Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Seale.
Robert Seale is a Houston commercial photographer who creates heroic portraits and other memorable photography for advertising agencies, corporate annual reports, and magazines.
Seale began his photography career as a photojournalist, where he worked as a staffer at several major newspapers (including the Houston Chronicle, Houston Post, and Austin American-Statesman). He next became a staff photographer at The Sporting News, a national weekly sports magazine founded in 1886 where he spent 11 years crisscrossing the country shooting Super Bowls and World Series games as well as slick cover portraits. In 2006, he left his staff job to establish his own business as a Houston commercial photographer. It was a calculated move to diversify and work for an assortment of new clients: other magazines (including a long association with Sports Illustrated), sports and fitness brands, oil and gas companies, and healthcare corporations.
Since starting the business, Seale has leveraged his visual ability, and Houston-based location to become an expert in industrial photography for oil and gas clients. This work has afforded worldwide opportunities to move seamlessly from the boardroom to the helipad, transforming hard-to-photograph refineries, plants, labs, and drilling rigs into beautiful graphic art for some of the world’s leading brands.
Seale is known for his technical ability, graphic eye, photographic lighting skills, and visual problem-solving. He has the ability to coax multiple creative concepts from a single location with very limited time, keeping his subjects happy and on schedule. He’s equally adept photographing celebrity athletes, busy CEO’s, and normal folks in any environment with any level of production necessary to tell their story.
He has worked hard to become one of the leaders in the Houston corporate photography community, often mentoring assistants and emerging photographers and volunteering for speaking opportunities. As a speaker in the industry, Seale has taught photographic lighting, portraiture, and photography business practices regularly at a variety of photography workshops in North America including the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop, Photoshelter Luminance Conference, Rich Clarkson’s Photography at the Summit Sports Workshops, and the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar. He has won awards from The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, was a finalist for Life Magazine’s Eissie Award), and was featured in the Best of ASMP (2008, 2015).
A lifelong fascination with military pilots and aviation turned into an ongoing personal project chronicling aviation heroes and astronauts. This work is a labor of love but has been widely published in aviation magazines. He is a member of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and APA (American Photographic Artists).
His editorial credits include Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Men’s Health, SLAM, Businessweek, Forbes, Fortune, Barron’s, GOLF Magazine, Smithsonian, Air & Space, The New York Times Magazine, and over 200 covers of The Sporting News. As an annual report and advertising photographer, Robert has worked on projects for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Tellabs, Schlumberger, Aramco Services, Anadarko, Baker Hughes GE, BP, EOG Resources, XTO, GMC, BMW, Invesco, Huntsman, Marathon, Major League Baseball, Pepsi, Gatorade, Reebok, Methodist Hospital, UT Health, Memorial Hermann, M.D. Anderson, Under Armour, and various professional sports teams.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not always been smooth… for example, I started out just wanting to be a successful newspaper photojournalist, but after my newspaper was bought and closed, I had to pivot and make other plans, going to work for a large sports magazine. That was a fun way to make a living for many years, jetting off all over the country to cover sports and photograph athletic portraits but as that market was changing, I had to pivot to doing more commercial work. Now I work for ad agencies, big oil companies, healthcare/hospitals. I’m grateful because even though it’s not what I originally planned, everything I’ve done, every experience informs what I do now. My skill set is a product of all those rich experiences.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
What sets me apart is my varied experience background. When most of my commercial peers where just getting started by assisting other photographers (usually for a period of years), I was out working, literally getting my 10,000+ hours in with my eye to the viewfinder – shooting photojournalism, sporting events, and portraits-working constantly. By the time I went out on my own, I had much more experience at a younger age than most of my competition.
Working as a photojournalist, particularly feature hunting, turned me into someone who can find visual design potential in all sorts of things… a little sliver of interest or architecture can literally be the background and basis for an entire shoot. I see things and find potential in places most people find boring or even ugly. It’s all about potential and seeing the world differently.
The mindset of dealing with big athletes and celebrities was a great training ground for the commercial world, dealing with corporate CEO’s or ad agency types… preparation is key, arriving early, scouting ahead of time, testing lighting, etc. and by the time subjects are on set, everything has been tested and perfected. I’m able to work lighting fast and get people in and out with great results in minimal time.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Growing up on the Gulf Coast in a small town near the bay.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.robertseale.com
- Phone: 832-654-9572
- Email: studiomanager@robertseale.com
- Instagram: @robertsealephoto
- Other: www.robertsealeblog.com
Image Credit:
All Images ©Robert Seale/ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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