If I had a dime for every billionaire I've photographed...

The October issue of Forbes with Ronald Perelman and his father on the cover....it's was for the Forbes 400 rich list.shot on location at Ron's office on the upper east side. So cool to shoot a father and son that obviously love each other. I was a bit nervous, as was everyone on set, before they arrived...but when they walked in, Ron and his pops really put everyone at ease because they are so close. It was like shooting a father son comedic act..they were going at it the whole shoot. A real highlight shoot this fall...Its always a bit surreal to photograph people that are worth BILLIONS...literally these guys can and do buy anything that they want. We shot this in late summer early fall, and Ron was talking during the shoot how he had to catch a flight to Venice italy later that afternoon. I was talking to his publicist about it later, and it's nowhere near the same experience that you and I have. He was taking his chauffered black escalade to the airport, where he would not wait in any lines, but walk up the steps to his jet, where his pilots had done all the fueling, planning etc. and his assistants had the trip planned and scheduled once he arrived...then they would take off in the early evening, he would have dinner on board with his family, maybe read or watch tv, then go to bed in his stateroom in the back in his king size bed. He would then wake when they landed, and go look at art (he was going to the biennale) for the day...then he was getting on his gigantic yacht, again all prepared and ready to go with his crew, for a sail around the mediterranean...We shot this on a thursday, so he was leaving that thursday afternoon, and he was going to be back in nyc the following wednesday! Only 6 days! When you roll like that, and the stress of travel and cost are taken out of the equation, I guess it is easy to do super cool extravagant stuff like that for a few days at a time. For the next 6 days my assistant johnny and I during the course of that weeks work would sometimes just look at each other and say "I wonder what Ron is doing today".....