On photographing Steve Jobs
The portrait of Steve Jobs that has been a fixture on Apple's homepage since his passing is iconic. It tells you just about everything you need to know about the man -- his intensity, determination, intelligence, the fact that this is a great man from whom great ideas spring, and the fact that he's a man you challenge at your own peril. It's the photo that will be on the cover of his biography, and it's likely to be one of the main images that represents him throughout history.
According to PDN Pulse, Albert Watson took the photo back in 2006 during a shoot for Fortune. Having heard of Jobs's reputation as a demanding man, even when it came to photo shoots, Watson did a great deal of preparation and research for his session with Jobs. Steve was bemused that Watson was shooting with film instead of digital, but he agreed when Watson said he didn't feel digital was "quite here yet." "We'll get there," was Steve's reply. The photo session with Watson was relatively low-key compared to other Jobsian sessions; Jobs gained notoriety as a "nightmare subject" among photographers, mostly because of how much control he demanded over shoots.
As for the portrait itself, Watson told Steve to give the camera almost 100 percent eye contact and "Think about the next project you have on the table." Watson also told Steve to think about times when people had challenged him. Much of 2006 was filled with rumors of the supposedly forthcoming iPhone; virtually every pundit in the universe expected it to be a huge flop, and that was assuming Apple even had the "guts" to challenge the mobile handset industry in the first place. It's easy to imagine that Steve was thinking about the original iPhone when the shutter snapped, in which case the "visionary" quality of the portrait seems even more appropriate. Steve Jobs knew he was about to change the world -- again -- and it comes through in this photograph.
Watson says Steve told him it was his favorite photograph of him. It's easy to see why.
