Will Smith, the actor, visited the St. Louis Post-Dispatch November 19, 2008.  He was in town to promote his new movie Seven Pounds.  The newsroom was buzzing and people gathered around the elevators to await his arrival.  I was assigned to shoot a portrait of Smith before his interview with our movie critic Joe Williams.

I’ve never had so many co-workers offer to assist me during a shoot.  But I did have some help getting ready and planning out the shoot.  The night before our intern Max Gersh helped me transform the conference room from lame and ugly into something at least workable.  Features picture editor Lynden Steele found the perfect chair for the shoot, it’s perhaps the coolest chair in the entire building.  And fellow photographer Huy Mach helped me race around to set up a second background after we were told Smith was arriving an hour early.

Smith walked in flashing a movie star smile and shook everyone’s hand in the room.  After some brief small talk, we chatted about the photos I was hoping for and started shooting.  He comment on how he liked chair and effortlessly worked through number of poses with limited coaching from me.  I knew I had to work quickly.  We moved six feet to left and shot our second situation.  The shoot was going very smoothly, all the preparation and test shots before he arrived were paying off.

Fifty three frames, and five minutes 56 seconds later the shoot was finished.  We shook hands and he thanked me by name.  I was impressed he remember it, I’m terrible with names.  He’d been meeting people and shaking hands since early in the morning as part of the promotional tour, but he remembered my name and used it.

I pulled the memory cards from my cameras and left the room so the movie critic do his interview.  I opened the pictures up on my computer in the photo department.  I was happy with the results but several other photographers commented on how they wished I had used the ugly curtain in the shoot.  I looked at my co-wokers the skeptically, I thought they were kidding at first…they weren’t.  I was kind of irritated with them, but thought maybe they were right.  I ejected the memory cards from my computer and walked back towards the interview room, muttering under my breath.

I heard the interview wrapping up so I walked in, and put my cards back in the cameras.  I very politely explained to Smith that I wanted to shoot one more picture if he was alright with him.  He cheerfully agreed.  Seventeen frames and a minute and a half later we really were finished, again.  I still think the curtain is horribly ugly, but I’m glad we made the extra frames.

I find it sort of interesting that in total I photographed Smith for seven minutes, for his film titled Seven Pounds.