Environmental & Lifestyle Executive Portraits

Where is your studio?, is a common question that I get asked a lot. My answer is always the same,

The world is my studio!

Yeah, you can quote me. ;) The term photography studio tends to indicate an indoor space where backdrops and sets are available to create a seamless background. Multiple lights are setup for a consistent look and feel to the images.

However, the next step in the progression of a photographer is outdoor where nothing is consistent. The sun travels across the sky, a dynamic lighting phenomena that perplexes the likes of Ansel Adams & Galen Rowell. Add the complexity of studio lighting, it creates lighting condition that will make the most skilled studio photographers cringe. A good example is a recent sunset shoot with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Cheerleaders' 2009 Swimsuit Calendar. As the sun dips lower into the horizon, the lights had to be toned down by half power every 2-3 minutes!!!

I had fun shooting Environmental/Lifestyle Executive Portraits for Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a VC company that invests in tech companies such as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), etc. The lifestyle portraits are meant to create a fun factor, humanize the executives and build a virtual rapport with their business partners/clients via their website.

(Click on an image, then use your RIGHT and LEFT arrow keys to go through all of them)

- Michael Soo