In the Spotlight: Joe Vericker, chief photographer at PhotoBureau Inc.

Joe Vericker’s camera has captured images of some of the most influential people of our time – including three popes, a few presidents, many corporate leaders and more than a few movie stars. His work has been published in The New York Times, Time magazine, People magazine and Vanity Fair, among other notable media outlets and he is an inductee in the International Live Events Association Hall of Legends.

But Vericker isn’t just a photographer for the rich and famous. He is prominent within this region for his business headshots and event photography through his Westchester-based corporate photography firm PhotoBureau Inc., and he recently opened an additional office in Stamford to service the needs of Fairfield County’s companies.

Vericker recently spoke with the Westfair Business Journal about his illustrious photography career.

Was photography your original career path?

I went to graduate school for clinical psychology, and then I realized I’m more suitable to be in therapy than to give therapy. So, I did about a year at Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey, and people started to hire me to take photos. What was a hobby became a small business. And it just really grew by word of mouth.

What is it about photography that made you want to go from being a hobbyist to being a professional?

One of the things about being a professional photographer is what Henri Cartier-Bresson mentioned: capturing the decisive moment. And I always loved doing that. It could be a fleeting glance or the moment somebody hits a golf ball – just to be ready for it and to capture that moment.

I also love meeting people. That’s really my forte – being in conversation with people. When you do executive portraits, you get to know them. You have a couple of minutes where you talk about where you live, family, what do you do with the company – and it’s great, because it gives me a window not only into the person who I’m with, but since most of my work is corporate it’s a window into the corporate structure where they work, the way folks interact with each other, and their corporate culture. So, every day is interesting, every day is different for me.

There are a lot of commercial and corporate photographers – how do you get to stand out from the crowd? What makes your photography different from your competition?

I think it’s my personality. When I when I do portraits, I have a knack for connecting with folks. And people say, ‘Oh, that’s because you went to school for psychology.’ That’s really not so – I always seem to connect with people and kind of get on their wavelength.

It’s not every photographer who gets assigned to cover a papal visit, let alone three. How did you snag those prime assignments?

My longtime customer has been the Archdiocese of New York. I started working for them back with Cardinal O’Connor, followed by Cardinal Egan and now Cardinal Dolan. With the most recent visit when Pope Francis came to town, the Archdiocese asked me to cover it. And they said, ‘Okay, we’re going to put you in the back of a police car and wherever the pope goes, you’re going get there five minutes before him.’  I was with the pope every step of the way when he was here in September of 2015.

When I photographed Pope Benedict, I was in the cardinal’s residence and there was a breakfast with the pope and some of the other cardinals and a couple of the bishops. I tried to stay out of sight and went into a hallway – I had just gotten some pictures of the start of the breakfast and then my gut told me, ‘Okay, leave them alone for a while. Don’t be an annoying photographer.’ I went off into this hallway and I sat down, and a couple of minutes later Pope Benedict comes down the hallway. It’s only him and an aide and they walk straight toward me. He looks at me gives me a smile, and in a split second I said I’m not going to let this opportunity pass me by. I got down on my knees, kissed the pope’s ring and I said, ‘Thank you, Holy Father, for coming to visit us.’ He struck me as what you would love to have as a friendly, warm and loving grandfather. He just looked at me smiled, he kind of patted my hand. And then he went into the elevator, up to the third floor of the cardinal’s residence.

With Pope John Paul II, that was a private event in 1995 and he had just finished praying the rosary at St. Patrick’s. I was not there. I was on E. 39th Street in Manhattan – that’s where the Vatican Mission to the United Nations is located. There was a donor who had given lots and lots of money to renovate those offices. And it was through an organization called the Path to Peace Foundation, so they had an event there – the pope came down to 39th Street, and he blessed the new offices. The man is now a saint, but I still get goosebumps when I think about it. And it was just probably the most exciting moments of my life, without question.

What advice would you give to young people who want to pursue a career in photography?

The way I started out was by working for a local newspaper. I was born in Queens and raised in the Bronx, and there was a local newspaper called The Bronx Press Review. I started working for them at $7.50 an assignment. And I had to pay for my own film at the time. But I did it because I got my name under the picture in the newspaper. And then that progressed in the 80s – I was a stringer for the Westchester and Rockland newspapers and it gave me a lot of experience.

But to get back to your original question, I would not recommend anyone starting out to be a photographer as a career. With the advent of technology, everyone’s a photographer. And even if you’re not a good photographer, you can take your iPhone, or your Samsung Galaxy, and even take a bad picture and remove someone out of it, put it in focus, do a million different things. So, the only market for my business is covering big events or important people where an amateur or an iPhone won’t do the job.

But like anything else, if you have that burning in your heart, you do what you have to do. Never say no to anything when you’re starting out, even if you’re not making money doing it. If it will lead to experience in your field, where it will lead to someone hiring you maybe later on, go for it.