Celebrity Portraits by Jefferson Graham
Read MoreLewis Black
The comedian Lewis Black met us at a West Hollywood bar, which agreed to let him do our TalkingTech video interview there. Afterwards, I asked him to show off one of his trademark screams to the iPhone. With each successive shot, Black turned redder and redder, until his eyes were literally bugging out of their sockets.
Ricky Gervais
The comedian Ricky Gervais was plugging a new app he was touting as the "Twitter of voice," at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. We photographed Gervais in a boardroom at the hotel.When we arrived, the room had a super long table and 12 chairs. We moved things around, put two chairs in the middle of the room, to isolate the background, and lit the room with the Lowell Rifa softbox and some Lowell Pro lights. I asked him to show me some emotion in showing off the app, thus the big smile and those fangy teeth!
Slash
The guitarist Slash, best known for his work in Guns N' Roses, was plugging a new series on the Fandango app, when we met up at a Hollywood screening room. We photographed this in the screening room, taking advantage of the dark background. He was lit by one softball, and we did the usual assortment of shots--wide, medium and closeup. I'm partial to this in-your-face shot, complete with stubble and yours truly in his glasses.
Justin Williams
Magician Justin Williams hosts a monthly podcast at Meltdown Comics in Hollywood and does great things merging the old-fashioned art of magic with technology. So when it came time to do this portrait, we wanted to do something out of the ordinary. Thus: the notion of a big eye emanating from the iPhone. Shot in natural light from the Meltdown front window.