Rest in peace Steve Jobs, that seemed to be the theme this whole entire month when the iconic and visionary CEO of Apple passed away. Plenty of blog posts, news wire, memorial services flood the internet, I was curious. Curious about his life, curious about this photo.



Yes, that is the photo on the splash screen on the Apple website. Getting aside from being emotional over the demise of a great man, the curious side of me or shall I say the photographer in me wondered, who was the guy who took that image of Steve and what was the story behind it?

This sort of sparked from a message I received from Grace about taking images of family members during a wedding and you never knew when they would use those images. The last thing on my mind was that at the funeral memorial service. But it did make sense to use because in our Malaysian mindset, taking photos isn't so much of something my parent's generation like to do and how many times have we seen on the obituary, the photo used in our IC (identification card) is displayed.

Anyway back to the point. After mucking around on the internet, I found out a little bit more about the story behind the image of Steve. Read it more below.

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

©Doug Menuez/Getty Images

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.

Asked to recount his experiences photographing Jobs, another photographer said,  “I don’t really want to be the guy who pans iGod during this hour of national mourning!”

Photojournalist Ed Kashi, who photographed Jobs about 10 times between the early 1980s and early 1990s, recalled via text message, “He was one of the most difficult subjects I ever dealt with during my Silicon Valley years but I appreciated his awareness of identity, setting and message of the images. There was one time I had to get a picture with him and Ross Perot and when Jobs acted up Perot turned to him and like a stern parent said ‘Steve, Grow up!!’ No matter how dreadful he could be as a subject, I am deeply saddened by his early departure.”

McLeod says his first encounter with Jobs was as an assistant for Kashi. “It was in the late 80s. [Jobs] walked into 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.”

“From an editor’s standpoint he could be difficult,” says Scott Thode, a former Fortunemagazine photo editor. “[He was] not unlike a political candidate. The main difference is that he had a real sense of design and how things can look.”

Doug Menuez spent more time photographing Jobs than just about any other photographer, after Jobs agreed to let him document the development of the NeXT computer. Menuez had access to the labs and boardroom for three years.

“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 [he] 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.

Menuez concludes, “ I’ve been in war zones, but I like to say that I became a man learning how to stand my ground with Steve.”

Albert Watson, who photographed Jobs just once for a portfolio of people in power that Fortune commissioned him to shoot in 2006, had a different experience from other photographers. “The one thing I insisted on was that we have a three hour window of set up time,” Watson says. “We were prepared…we set up to make [every shoot] as greased lightning fast as possible for the [subject].’ Watson says he had also read “a massive amount of stuff” about Jobs to help him conceptualize the shoot, and so he would be able to converse with Jobs intelligently.

When Jobs walked in, Watson says that his power, charisma and genius were palpable. “It was like when Clint Eastwood walks in to the room.”

Jobs didn’t look immediately at Watson, but looked instead at the set-up and then focused on Watson’s 4×5 camera “like it was something dinosauric,” Watson recalls, “and he said, ‘Wow, you’re shooting film.”

“I said, ‘I don’t feel like digital is quite here yet.’ And he said, ‘I agree,’ then he turned and looked at me and said, ‘But we’ll get there.’”

Jobs gave Watson about an hour–much longer than he ever gave most photographers for a portrait session. “I had wanted to do the shot in a minimalistic way because I knew that was going to suit him very well. He said, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I said I would like 95 percent, almost 100 percent of eye contact with the camera, and I said, ‘Think about the next project you have on the table,’ and I asked him also to think about instances where people have challenged him.

“If you look at that shot, you can see the intensity. It was my intention that by looking at him, that you knew this guy was smart,” Watson says, adding, “I heard later that it was his favorite photograph of all time.”

Apple cleared its home page today to post that photograph as a tribute to Jobs.

(correction: an earlier version of this story said Fortune commissioned Albert Watson to photograph Steve Jobs in 2008. The date was actually 2006.)

Source of the story: http://pdnpulse.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-visionary-inventor-and-very-challenging-photo-subject.html 

The amount of work put in by the photographers just to shoot Steve was absolutely amazing, I mean, 3 hours or prep work? Shooting in film? Standing up to his screams? These are the guys who like in turn captures the most amazing or memorable images. And with this image plastered on the Apple main page, hundreds of millions of people will remember Steve by it. What an honour.

