Ryan Hibbert - RIOT Hospitality Group

 

I recently photographed CEO of RIOT Hospitality Group Ryan Hibbert for the cover of C-Level Magazine. RHG is the parent company of popular restaurants in Tempe, Scottsdale, Chicago, and Las Vegas such as El Hefe, Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row, and Farm + Craft. The initial brief called for me to photograph Ryan at the Tempe El Hefe location, but a last minute change to their Scottsdale location was unexpectedly fantastic.

El Hefe Scottsdale and Whiskey Row Scottsdale are directly across the street from each other, moving the shooting location doubled the photographic options we had. I arrived about an hour before Ryan to scout the area, the locations, the light, set up a few lights and begin developing a shot list in my head. Both locations were incredibly photogenic and really lent themselves to be great backgrounds. My job now was just to narrow the options a bit to find the strongest angles and decide which areas I'd shoot natural light and which areas I'd use my lights. If I can pre-light my set, and have lights in place before my subject arrives, I can roll through a shoot pretty quickly. That may sound like I'm trying to rush it, but I know from experience that the time I have with my subjects may be as little as 10 minutes. Being prepared to hit the ground running when they arrive is crucial.

Ryan met me at El Hefe around 11am, my first question to him was how much time he had available for the shoot. I was very pleasantly surprised that he blocked out a full two hours for shooting, and was prepared for a clothing change, he was already my new favorite cover model. We decided to begin with a suit, shoot in both El Hefe then Whiskey Row, change clothes in Whiskey Row, then go backwards through my shot list in casual clothes. It was already 100 degrees by 11am, so needless to say, we'd be working with indoor shots only.

I've had a lot of fun shooting this year, but my shoot with Ryan is definitely going to be high on my list of year's best shoots. We ended up utilizing the full two hours for shooting, but walked away with great images. I posted a few below, I hope you enjoy them...

 

 

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