PLATON + ME

Famous British photographer Platon recently got a lot of press for his
Time magazine Man-Of-The-Year portrait of Russian President. V. Putin.

According to the interview with Platon posted on the World Press Photo
award-web-site-thingy (click here, then click 2008 interviews, then click
on the shot of Putin) it took 5 days of waiting around, a limo ride to the
sticks outside of Moscow and a further 5 hours of waiting for his 5 minutes
with Putin. (Boy, that’s a lot of 5’s.)

I’m struck by the similarities between Platon’s shot of Putin (2007) and
the shot I took of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (2005).

I’m not suggesting that Platon’s copying me, after all….he doesn’t even know I exist.
I just think it’s funny how this stuff happens from time to time.

Anyway……

The look of the images isn’t the only similarity at work here. While I didn’t have
to wait in a hotel room for 5 days to get the go-ahead for my shoot, Harper’s
people did only give me 45 minutes to set up and 5 minutes to take the pictures.

I kept him for 6 minutes. In that time I did 3 set ups. One of them sucked and the
other two worked. Here’s another frame from my 6 minutes with the P.M.

And, speaking of World Leaders (or maybe I should make that: World Leader), I
recently photographed the American Ambassador to Canada for Winkreative.

I’m not at liberty to show you those portraits yet but I can show you the napkin the
Ambassador’s butler (or whatever he is) put under the glass of water I asked for…..

EVIDENCE

The big Ottawa Art Gallery 20th Anniversary show EVIDENCE opened this past Thursday.

Seeing as there were 17 artists showing and that it was an anniversary celebration there
were about a million people at the opening. I took my trusty point and shoot but was
so distracted, what with seeing so many people I know, catching up and so on, that I
didn’t really take a lot of pictures.