"We were two guys goofing off having fun," he recalls 28 years later
Steve Jobs with Mac. Photo by Norman Seeff. Click to enlarge.
Ray Basile, who hung out in Norman Seeff's Laurel Canyon studio as a teenager and now writes a blog called iPhone Savior, has posted a long interview with the South African photographer whose portrait of Steve Jobs ended up on the cover of Time Magazine and the book jacket of Walter Isaacson's' biography.
Seeff, who had long career as a photographer of celebrities from Andy Warhol to Whitney Houston, tells how he flew to Apple's (AAPL) Cupertino, Calif., headquarters in 1984, tasked with shooting the Macintosh design team.
"I decided to start with the team rather than Steve right out. They were like a commune, very different than what you'd expect in a corporation. There was a tremendous sense of family, a tremendous sense of shared innovative thinking that seemed to be future oriented.
"I got all of these people together in the room and I could see Steve in the background. You could see him thinking 'this looks like fun - I wanna play'. Every now and again he'd sneak into the room and he'd kind of glom on -- if I was shooting 20 people together he'd run in and he wouldn't stand in the middle -- rather he'd put his arm around someone on the edge and in that way, I was able to get a shot of him with the group."
Photo by Norman Seeff
Later Seeff suggested that they photograph Jobs by himself in his Woodside mansion.
"We drove over to his house and we sat in that large unfurnished living room and we were just in conversation. My fundamental approach is not to try and take photographs, but to create an authentic, honest relationship so that they forget that the camera is even there.
"He was so inspired in that moment and said 'I'll be right back' and he ran out of the room and he came running back in with the new Mac and he just plopped on the floor.
"So we didn't think of an idea, we just had a moment. What was encapsulated in that box was his baby. Now if we had conceptualized it and said 'let's put you in a lotus position so that you look like a guru and let's put the Mac on your lap and let me get the right angle and now look at me' — but none of that happened.
"He walked in and he fell into that place in one second and I got the shot, it was that easy. I didn't tell him what to do, he just did it. There isn't any other process that works unless it's collaborative, that's the foundation of working with innovative people - you don't 'do it' to anybody — you participate with them."
Lithographs of the original black-and-white photo, printed on 25 x 36 inch sheets, are now available for $75. Signed and numbered copies, with a touch of color on the Apple logo, are $125.
Basile has the details, plus a gallery of more Seeff photos shot that day. Click here.
The senior VP's chief weakness, writes Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, is his naked ambition
Jobs and Forstall. Source: AppLecture.com
He's young (43). Comfortable on stage (played Sweeney Todd in high school). Has serious nerd credentials (Stanford, NeXT). Shares Steve Jobs' obsession with detail (keeps a jeweler's loupe in his office to check every pixel on every icon). And the division he heads -- mobile software -- drives nearly 70% of Apple's (AAPL) income.
"He's MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 17, 2012 5:29 AM ET
Returns to the venue where Rupert Murdoch launched The Daily on the iPad
Eddy Cue, Apple's (AAPL) senior vice president for Internet software and services, is reported to be in charge of the much-touted special event scheduled for the morning of Jan. 19 in New York City. The wording of the blackboard-like invitation sent to reporters Wednesday -- "Join us for an education announcement in the Big Apple" -- suggests that this could MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 11, 2012 1:31 PM ETWalter Isaacson shares new information on his best-selling biography of the Apple founder.
FORTUNE -- Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs has topped The New York Times bestseller's list for eight consecutive weeks now. Earlier in the month I interviewed Isaacson for a sold-out audience of the Commonwealth Club of Northern California in San Francisco. For all that has been written about Isaacson's book and for all the people who have read it, there MORE
Adam Lashinsky, Sr. Editor at Large - Dec 27, 2011 10:53 AM ET
He laid out the reasons NOT to build an Apple television at All Things D in 2010
Jobs at All Things D8
There's been a lot of talk about Apple (AAPL) launching a full-fledged interactive television ever since Walter Isaacson quoted Steve Jobs saying he'd "finally cracked it."
But before the company can successfully market such a product, it must overcome the formidable hurdles that Jobs laid out the year before he died at MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Dec 23, 2011 8:28 AM ET
Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus with One Kings Lane co-founder Alison Pincus.
* Zynga (ZNGA) raised around $1 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), giving the social gaming champ a $7 billion valuation. Check out colleague Dan Primack's list of the biggest winners to come out of this, including MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Dec 16, 2011 3:00 AM ET
Your chance to register a preference before Steve Jobs, the movie, is cast
George Clooney, Noah Wylie
Sony (SNE) has reportedly picked up the film rights to Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, and according to the Hollywood rumor mill two ER veterans -- George Clooney and Noah Wyle -- are in the running to play the title role.
Clooney, of course, has the edge in box office appeal. But Wyle looks more like MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 21, 2011 6:27 AM ET
Will Art Levinson change the power balance at Apple? A closer look at the new chairman
Levinson: "We need to make the transition to being a big company and dealing with the hubris issue."
One of the first things Steve Jobs did when he returned Apple (AAPL) in 1997 was dismiss the company's board and appoint directors more to his liking, including Genentech CEO Arthur D. Levinson.
"Jobs did not cede any MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 16, 2011 11:01 AM ET
But CEO Cook, according to Walter Isaacson, is Apple's new decider-in-chief
Serwer and Isaacson. Photo: Tanner Curtis
One of the questions that lingers at the end of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is who at Apple (AAPL) is going to make the thousands of product decisions -- large and small -- that used to be made by Jobs himself.
The issue is especially problematic because no one at Apple has the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 10, 2011 11:46 AM ET
In the current New Yorker, Malcom Gladwell boils it down to this: Jobs was a "tweaker"
Samuel Compton's spinning mule. Source: Wiki commons
I'm only 46% of the way through Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs, according to the Kindle app on my iPad, but I've read enough to recognize that Malcom Gladwell has captured the essence of the book -- and the man -- in his 3,000-word review in the current New Yorker.
Gladwell's thesis MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Nov 7, 2011 7:02 AM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
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