Commercial photography is the genre within our business that most often means you are photographing someone or something for the purpose of selling the product or person or disseminating information about it/them! As I have often said, if you are shooting for a publication, you need first to know the publication, how it uses images and what types of images it needs. When I go on assignment for any publication, and I know who the subject is and what they do, I most always have a picture in mind of what I want the final image to look like.
This was the case this week when I was assigned to make some portraits of the famed art director George Lois. Mr. Lois was most noted for his work as the art director for ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, back in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. I was familiar with a great deal of his work and even though I had shot an assignment for the magazine, I had never worked for him. Knowing something about his body of work, I decided that the shot I was after was of Mr. Lois presiding over a few of his famous Esquire covers. I had no idea about what his apartment looked like, but I thought that he must have a table on which I could display his work and have him sit behind them.
When I got to his apartment, I had to take off my shoes and I quickly got the impression that much of his furnishings were precious (some designed by famous artists), and that I couldn't just use any table he had. The
Commercial/Editorial Portraiture
By William Lulow