Looksmart creative photographed by advertising photographer Robert Houser
This image always bring me back to the crazy dot-com days of 1999/2000. Almost every magazine job I did was with a computer related business that was just starting out. In 2000 I averaged over 4.5 shoots a week, and since I tried to take Wednesdays off, that meant I did at least one double a week. This guy worked for LookSmart, anyone remember them? Before Google became ubiquitous there was Yahoo!, Excite and LookSmart - the latter ostensibly reviewing the sites they recommended with real people. Imagine that, search results that were verified by humans. Every time LookSmart hired someone new, which was almost twice a month, they had me come by, late in the afternoon to shoot executive portraits. With a backdoor on South Park into their offices, we could park and set up in 15 minutes. This guy was an evangelist of some kind for LookSmart, but also a comedian, and he arrived to the shoot looking just like this. Shot on Kodak chrome film on a Hasselblad with an 80mm lens.