Popping the cover cherry

So lil ol' me finally managed to get something printed on the cover of a magazine, which is nice. The subject, Othman Belbeisi, is just about one of the most interesting and genuine people you could hope to meet. After the 'shoot' he regaled me and my assistant-for-the-day  Naziha Baassiri over coffee and shisha with tales of the frankly crazy situations he faces on a near daily basis. As the head honcho of the International Organization for Migration in this neck of the woods, Othman is tasked with helping the region's domestic workers - possibly the most powerless of all the social strata in this part of the word -   get out of all kinds of scrapes, mostly  from escaping the clutches of crazy tyrants, be they Libyan 'Leaders' or Lebanese Madames. Anyway, JO's (a Jordanian magazine) own Cory Eldridge says it far better, see his story below, along with a nice nearly-candid shot I was able to take of Othman while enjoying his tales of derring do, an amazingly elderly grandfather and why Jordanian shishas are just better.

Cheers Time, don't mind if I do

Sami Halabi, our deputy ed, was patient enough to sit for me while I tried my hardest to recreate a poor mans' version of Marco Grob's portrait of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which was featured in the May issue of Time magazine. The lighting in it was awesome and there's no better way to learn than nicking tricks of those you admire.

Regular freelancer and drunken assailer of the Holiday Inn Nathaneal Massey was my guinea pig for the first attempt. The set up was all wrong but the shots came out kinda cool anyway.

Talking heads

A few head honchos from Lebanon's banking world gathered to listen to the above talking about banking stuff at a nice hotel. My attention got as far as the awesome steak rolls...

They yacked for ages, which meant a) I really needed those steak rolls by the end and, b) plenty of time to play with the lighting. Below is Yasser, Executive's editor in chief who was hosting the talk (i.e also capitalising on a journalist's innate ability to score great free grub).

Joe Ayoub

Joe Ayoub of Brandcell marketing is another Executive contributer and takes the award for Beirut's coolest offices so far. You'll be able to read his words of wisdom next week sometime.

This blog is getting a bit monochromatic, apologies. Also, I think I should invest in a small step ladder - these last few pictures make it look like I'm about 3ft tall.

Karim Makarem

I finally sunk my teeth into the first of a bunch of portraits of business leaders who regularly contribute to the magazine. After an aborted attempt to get on the roof we settled for this interesting curved wall in the offices of the oft quoted Karim Makarem of Ramco real estate advisors, one of Beirut's top real estate figures. Curvy walls are bloody great. So are subjects who are quite willing to give you a reasonable chunk of their time to let you shoot them without making you feel like you're clogging up their schedule.

Corporate location portraiture is usually an exercise in overcoming a combination of far-too-busy-for-you subjects and less than ideal surroundings, but today was a refreshing change.