Mug shots

George Sabados is the founder of GS Roasting, a wholesale coffee roastery in inner-city Sydney, and to the chagrin of many coffee aficionados, he doesn't retail coffee, though that maybe about to change hence me being commissioned to photograph him for several websites currently under wraps.

George not only roasts coffee, he is a coffee judge of international renown and is an expert in turning around cafes. He is also a great bloke and happiest when not buttoned up in a suit.

So many roles means that one photograph cannot do. George needed three photos, as a good bloke you would want to engage to sort out an underperforming cafe, as a gun coffee roaster and as a coffee consultant.

So how to produce three distinct images in an hour? George's office wasn't glamorous, a computer station, reams of paper, invoices, standard lighting, nothing you would want to see so when I set up the shoot in his office, I avoided the CEO at his desk look (which works if the CEO has a magnificent oak bureau but not if it's an Officeworks $99 special) and went for a very simple shoot - just George and the innocuous venetian blinds behind him.

To warm him up, get him used to the camera, I asked him to wear a casual shirt. Initially he sat at his desk but George is a doer, happiest when he is working. Once standing, the photos started to work but a problem, George was even too casual in the first photo notwithstanding you immediately smile when you look at it. The solution, not a reshoot but a tight crop - thanks to high end full frame DSLR cameras, you can get a fantastic image even if you use 1/5th of the frame.


Then to the suit shot. The whole point of wearing a suit is that it disguises your individuality - the term "suit" doesn't exactly conjure up a fun guy so as a photographer, there's no point fretting if the image doesn't 'sing' and give you visions of winning the Pulitzer Prize. Maybe if I had spent a day tricking up the lighting, I could have got a memorable result but instead, I got the suit shot.



I then focussed on what I really wanted to photograph - an environmental portrait of George, his environment being a bespoke coffee roaster that has allowed him to produce exalted coffee blends. The circumstances of this part of the shoot weren't ideal - roasting was about to begin in five minutes so the workers were loading beans and preparing boxes and a forklift truck was whizzing around alarmingly close to my gear. Worse still, a machine had just broken giving George and his offsider, Rudy, a major headache. So a quick two light set up, a naked strobe lighting the roaster and a flash umbrella lighting George.