Having photographed his son Clark, my friend and chairman of the Village Roadshow Mr Robert Kirby arranged a session for his own portraits; Robert was keen to use his corporate headquarters in South Yarra which features an excellent selection from his personal art collection.

I have worked with Robert for a number of years now, and apart from being a really interesting and inspiring man, he is a great guy and a lot of fun to photograph! We naturally had to capture the ‘standard’ executive portrait for use in the annual report, and once that was in the bag we started to just play with incorporating the artwork in the images. A really refreshing and enjoyable session was the outcome, with Robert himself suggesting different poses and compositions. For my part, I decided against the usual soft light approach (although it is of course evident in the ‘safe’ shots), and decided to use harsh direct flash (controlled with snoots), combined with the dark and moody reception and subdued office lighting which is a signature of the Village Roadshow HQ.

The harsh light source just ‘felt’ right on this shoot, and I loved the drama it added to the images, creating interesting shadows and shapes on the walls and even from Robert’s glasses on his face. For a few of the shots I also used the 16-35mm f2.8 L II lens, which is hardly considered a portrait lens, but can be used to incorporate more of the environment in the shot, or just to convey an interesting sense of distortion and drama…

Having used the office interiors, it was time to head off into the centre…

Again, my thanks to Robert for the fun session… I really cannot imagine a life without a camera in my hands, I consider myself so fortunate to have always known my passion and calling…