Every-once-in-a-while there comes an opportunity to do something fairly unusual with my trade as a photojournalist. Photographing people on stage, performing on the court or the field, being out in public on the spotlight… but usually overseas in the darkened corners of the world do I ever photograph the average person in their average environment because we – as westerners in the “First World” – think that fishing and tending a market stall or planting rice is “unusual.”
Millions and millions of people work their 9-to-5 in an office nobody ever really sees it. I’ve never seen a journalist from Mongolia come to Chicago and photograph an office with the fresh eyes.
So, these are the people who occupy the offices of LinkedIn in Chicago. (Yes, like, the social network: LinkedIn). These offices are not full of machines cranking out numbers and things… these are offices full of friendships and memories and a whole lot of hard work.
Philip Holsinger and I, as part of the Caractere,Inc. cooperative, spent the entire day photographing as a team. His version of this post along with his side of the story (and photos) will be up on his website at http://www.flipholsinger.com soon.
In this collection, there are bosses and there are marketing reps and there are accountants and tech people… if done right, you’ll only be able to see a little of who they are, not what they do.
These are a few portraits and some captured moments from the time we spent around the office for a day.
Be aware, heavy photo load ahead…
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We owe a great deal of thanks to the staff at LinkedIn in Chicago and everyone who made this possible.
I’m thankful for being allowed behind the scenes at something that so many people around the world know (a fairly major social network) but know almost nothing about the real people behind it. I hope this will be starting a good relationship with this crew. One 9-to-5 is not enough time.
Maybe it is because I don’t know this world. Honestly, I know the world of fishermen sewing their nets on a Haitian island or tea pluckers in Northern India just about as much as I know the land of the office cubical, but maybe that’s part of the mystique: the man in the market stall or the marketing rep in the cubical, in the grand scheme of things… not so different.
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
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PS: There has been some interest in the lighting used in these photographs. If you can’t tell by some of the images, only Nikon speedlights were used on commander mode. In the white background – a 9ft seamless – a shoot-through umbrella, a grid-spot on the background, and a snooted hair light. On the black background – a big piece of black wool from the fabric store – ONLY a medium grid-spot… and whatever fill spilled over from the other flashes. Definitely nothing complicated, but I’m pleased by the results.