Now, to gain a little bit of insight to what they meant about Steve's character, I would recommend that you watch this show, Pirates of Silicon Valley, to see how Steve's character was portrayed alongside together with Bill Gates. Because frankly, before watching this movie, Steve in my head was that of an angel with a strong fatherly figure and someone you might look up to and ask for more porridge. Well, that movie did definitely set my thinking straight but it also came to me as a revelation that Steve's character is what made Apple what it is today.

BERSIH came twice with protests on the streets and garnered a huge publicity. Upheavals in the Middle East brought down governments and don't even get me started on the countless of revolutions which happened over the past hundreds of years. Riots and panic caused a lot of damage and even death to some of the people caught in the stampede. Most of this time, it all takes a bit of spark to set off the mob mentality.

Nowadays, we take that very same mentality to the internet. First we had the case where a video of a guy punishing his poodle and that was publicized on all social media networks from Facebook to Youtube to blogs and even news portals. Then came many more rantings and created that mob mentality online. It all just takes a spark and the whole internet community became enraged.

The problem is that, as much as we say that facts are sometimes turned around on our news and mainstream media, I tend to see the same thing happening on the internet as well.

Take this story about a bartender in the US of A, she waited on a couple one night at the bar and lo and behold, when the couple left and paid for their drinks, they didn't leave a tip. That might seem normal here especially in Malaysia where service charge is already charged into our bills but in the states, it is deemed as rude not to leave a tip.

A normal tip usually ranges from 15-20% and whenever I travelled to the states, I made sure I used an app on my iPhone to help me calculate my bill when eating out (which I do anyway since I was travelling).

The worse part for that bartender was that, the couple also wrote a small note on the receipt.

p.s. You could stand to loose a few pounds

Image source: http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/

By the way, that's "lose" instead of "loose".

Anyway, she became enraged and posted this receipt on her Facebook page and the thing just went viral. She gotten tonnes of support from people and they even started researching for this alleged person who left the note and the no tip and when they found the guy, a whole hate smear campaign onslaught went on.

The problem with the whole entire episode was that the bartender, gotten the wrong guy! I guess with "gwailo" fellas, a first and a last name such as John Smith (just an example, the guy's name wasn't John Smith) would be extremely common.

I can just imagine that one day just waking up and finding out that half the internet community is knocking on your social media door asking for comments or just plain bashing you in.

Of course the news site have then issued apologies here, here and here. But the damage has been done already. So the next time you decide to start an online vigilante campaign, just make sure that you do your own proper research and homework before hitting out on innocent folks out there.

I've got quite a number of blog posts which have been sitting in draft mode for the longest time! And to include that in, I've got a number of photo folders filled with RAW images which have been crying for my attention but most of the time, that has sort of eluded me. I guess its the end of the year where I've got a lot of things to clear up.

It is also the peak season whereby everyone is getting married so most of my weekends are used up for wedding shoots. The lack of a permanent internet connection at home is also another factor. Yes, I have been bugging TM non-stop of when Unifi will be installed in my apartment.

In September I asked them, they replied October

In October I asked them, they replied November

In November I asked them, they replied December

In November I tried asking them twice and even lied that I said a contractor came and installed it for my neighbour, their only response was that I was lying and it is not in their system. In my defence, the contractor did say that Unifi was available (but he was installing a phone line for another unit and not Unifi) and even TM Marketing called me to inform me that Unifi was available.

In December I called them, they replied at the end of the month.

I might as well give up soon, still have to rely on my Maxis Broadband connection instead.

The iPad was launched in Malaysia last week, loads of people got it and I saw a huge crowd around it at Epicenter at Pavilion last night. Still, I wonder, what can it really be used for? I started a thread at a local forum and judging from the responses I get, most people tend to agree with me that in terms of business wise, unless your company has applications which supports it, most of the time, its mainly used for leisure. Mine has kept me entertained especially on long flights, bus rides and while waiting.

iOS 4.2 was also released for the iPad and I am really glad that I can reduce the number of pages that I have and organize everything in folders. Downside is that I really did see a drop in terms of my battery performance as I have applications running in the background which I forget to kill.

So if you have an iPad, what do you use your iPad for?