I first met photographer Norman Seeff in Laurel Canyon when I was a teenager living in Southern California sometime around 1972. I had no idea then who Norman really was, all I knew is that he had a wicked cool accent and the people hanging around his studio wanted to be him.
In 1984, Norman was called up to Cupertino, California and tasked with the assignment of photographing Apple's Macintosh design team.
It was that very session where Norman captured the image of Steve Jobs sitting on the floor in lotus position with the original Apple Macintosh centered on his lap.
That iconic image, featured on the cover of Time Magazine and on the back cover of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, is now being released as a collectible lithograph by Norman Seeff almost 30 years later.
By the time he arrived at Apple headquarters, Norman had already made a name for himself as the creative force behind emotionally engaging images from his sessions with Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Whitney Houston, Johnny Cash and a glorious parade that featured some of rock 'n' roll's elite. His album covers include an unbelievable list of music innovators from 1969 through 1995.
But it was his work with Steve Jobs that captured my attention. There was something in his images of the young Jobs I wanted to know more about, something I hadn’t seen in any other shots. So, I called Norman and he was gracious enough to share with me how he was able to capture the very essence of the man who went on to change the lives of so many.
Norman explained to me that the moment he caught in that image was not a concept, nor was it a "posed photograph". It was a single frame captured during a spontaneous moment while shooting an extended session at Job’s Woodside mansion.
"We were two guys having fun goofing off. You know, that's the magic of the kind of photography that delivers these kinds of shots,” Norman said. "It's not like I have four contact sheets of the same shot and we go ok this is the best one — that's one shot!"
