December Challenge: Day 21 – Drew Verkade
Drew is another member of the Quartus team (in case you couldn't tell by photo), but more specifically he's my direct manager — the boss-man. Drew is a cool guy and he's really easy to get along with at work and outside of work. He has a great ability to be friendly as a peer, yet provide guidance as a knowledgeable superior. And, as with all of the Quartus management team, Drew is a skilled engineer who not only manages projects but works on them side-by-side with his engineers.
In his free-time, Drew likes doing things such as hiking, camping, fishing, shooting guns, etc — you know, the outdoorsy type of stuff. I recently learned that he was a bit of a photography enthusiast back in the day. Apparently he's got a small collection of Nikon 35mm film equipment along with some medium format stuff. He's been ignoring his cameras for a few years, so I now have the personal goal of getting him back into it.
This photo was taken from inside of our main conference room. The background is a frosted glass wall with the Quartus logo as clear glass. The logo actually faces outward, so in this photo it was backwards. I flipped the image so it would read normally. The mouse on the table also gives it away (it's now a left-handed mouse).
Oh yeah, Drew also wanted me to note that he doesn't usually look this grizzly — it was the Friday before the winter holidays so you'll have to give him a break.
To see the rest of my December Challenge photos, check the “Challenge” category here on the blog or visit my Flickr Set.
the_wolf_brigade
December 22, 2007“I now have the personal goal of getting him back into it”.
Alternatively, I’ll pay the shipping costs and he can send me his medium format gear…:D
(While I say this partly in jest, if that situation ever occurred I would be a willing recipient!)
Brian Auer
December 22, 2007LOL, you actually might be able to talk him into that. I’ll let him know about your offer — I’ll see him tomorrow (we have to pop in to work for a few hours to finish up a project).
the_wolf_brigade
December 22, 2007Sweet!
Neil Creek
December 23, 2007Great photo 🙂 The light is nice and even, soft and flattering, and the background has a fantastic radial gradient that draws attention to the subject nicely. The shirt is a little hot maybe, but you could bring that back a little fairly easily with the “recovery” slider in Lightroom or ACR. The only other suggestion I’d make, is that the balance of the photo is heavy to the right. I’d have tried to recompose with the company logo a little further to the left to balance things up a little.
I can see your proficiency improving with each portrait Brian 🙂 Great work!
Brian Auer
December 23, 2007Thanks for the compliments and feedback, Neil. I think I had the same feelings about the shirt (and I recovered what I could), but the contrast was just a little too high to work with. I toyed around with moving the logo to the left, but my cloning skills aren’t good enough to deal with the complex gradients in the glass. I also tried cropping it down, but something kept telling me to leave the negative space on the left.
the_wolf_brigade
December 27, 2007I’ve been contemplating the “negative space” on this image. I think that this could be perfectly suited to a write up about the company, or Drew himself. It seems to suggest to me that this wouldn’t look out of place in a magazine or brochure with a short blurb. Kind of a “stock image” feel to it. Hope that makes sense!