Eric OgdEn: Telling a Story
Eric OgdEn bEliEv ES that placing subjects in an environment helps draw out
their personalities. “I’m surprised by who’s shy or uncomfortable in front of a camera and who’s not,” he says. “You might be photographing movie stars and find that
they’re shy in front of a still camera because they’re not in character.” Posing such
subjects on white seamless only makes it harder for them, while having them in a
setting “gives them something to play off of, whether it’s a couch, a chair, a window,” while also lending “a narrative quality” to the image.
For an Esquire profile on Paris Hilton, Ogden was called on to show a fresh per-
spective on the socialite/actress, who is most widely known through paparazzi pho-
tos. “She’s obviously a beautiful woman, but she’s a polarizing figure. We wanted to
show her in a way that’s more soulful or thoughtful.” He adds, “There’s an unknow-
able quality about her because she’s such a celebrity. Can you know anything below
the surface?”
Ogden had an afternoon to shoot a handful of setups in Hilton’s home, which he
had only seen in photos before the day of the shoot. He lit her kitchen using two or
three strobes outside a window, and placed two more strobes inside. “I try to light
three dimensionally, and not just light the person,” says Ogden. “I’m trying to light
the environment to look as interesting as the person. I want everything to be inter-
esting.” When he shoots, often with a Hasselblad, he rarely uses a tripod. “As I shoot,
I move around, and I’ll discover how light hits a wall, or how it looks here or there. It
allows for more discovery and chance.”
As he began shooting he discovered that Hilton’s face was mirrored in the glass
of her kitchen cabinets. “I didn’t realize this until I
started shooting, but this is what I was trying to ac-
complish, to show her image reflected and multiplied.
That’s cool, when you have something that supplies a
visual metaphor.”
For an ad campaign for the Animal Planet’s TV show
about Mike Tyson’s fascination with homing pigeons,
The first pigeon release didn’t look right, Ogden says. When he told Tyson this,
the boxer replied, “I did what you told me to do,” recalls the photographer (who
also remembers noticing the girth of Tyson’s arm relative to that of Ogden’s chest).
Ogden says, “I just had to say, ‘You’re right. Now try doing it a little more regally.’”
An outtake from the campaign shows Tyson gazing toward the horizon as deli-
cate white birds whirl around him. “He really loves those birds, and he’s really watch-
ing them,” Ogden notes. “That’s the great thing about working in a real space. And
any time there’s an animal around, I pull it into the shot. It just gives a subject some-
thing to react off of, and it adds surprise.”
Opposite: Former boxer
Mike Tyson with a few of his
homing pigeons. Above: Paris
Hilton in her home, lit with
strobes placed both inside
and outside the kitchen.
