Norman Seeff and Steve Jobs

If you want to get an idea of what relaxed portraits look like, peruse the work of legendary photographer Norman Seeff. Originally from South Africa he became art director for United Artists Records in 1972. This gave him the chance to regularly shoot many of the most famous musicians in the world at the peak of the record industry. Often these sessions took place in front of fairly large audiences at Seeff's (now defunct) studio on Sunset Boulevard. I'm most struck how Seeff uses very simple lighting schemes if he uses lights at all. His biggest interest is always his subject.

If you've got a few thousand bucks to burn and you're an Apple fanboy, a private collector is currently selling prints of Seeff's famous shot of Steve Jobs. Of course though we should never forget that the most important moment of Seeff's career was when he came to Toronto in 1982 to shoot the original cast of SCTV for Life magazine. Could anything top that? Probably not.