{"id":2192,"date":"2016-06-16T07:57:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-16T07:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2017-08-01T11:06:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T11:06:52","slug":"hows-your-luck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/?p=2192","title":{"rendered":"How&#8217;s Your Luck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Politicians get a bad rap, African politicians get an even worse one (usually with good reason). Last week I was commissioned to photograph former Nigerian President, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Goodluck_Jonathan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Goodluck Jonathan<\/a> for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/europe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-2185\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BBG_goodluck_060616-19small-400x600.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BBG_goodluck_060616-19small-280x420.jpg 280w, http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BBG_goodluck_060616-19small-768x1152.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BBG_goodluck_060616-19small-400x600.jpg 400w, http:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/BBG_goodluck_060616-19small.jpg 880w\" alt=\"Goodluck Johnathan, Nigerian President\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">As politicians go, he\u2019s a bit of a celebrity. Firstly he\u2019s got the coolest name on the block and secondly his trademark <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nairaland.com\/1933098\/why-president-jonathan-overly-obsessed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">fedora hat<\/a> makes him instantly recognisable. Goodluck became famed for being the first ever Nigerian President to concede defeat in a general election; yes, he\u2019s famous for accepting failure in a democratic vote!!<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I was due to photograph him after a scheduled television interview at 8am\u2026sharp. He eventually arrived at 11am with his sizeable entourage and wasn\u2019t fazed a bit, holding a heated conversation on the set at Bloomberg\u2019s London offices.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I knew I wouldn\u2019t have long to shoot, as I was repeatedly reminded by his people. None the less, I was determined to get something special out of my allowed 10 seconds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I got busy and set up a load of lights in what has now become one of my go-to portrait techniques. When you are worried about them walking straight off it never hurts to have the look of an expensive shoot. Generally I find politicians like to be made a fuss of so having lots of shiny toys out helps make them feel a bit more important. I\u2019d love to tell you whitty remarks where exchanged between Mr Jonathan and myself but the whole 10 seconds was conducted under the silent scrutiny of his looming entourage.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Our star\u2019s sense of timekeeping quickly kicked back in and the shoot was over, his hat disappeared into his throng of advisors \u2013 leaving me to check the back of my camera, hoping for the best.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Image \u00a9 <a href=\"https:\/\/mediasource.bloomberg.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bloomberg News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Politicians get a bad rap, African politicians get an even worse one (usually with good reason). Last week I was commissioned to photograph former Nigerian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2232,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions\/2232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonalden.com\/site\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}