Steve Jobs: Visionary, Inventor, and Very Challenging Photo Subject

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Thought I'd add a little fuel to the fire.

I just ran across this on PDN: http://pdnpulse.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-visionary-inventor-and-very-challenging-photo-subject.html

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Steve Jobs: Visionary, Inventor, and Very Challenging Photo Subject

The media is heaping accolades on Apple founder Steve Jobs, who died yesterday of cancer at the age of 56. Tributes have poured in from all over the world. Jobs was a visionary who changed the way we use and interact with technology. The iPhone and iPad have certainly helped re-make the photography landscape.

But Steve Jobs also had a reputation among photographers for being a difficult subject–and not just run-of-the mill difficult, but the archetype of difficult. “It was the joke among photographers. He was like the nightmare subject,” says San Francisco photographer William Mercer McLeod, who photographed Jobs on assignment a total of five times, and once worked for Apple, helping to develop the company’s Aperture software.

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McLeod says his first encounter with Jobs was as an assistant for Kashi. “It was in the late 80s. walked into the the photo shoot and started moving the lights around. Then he picked up the phone and called the art director in New York and said he wanted to do something different.”

McLeod recalls how he and Kashi stood there watching in disbelief. “He’s the only person I ever saw do that,” McLeod continues. “Photographing Steve was like a dance. He had such a thing for control like nobody I’ve ever seen. He loved to be in charge. He wanted to have his say.”

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“In all those years, Steve only screamed at me at the top of his lungs once,” Menuez recalls. It was in 1988, when Fortune hired Menuez to shoot a portrait of Jobs for the cover of the magazine. Menuez wanted to photograph him in the NeXT offices, on a staircase that Jobs had commissioned architect I.M Pei to design. Jobs arrived for the shoot, looked at what Menuez had in mind, “then leaned in and says, ‘This is the stupidest fucking idea that I’ve ever seen.’ Right in my face, like 5 or 6 inches away,” Menuez says. “I felt like I was 10 years old. He went off on a tirade. He said, ‘You just want to sell magazines. ‘And I said, ‘And you want to sell computers.’ And at that he said, ‘OK,’ and sat down.

more: http://pdnpulse.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-visionary-inventor-and-very-challenging-photo-subject.html

[Enrique]

1. my father has a story about taking Frank Lloyd Wright's picture

he had to go through all this process to get permission, had to wait weeks, and had to drive up from Chicago to Wisconsin to take the picture. And then he was allowed ONE shot, which I guess was an unheard-of restriction, especially after going to all that trouble.

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2. I've heard

through the grape vine that Martha Stewart was pretty difficult to deal with too. Particularly in regards to her pets' photography.

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3. ...

kicking for the saturday morning photographers.