Posts from the ‘corporate’ Category
Fabrizio Freda, CEO of Estee Lauder for The NY Times
A few months ago I had an assignment to photograph Fabrizio Freda, the CEO of Estee Lauder, whose offices are located in the General Motors Building, a building which now is most well known for being just behind the Fifth Avenue Apple Store.
The shoot was for the New York Times Business Day article about the company developing a new brand for China.
The assignment was pretty strait-forward in that I was simply tasked to take a portrait of Mr Freda in the lobby which was decorated like the late Estée Lauder home. ie old school wealth.
As with any portrait of a high-profile subject, my time was limited so I arrived early to figure out a handful portrait setups.
Whenever I’m in an office building with a view, I always try to get a nice photo from the window. As I looked north from the 47th floor over Central Park, one building dominated the foreground, the Sherry Netherland Hotel. I even mentioned to the publicist how awesome it would be to have a balcony iin that building. It wasnt 24 hours later that I got a call to photograph a $95 million listing within that very building. Crazy coincidence. 
Sting Plays Cinema For Peace
Most corporate shoots are boring and involve photographing stiff executives speaking at a podium and shaking hands. But that wasn’t the case a few weeks ago when I photographed a special event held at The Harvard Club in New York City. The event was a fundraiser for Cinema For Peace, a worldwide initiative promoting humanity though film and has events all over the world with big celebrity backers. I was shooting the event for one of the sponsors, a bank based out of Berlin.
Sting’s wife Trudie Styler, English actress and producer and supporter of Cinema For Peace, speaks prior to her husband’s performance.
My task was to photograph the CEO of the company interacting with the celebrities and other business executives in attendance. This particular event was a fundraiser for the organization and raised money through auctioning some amazing prizes that ranged from Sting’s autographed guitar (sold for $20K), guest starring in upcoming movies, official after-party tickets to the Golden Globes, to yachting adventures around the world.
The experience was quite fun for me…I’d never been in The Harvard Club before. It’s a members-only facility that offers hotel rooms, dining rooms, athletic facilities, and more….and of course you have to be affiliated in some way with Harvard University to be a member. So that might be why I’d never been invited in the past! The entire place screams wealth and old school luxury. Think leather chairs, libraries, reading rooms, animal heads all over the walls, chandeliers, and so on.
So there was a red carpet situation set up for all the attendees of the event to get paparazzied during a cocktail hour before a fancy dinner with speakers, an auction, and a private performance by Sting, who is a big supporter of the cause. Sing ended up playing 4-5 of his classic songs. He was a good sport and let me take a few portraits of him while he was at his dinner table too.
All and all it was a great experience.
