture world of PR flacks and tight executive schedules, taking a more organic approach to lighting his subjects became a challenge beyond composition. “I know I can always set up lights and create something, but I want to push myself to find something that’s there already, some place where I can engage the subject instead of just shooting them.”
His subjects’ ease in front of the camera certainly benefits from this approach. PG+E’s CEO remarked on how no one had ever taken him outside the building before, but on the CFO cover shoot, the two walked for 4 blocks, stopping periodically at the locations Houser had scouted in advance.
“While we walked, I was able to bring him to each setting without stopping our conversation. Shooting him was just an extension of the conversation we were having. In total we spent 45 minutes with him, and managed to deliver to the art department 7 different situations. It shocked me that no one had ever taken this CEO across the street, where the afternoon light in front of the San Francisco Federal Reserve was gorgeous.” Robert Lesser, Art Director for CFO agreed, as the Fed image was selected for the October cover. The inside table of contents featured the CEO sitting on a wall beneath a row of palm trees.
The work fell in line so perfectly with CFO’s redesign concept that they hired Houser to shoot the next cover as well. The image chosen for the November cover was shot on the stairwell to an outdoor parking lot. This shoot was another great conversation, that lasted through 5 or 6 scenarios, almost all with available light.
To date, three of the first seven covers since the redesign have been shot by Houser.
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For more information, or to schedule an interview, please contact:
Robert Houser at 415 252 7818 or email to bob@roberthouser.com
http://roberthouser.com
For more of Robert's images:
http://www.indexstock.com/store/search.asp?SearchStr=///direct 841
Posted by Pat at March 17, 2006 09:25 PM
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