Years of experience
As those of you that visit the blog regularly will know, I tend to not post many images shot for clients here as I like to keep the blog focused on personal or travel images. From time to time though, I just can’t resist and this is the case with the image below.
This is His Excellency Easa Saleh Al Gurg, the chairman of the Easa Saleh Al Gurg, a UAE based conglomerate with 23 companies under its belt. His Excellency has an incredible amount of experience having founded the group in 1960 and having taken an active role in the history of the United Arab Emirates as a member (and later as an executive director) of the Deliberative Committee of the Trucial States Development Office.
He was also the ambassador of the UAE to the UK and the Republic of Ireland between 1991 and 2009 and upon his retirement from this role, His Excellency was awarded KCVO (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order) by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
As you can imagine I was really looking forward to doing this shoot, but at the same time I felt quite intimidated by all this experience and all the awards displayed around the office. I decided to focus more on the subject rather than the gear and I went really simple with the light. The office had huge windows that were letting quite a lot of light in, so I only supplemented the natural light with one small strobe shot through an umbrella just to control the shadows. Unfortunately because this is client work, I cannot show you the original image, but I will tell you that it’s not too far off from what you are seeing here.
On a related note, I have now added a new “Corporate portraits” section to the portfolio site where I have uploaded some of the more recent work.