Superman

Optical Illusions & Ice Cream Cones

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For Part Two of my story featuring Anthony “Superman” Scaramucci, Bloomberg Markets magazine had me head back up to SkyBridge Capital to photograph Managing Partner Ray Nolte and Senior Portfolio Manager and Managing Director Troy Gayeski. Since I had already shot their boss shadow boxing in his office surrounded by cartoon characters, I kinda had to think of something equally offbeat for their portrait, but the rest of the SkyBridge office was decidedly not offbeat. It was, quite frankly…pretty utilitarian…office cubicles and a rather small trading area. But as Kaz and I were walking the halls we passed a tiny little kitchen area that caught my eye…

Now, I’ve been shooting guys in their offices my entire professional life, but this was the first box of ice cream cones I’ve ever come across. And even though the space was barely big enough to swing a cat, ice cream cones in a financial office had to be a sign to stop and take a photograph! So we did…

…and when Troy…who is actually at least an inch taller than Ray…jumped off the counter and stood next to him, we pulled off this almost Funhouse Mirror-style image…

Even though they were standing next to each other, the combination of the super wide-angle lens I was using and Troy leaning back slightly on the counter made him look freakishly small! But it certainly makes you stop and look.

Next, we decided to shoot them in the Sea of Cubicles that made up the trading area, but add a little bit of surreality by dropping a white seamless behind them…

…and the final image…

Anthony Scaramucci is Superman!!!

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Even with the highly charged, Occupy Wall Street attitude that is gripping the country, you hafta look at Anthony Scaramucci as a pretty interesting guy. Besides being the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, an asset management fund with about $8 billion in the bank, at 47 he’s already written his autobiography…‘Goodbye, Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul’…had a cameo in Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps’, volunteers on the board of The Lymphoma Foundation and The Brain Tumor Foundation, is a rabid Mets fan who also hangs out with New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan, got nicknamed “Gucci Scaramucci” by former President George W. Bush, and he has enough jam to draw investment superstars like Steven Cohen, Leon Cooperman and Kenneth Griffin and political heavies like Colin Powell and Gordon Brown, to the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, his annual symposium for hedge-fund managers and investors. But when I was sent to photograph him for Bloomberg Markets magazine, the one thing that jumped out at me was his unabashed love for all things Superman! Every wall and surface in his office has Superman memorabilia…posters, painting, games, sculptures…it was like I got sent to a 12 year-old kid’s room, and not the office of a Master of the Universe. But I quickly understood how this street-smart Harvard Law School graduate who wants “…to be the Peter Lynch of the hedge-fund industry!” held the Good vs. Evil metaphors that are at the center of every Superman cartoon close to heart, so we ran with it…

For once, Bo was the perfect height to act as a stand-in…

Our Barrel-Chested Financial Man of Steel…

…and the completed opening spread, with new creative director Siung Tjia’s Superman cape graphic that wraps the headline…