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Andrew Mitchell, my editor at the London Sunday Times, sent us out to Brooklyn to the headquarters of Etsy…the online site where all the cool kids go to buy and sell hand-crafted and vintage stuff…to shoot their CEO, Josh Silverman. In less than three years, Silverman has taken a company that had slowing sales growth, climbing expenses and a stock price that had slumped 65 percent from it’s IPO, into a true Juggernaut in the space. Etsy’s investors love the guy and what his ideas have done for the formerly foundering company. It was sorta my job to illustrate those big ideas in a portrait…
Walking around Etsy’s two huge buildings in DUMBO, we passed by this kitchen space…
Now I’m not the kinda guy who lets a good metaphor go unnoticed, and those hanging light bulbs just screamed BIG IDEA…so we quickly threw up some lights and I had Robert jump up on that table…
The lighting was pretty simple…we let the windows bleed in a ton of ambient light to blow out the details from outside, and I added a couple of very bright rim lights on either side, then just dropped in some front fill from a gridded Profoto RFI boomed high above him…
After tweeking the color balance and contrast, this is how things were looking…
It was getting there, but it still needed some more drama…a bit more theatrical lighting oomph…so I added a mask (I was shooting tethered to Capture One Pro) and by using some reverse-clarity and really increasing the contrast, it gave the lightbulbs a wonderful glowing halo effect…
My ‘Light Bulb Over The Head’ metaphor was complete…
Just down the a hallway from our lightbulb shot was the Etsy Lab…sort of a ‘Test Kitchen’ that Esty suppliers can come and play in. It sorta has the feel of the ultimate Elementary School art class, with all the buttons, bows, paints, beads and glue sticks you would ever need to do whatever you might wanna do!
Sarah Marx, our liaison from Etsy, sat in for a quick iPhone test shot…
…and after a good dose of styling and lighting, we turned it into this…
And Josh dug it…
Here is the final page as it appeared in The Times…
Damn Ugly Photography 
Fantastic! I love your work! Thank you for sharing!
Brad,
Terrific, thanks for sharing. It’s a shame they didn’t use the fabulous lightbulb picture too!
Best,
Bruce Jaffe
Yes! The light bulb shot! Although I also like the one they ran. You are an amazing photographer, and it’s really generous of you to share your behind the scenes secrets. You fan always, Barbara
Very cool to see how you work with what you got.
So good, as usual. Thanks!
As always, very inspirational!