Greg Norman photographed for Men's Journal, West Palm Beach, FL, Feb. 2009
After a couple of false starts and cancelled shoots early this year, I finally had the chance to dig in for a pair of really great features for Men’s Journal, easily one of my favorite clients over the past few years. The first to hit the newsstands is a profile on Greg Norman and his return to golf after his magical run at the British Open last year which earned him an invitation to The Master’s, a tournament with a lot of dramatic history for Norman.
Director of Photography Michelle Wolfe and I started at the concept stage and had a few really cool ideas which were very quickly (though not before a “master’s green” jacket was drop-shipped to my office) whittled down to 1 simple and playful idea with Greg and his new bride (tennis legend Chris Evert, who is one of the cooler women I’ve ever met) doing a sort of golf lesson. Day of the shoot we (me, assistants Ian and Matthew) had the typical drama of scrapping the suggested location before deciding to shoot everything on a nearby course. After getting set-up and watching our light completely change minutes before talent arrived on set, we met Greg and got the bombshell that Chris doesn’t play golf (they only play tennis together), and might not be into it. But as I already mentioned, Chris Evert is cool.
Once Chris and Greg came back wardrobe-ready we quickly dispatched a couple of easy set-ups to get the vibe going and also to wait for the early morning light to stabilize a bit. I then jumped straight into our golf lesson which ended up working great because you could see Greg and Chris connect in an elite athlete sort of way, having fun with each other, and just about forgetting that they were being photographed for a magazine. Whenever you can even get half way towards pulling people out of the “I’m being photographed” mode, you have a much better chance of taking images that let your viewers in to connect with a person, instead of a personality.
Greg Norman with Chris Evert photographed for Men's Journal, West Palm Beach, FL, Feb. 2009
Shooting celebrity athletes is hard because they have multiple layers of agents, PR flackies, and handlers and you very rarely know what you are going to get, how much time, etc. My thing is to be on the offensive, to be warm and friendly and interested, but to have a plan and dictate the pace and schedule of the shoot. I always map out the goal of the shoot – who its for, what it is, and what we need from them – at the very beginning so that the subject feels less trapped in a production with no end in sight. I hope that if I respect them enough to share the details and let them in on the process, then hopefully they’ll be present on set and bring the energy required to get us home. This worked perfect with Greg, who is not known to be an easy subject from stories was told.
But truly Greg could not have been more gracious with his time that morning. Chris had a tight schedule and was supposed to need to leave right away, but she decided to stick around and just hang out (sweet!). After the golf lesson I had Greg basically just go through his normal practice of hitting various clubs on the practice tee while I shot ultra close with a 135mm on his face. I loved the way that the sun filtered through his signature Shark hat, and I really wanted to capture the elegance and character of his face. So it was especially cool that an image from this set-up wound up as the opening shot.
After some practice Greg was hungry so instead of trying to rush to get him finished I made the judgement call that we were in a groove and that giving them space would be rewarded instead of punished (this can go either way). Chris had ordered some sandwiches for everyone (again, cool… I believe they were turkey), and they hung out while we set up for a more complicated lit portrait shot in front of a background that I had scouted earlier in the morning. Following that a final wardrobe change and additional (bonus really) set-up closed out our morning and Greg actually offered to help us pack up and load gear, etc (I would never agree to this, but it’s awesome of a subject to ask).
Best wishes to Greg during the Master’s! A really good guy to meet and photograph, and I deeply appreciated his thoughts on living in the moment and not concerning yourself with things that are out of your control or in the distant future that we chatted about. Plus he makes a pretty decent bottle of grape juice! Here are a few more that I liked from the shoot:
