Just last week I photographed B. Martin Pedersen for my series on noted graphic designers. A member of the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, an AIGA Medalist, and the longtime publisher of Graphis, Pedersen has a longstanding reputation as a brilliant art director, designer, and chronicler of the visual arts.
It’s never easy to distill the accomplishments of a creative icon into one portrait. Graphis is one of the most respected showcases for the world’s best graphic designers, art directors, photographers, illustrators, and architects. Using the annuals as the primary visual element in Pedersen’s photo was an easy decision for me.
I wanted to convey the energy and excitement that a reader has when viewing these exquisite publications. Having the pages form a graceful, blurring arc of motion seemed to do that nicely. I put my subject to the difficult task of making just the right shape and amount of blur while he maintained a relaxed but fairly structured, symmetrical pose.
The technical aspects of the photo were a bit complicated in that beautiful soft light was needed to capture his sharply focused portrait while still allowing for blurred motion in the pages. The desired effect came after much experimentation with a combination of strobe lighting and powerful LED's.
This is the fifteenth portrait from my series of noted graphic designers. You can see all of those here and read about other related shoots in earlier entries on this blog.