THE SHOOTER
It’s 1970, a 12 year old boy picks up the family Kodak and starts pointing it at anything. Or is it everything – hard to tell – but after a quick twelve exposure cassette, he runs to the corner drug store for processing.
Every photographer knows the pleasure from frequent shutter clicks, at age12 or 50, doesn’t matter. It’s addictive.
Meandering through cities and stretches in related professions, Bruce DeBoer, now fully grown, moved – the first of five times – from his college town Rochester, NY to Boston. Eight product shooting years later, Hallmark Cards successfully recruited Bruce to manage their behemoth studio with a 2.5 million dollar budget and 23 talented shooters. Dry? Perhaps. But ask Bruce about his most transitory career experience and you’d hear, “I supervised 23 talented photographers who taught me beauty’s influence and that there are at least 23 ways to find it. My skills where honed in Rochester and Boston but my vision began there in Kansas City.”
A call from his second year college roommate jumped his shooting career to Raleigh, NC working with Jim Erickson. “That’s where my shooting career really started. I shot in the studio while Jim traveled. We finally collaborated on a Harley Davidson catalog just prior to Jim’s move to San Francisco.” At which point, Bruce opened Stone Soup Productions with those on Jim’s staff who preferred to stay east.
Perhaps a Y2K glitch or the lure of something shiny, in 2000 Bruce sold all shares of Stone Soup Productions for a Chicago U-Stor-It garage full of studio gear. For a few years at least, that’s where it stayed as Bruce temporarily morphed into an account services Mad Man. “If Hallmark was my big transition, a small Chicago Ad Agency was my continuing education. I learned market strategy from the agency side”.
Once the small Chicago agency got even smaller, Bruce moved back to Raleigh where he Joined Synthesis Creative – an Internet design partnership – as their Director of Marketing. However, within another couple years, Bruce reconnected with Jim Erickson on a few trips through the US, Europe and Asia where in 2005 Bruce was overheard saying: “This digital stuff is really, f’ing cool, I’ve got to get back to this shooting thing.” Twenty five years after his first move to Boston as DeBoer, Inc. there is DeBoer Works LLC in Raleigh, NC.
Bruce’s name has appears on numerous national and regional Addy Awards, One Show Awards, a NY Festivals Gold, a B&W Spider Award, and as a National Kelly Award Finalist. He’s been published in Communication Arts, Graphis Design and Photo Annuals, Print Regional Design Annuals, AIGA Design Annuals, Creativity, Ad Age, Ad week and featured in Graphis Magazine issue 312. In 2002 Bruce was selected to work on the America 24/7 project and has been a guest lecturer at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at UNC Chapel Hill.
Over the years Bruce has shot with some of the most talented art directors and clients among them: Certified Angus Beef, Harley Davidson, Healthy Choice, Anheuser-Busch, Conde Naste, Duke Medicine, Cliffs Communities, Mandarin Oriental Resorts, Shell Motor Club, Amoco, Couples Resorts – Jamaica, MGM Studio 54 – Las Vegas, and Giro Sport Designs.