Robert Ector is a fashion photographer for celebrity clients including Mary J. Blige, Steve Harvey, Serena Williams, Nicki Minaj, Mariah Carey, and others. He travels to exotic locations to capture the glitz and glam of these famous and fashionable globetrotters, taking photos that would be difficult to replicate.
“When I work with entertainers, I always focus on the details,” said Ector. “You have to get those details and that will make your branding and your product stand out.”
Ector shoots photos in RAW format at 45 megapixels per capture for optimal quality. Sometimes the images are enlarged to billboard size or splashed across the side of a building. When working on a celebrity photo shoot, there are no re-do’s. Trusting a reliable storage solution is paramount to his success. The celebrities know this as well.
“You should see an artist like Mariah Carey or Mary J. Blige when they have their photos and music on here” (he shows a flash storage card) “they protect it and guard it with their lives,” he said. “It’s just really so enchanting how important memory and data are.”
A family tradition
Ector, who has three sisters and a brother, grew up as the designated photographer in his family. He often went to the local drug store to buy disposable cameras. His mother bought him his first digital camera one Christmas and they didn’t know why it wasn’t working.
“I realized I had to buy a memory card and that was my first experience with SanDisk,” said Ector. “It really changed my life and it’s been with me every step of my career.”
His mother was not only his inspiration but among his first subjects. Ector began photographing her as a fitness influencer when she embarked on her fitness journey at 40 years old. Ellen Ector is now 71 and speaks globally on health and fitness. She appears on talk shows often about ‘super aging’.
He got into celebrity photography in 2005 when Jay Z’s newly signed Roc-A-Fella Records artist Teirra Mari saw his work and brought it to the record label, who then recruited him for Mari’s promotional photography. This led to other gigs, and coverage of the “America’s Next Top Model” television show.
“During the height of ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ every photographer watched it. Every aspiring model watched it,” Ector said. “I really feel like ‘America’s Next Top Model’ was the introduction to what the world knows today as the creator and influencer.”
He continued to work with the show’s models, doing their promotional work and magazine photos. He also worked on branding and photography with popular shows like Bravos’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and VH1’s “Lala’s Full Court Press” during the show’s peak.
One day he got a call to do Steve Harvey’s book cover. His wife, Marjorie Harvey, was so impressed with Ector’s work because he was able to capture Harvey at his best in only two hours as opposed to previous all-day shoots from other photographers.
She then tasked Ector with the branding and art direction for her new fashion site and the entire family. Over the following years, Ector would travel the world with the Harvey Family documenting fashion shows and launching the modeling career of his daughter, Lori Harvey. This augmented Ector’s career from celebrity to fashion photography.
He later opened a photography studio in Atlanta with his sister, who is a wardrobe designer. In November 2022, the city of Atlanta honored Ector with official legislation recognizing November 5th as Robert Ector Day for his contribution to the city of Atlanta (nicknamed the “Hollywood of the South”) through the field of Photography & Video.
“I’ve always been into art and drawing and dance, all of which just transferred into me mixing it with a camera,” said Ector. “I always say taking the best photos is like slow dancing. You never stop. You’ve got to keep moving and know your angles, but it’s all intertwined in photography.”
Lights, camera, shoot!
Ector brings a main camera, a backup camera, and several lenses to his shoots. He also brings multiple flash drives and a 1TB hard drive. An average photo shoot requires 1-2TB of storage.
A typical celebrity photo shoot might include 15 to 20 people. Ector has his team, and the celebrity has their’s. As the photo shoot progresses, one of the best things, according to Ector, is having available, fast storage for quick review during a shoot. If a subject’s hair is out of place or a production manager doesn’t like a pose, everyone can look at the monitors and suggest changes in real time.
The teams take a copy of the images with them to critique. Flash drives are a conduit to how they communicate, making notes or numbering which images they want retouched.
“You always want to make sure you’re leaving that drive with people you trust because even though it’s so small, it’d be a disaster to lose it,” said Ector. “So much goes into a photo shoot it’s almost crazy to think that it can be held in that.”
He’s had a long relationship with SanDisk and Western Digital for storing and saving his valuable images. He always keeps five to ten SanDisk Extreme Pro Portable 1 TB SSDs with him, then gives them to his clients after a shoot so they can go home and review the shots.
“I’ve worked with many brands over the years, and I can tell you SanDisk has proven to be reliable and trustworthy, and that’s my go-to,” he said.
After the shoot his process includes saving and backing up the photos and creating a gallery for his clients to choose from. Once they select their favorite photos, he goes into a retouching process which he dubs making them “magazine-ready”. There could be 3,000 images depending on the subject. And with social media, clients want turnaround times to be extremely fast.
“I’ve literally been driven in a car while retouching photos because my client prefers her pictures be released before she hits the red carpet,” Ector said.
Ector’s enthusiasm for photography is contagious. He cites an article that said 300 sixth graders were interviewed and almost 80% say they want to be creatives or influencers.
“From the beginning of life, and even before that—when a woman is pregnant—capturing those memories is so huge,” said Ector. “I feel like this is something that’s never going to go away with artificial intelligence.”
He predicts that photography will change in that the average person will have more access to technology leaps, even to the level of professional photographers.
“It’s been made easy to take an amazing shot,” he said. “You don’t have to know about shutter speeds nowadays, and that’s a beautiful thing because photography should grow and be all around the world. I always tell people: ‘I believe everyone should own a camera’.”
On creating what’s next
Ector understands the importance of photography in branding and how one can change the perception of things with a picture. He says the secret to his success is the connection between the subject and the photographer.
“I like to create what’s next by truly showing up as myself, by truly trying to find several reasons and several ways to make my subject feel so comfortable, so vulnerable to where they let go of everything and truly let their inner soul shine through,” said Ector. “Because if you think about it, even your favorite photo, it’s mainly how you felt at that moment. Not your hair or that you were 10 pounds lighter, but you can tell if my smile was genuine, if my eyes had that sparkle, and I was sitting next to a family member who I really loved. A great, amazing, long-lasting, iconic photo comes from within.”
He’s also very detail-oriented, which is displayed in his photos, his company name (Robert Ector Details), and his new book aptly titled “DETAILS | Robert Ector-City Streets are the REAL Runways.”
The new coffee table book weighs 15 pounds and holds 650 pages of his work with the world’s most fashionable people. He spent four years working on it, globetrotting with celebrities, and covering the four major runway shows.
“When I did my book there were times when I had nothing but my (SanDisk) card,” he said. “I would be in New York, Paris, London, and Milan and I would head out with my camera and make magic, you know?”
The book’s subtitle is “City Streets Are The REAL Runways” because, as Ector points out, runway shows are usually only 10 minutes long. The real party is outside of the show, seeing what people are wearing, what trends are going to be next, and creating his own show with pictures.
His photos and the book focus on the intricate details of fashion.
“So when you see this diamond-embellished Swarovski Crystal Christian Louboutin shoe, it’s not 15 feet away just on a model’s foot, it’s right here in your face,” he said as he flips to a close-up in his book.
When working on the book, he’d send his data drives over to the printer’s shop and manage approvals remotely, making sure the images were the right format, retouched, and saved correctly.
Ector’s success is in the details.
Check out his book “DETAILS | Robert Ector-City Streets are the REAL Runways.” for a deeper glimpse into his work as a fashion and celebrity photographer.
Artwork by Rachel Garcera
