At the close of 2001, Telephony Magazine's Scott Holl was assembling photos to illustrate the publication's "Ten to Watch" feature showcasing rising stars in the telecom industry. Universal Access CEO Patrick Shutt's part of the piece needed a dynamic yet relaxed portrait, so we set up a shoot at the company's Sears Tower offices in Chicago.
A previous day's scouting trip yielded several interesting locations for shooting. Since time constraints limited us to a single spot, we selected the brushed-steel columns of the foyer area for our thirty-minute time slot. The area was lit with a mixture of electronic flash and ambient light. The background glow in particular was the result of some last-minute tweaking of existing spotlights to set off the metal texture. Long exposures allowed the mixing of warm incandescent, greenish flourescent and the clean strobe light to create this look.
Mr. Shutt proved to be a relaxed and cooperative subject, despite the fact that we were working in the most public area of the office complex. We shot about three rolls of film and it was a wrap.
Scott reviewed the films the following morning and we scanned three frames for final output, delivered that afternoon as CMYK files ready for publication.