The corporate world.

I’m wearing a suit in this photo.  OK, you can’t really see me, but I assure you, that is my hand holding a grey card so i can ensure I’m getting correct white balance.  My father used to love seeing me in a suit.  He loved wearing suits.  I guess it was because he wasn’t very educated, and he worked as a bricklayer.  The suit made him feel rich, educated….classy.  I don’t think he realized that he was all of those things without the suit.

For most of my childhood and even adult life, I disliked wearing a suit.  I think I had a lot of bad associations with a suit.  It usually meant I was attending a long hot church service, or being dragged into a park by my Aunt Shirley to take photographs.  The suit would never fit properly and since my earliest years were spent in the hot city of Baton Rouge, LA, I was always overheated while wearing it.

More recently, I’ve come to accept and practically enjoy wearing a suit.  I buy Kenneth Cole suits that fit properly.  They look nice and are easy to wear for a full day.  Anytime I’m wearing a suit, I know I’m working a corporate gig where the rate is good, the shooting conditions are good and I’m surrounded by upwardly mobile people who treat me with respect and are grateful for my presences. 

In the above grey card photo taken just last week, I’m in Atlanta shooting for Calibr -a networking group for executives.  Whever I shoot for them, they announce me on mic at some point.  Something to the effect of, “We are honored to have  celebrity photographer John Ricard shooting this event.  I love when they say that 😉