As a passionate photographer and Star Wars fan, it great to see that legendary photographer to the stars, Marco Grob was recently asked by TIME magazine to do a portrait shoot with the cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and it sounds like this Emmy Award winning photographer is also a Uber fan.
“For me, Star Wars is much more than only a film,” Grob says. “Star Wars is hundreds of people who try to push the envelope. People who take enormous risks in creative and in technical aspects. They try to do things we’ve never seen before in a way nobody would have imagined to ever see before. And for me, it’s incredible.”
Grob went into the 2 weeks of shooting across 4 cities in 3 countries without any special knowledge of the new movie’s storyline.
“Sometimes it’s good not to know too much,” Grob told TIME Magazine. “I wanted to have a feel on its own, to kind of do my own thing [instead of] being influenced by anything I would have seen.”
But when it came to Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, the situation was, of course, different. “I grew up with them,” he says. The same goes for R2-D2. “You get almost star-struck when you meet R2-D2. It’s incredible when you see it getting unwrapped. It was certainly one for the books. Something I’ll never forget.”
It sounds like he made a special connection with BB8…“The moment you meet BB-8, you build up some form of weird human connection, It has one eye that has this really cute way of looking at you. It’s just incredible.”
THE BIOGRAPHY OF MARCO GROB
Born in Olten, Switzerland, Marco Grob began his career as a photographer’s assistant in Los Angeles. Upon his return to Switzerland, Marco opened his first studio and worked for twenty years as a still life photographer.
In 2003, Marco decided to change his career path and focus on portrait and people photography. After his move to New York City, he worked with actors Leonardo DiCaprio, George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Colin Firth, Robert Downey Jr., Carey Mulligan, Uma Thurman and Julianne Moore – musicians such as Sir Elton John, Lady Gaga, Sting, Robert Plant, Justin Bieber, Pink, Seal, Lionel Ritchie and numerous political figures including President Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Joe Biden and Dick Cheney along with many other heads of state.
His commercial clients in the film industry include Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, MARVEL, NBC Universal, HBO, and A&E. He was assigned to work on movie posters like the 2012 Marvel / Disney Production “The Avengers” and Disney’s “TRON: Legacy.” His work in advertising includes clients like Rolex, Tag Heuer, BBC, ARD (First German Television) and Louis Vuitton.
Marco’s work appears regularly in magazines like TIME, GQ, Vogue, Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Wired and New York Magazine. In 2011, he was commissioned by TIME to create a series of portraits centered around the tragic events of September 11th, 2001. Titled, “BEYOND 9/11: Portraits of Resilience” this multiple award winning body of work is now part of both the Smithsonian Museum’s and the National 9/11 Memorial’s permanent collections.
His work has won numerous awards over time including an EMMY AWARD for “BEYOND 9/11”, an International ADC Gold, Swiss ADC , South African Loerie Awards, Cannes Awards, New York Festival Awards, POYi (Picture of the year), Kunstpreis des Kantons Solothurn 2011 and the prestigious Hasselblad Master 2007.
Since 2010, Marco has been working passionately and with great dedication for United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) in order to report and educate about the global tragedy caused by 100 million landmines which inflict terror and pain around the world.
Marco lives in New York, but follows his work around the world.
Geek Carl 
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing.