Behind the scenes at Nike

So I have been shooting photos of Hiroshi as he tours around the Nike world headquarters here in Portland Oregon since yesterday.

Very interesting assignment. There is actually a media tour/promo going on right now with a few hundred global media people. They are being shuttled around listening to presentations on new products being released in time for the 2008 Olympics. Big thing for Nike as they are a main sponsor of the Games. Our schedule is very different from the other media people though. We show up at the campus(that is what the Nike head quarters is called) in the morning and basically spent the whole day just wandering around meeting various designers etc., Hiroshi sits down with each for a few minutes to talk about new products and design ideas for the future.

Photographically it is kind of challenging as there are a lot of things that can not be shown or talked about to the public yet. So I am having to be rather careful what I shoot and from what angle. There are no set up photos either everything is very natural, journalism style. The light was not that great in the building making for some hard situations to shoot in. After lunch I joined the main presentation of the day to take photos of the company CEO Mark Parker and special guest Kobe Bryant from the Lakers introing a new shoe. Was fun to see Kobe up close although there were a ton of other photographers there shooting as well.

Then we hung out for a little longer for a special meeting between Hiroshi and CEO Parker. I think I got real lucky on that one. They met in a room pretty hi up and the afternoon light started to get really good half way though the meeting. It was unclear how much I could shoot, but I just kept snapping as they talked. I was able to get some really candid shots of both.

It is not very often that one gets to shoot freestyle with the president of a major global company. So it was interesting and I think I was able to get a couple of really cool shots. It is really interesting to follow Hiroshi around he seems to create these candid relaxed situation with whoever he meets, designers, marketing, media and even CEO’s. I just have to work quick and follow the flow to get really good shots. In a way it is a lot like shooting snowboarding. You have to have a feeling for when and where the action is going to happen and you need to have the right lens on ready and waiting….