Dennis Haysbert

Posted by John Keatley | Filed under Celebrity

Headshot of actor Dennis Haysbert. Photo by John Keatley.

It has always been a dream of mine to photograph the President of The United States, and now I can cross that off my list of things to do.  David Palmer is the first African American president in US history.  Well, in TV history I should say.  Dennis Haysbert played President David Palmer on Fox’s 24, and he talked about playing the president at our shoot, “A lot of people considered me to be the first black president – which is ridiculous, but that’s the power of TV.”

Speaking of the influence of TV.  I am seriously considering switching my auto insurance to Allstate.

I photographed Dennis while he was in Seattle working on an upcoming movie called “The Details“.  Toby Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, and Laura Linney are also in the film.  It is being labeled as a dark comedy, and there are rumors that the plot revolves around a married couple dealing with a raccoon problem.  That might just be a rumor though.  Dennis said that you could get 30 different answers as to what the film is about depending on who you ask.  We will see…  (Here) is an interesting story about the home the movie is being filmed in.  Sounds like the project hit some rough spots, but they are back on track now.

Conan recently ran a pretty funny sketch on The Tonight Show called Twitter Tracker.  The sketch quoted several celebrity tweets in an attempt to convince viewers of the value of Twitter.  The grand finale was a tweet by Dennis Haysbert.  ”Just saw the new Star Trek movie. Wow, really good.”  I was hoping to go to his Twitter page after our shoot and read about how he just worked with the most amazing photographer.  It turns out the whole skit was made up, and Dennis doesn’t even use Twitter.  Can you believe that?  Conan, making stuff up?

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Permalink | August 30th, 2009

6 Responses to “Dennis Haysbert”

  1. Alex D. Says:
    August 30th, 2009 at 11:41 pm

    Your photos never cease to wow me John. You’re lighting is sensitive and unique. So many photographers these days seem to be obsessed with stylized lighting that natural lighting is becoming an endangered species.

    It’s a shame because it looks so damn good.

  2. Stephen Woo Says:
    August 31st, 2009 at 9:19 am

    Good photo. However, I was surprised not to see catch light in eyes. I only mention this because last night when I was shooting photos I forgot to add the bounce card to create catch lights. My bad. Am curious about whether this is intentional.

  3. John Keatley Says:
    August 31st, 2009 at 9:49 am

    Hi Stephen,
    Interesting comment. I am curious why you think it is bad you left out a bounce card. If your personal style requires you to always use a bounce card to create catch lights in your subjects eyes, then I guess you made a mistake. For me personally, I don’t worry about catch lights or always using a specific light. I set up lights based on the feel I want to create. If I set up lights, and I don’t like how they feel, then I am going to change anything necessary to achieve the look I want. I would encourage you to be free with your lighting and experiment. There are rules in photography, but rules are also meant to be broken.

  4. Marcin Retecki Says:
    August 31st, 2009 at 3:03 pm

    Wah! Some perfect portrait you got in here. His eyes are so damn deep! And to the twitter and TV influence, I guess many people have searched twitter for him after the sketch just to find out it was made up. It could probably been no 1 search phrase that night ;)

  5. Dan Depew Says:
    September 1st, 2009 at 4:57 pm

    Awesome stuff John. Really like the shadow detail.

  6. TUffer Says:
    September 29th, 2009 at 7:59 am

    nicely done. Just enough light, not to much and the perfect close crop.

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