Elizabeth Holmes' most famous photo started with a simple request from a photographer

As lensman Ethan Pines drove to the Theranos offices in Silicon Valley, all he could think concerning was how to create his fire alongside its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, remain out.

It was 2014, and the hype about Holmes' health innovation company, which boasted it could run hundreds of medicinal and diagnostic tests using lone a few drops of blood, had hit its zenith. The 30-year-old Holmes was on the verge of becoming the youngest self-made female billionaire alongside a net value of $4.5 billion.

Pines had photographed CEOs before, and he was racking his brain for ways to create the visuals for Holmes' Forbes shield story memorable.

He never could have predicted that his attempt of Holmes would rotate into the sign of the now-disgraced CEO's meteoric increase and spectacular fall, not to citation imitated on TV series, put on billboards, and discussed in a famous documentary.

Twelve years later, Pines' photo of Holmes has re-entered the zeitgeist gratitude to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's hit documentary, "You Can See Everything," which chronicles the existence of Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, in the final weeks before Holmes reports to jail for defrauding investors.

Pines' celebrated attempt is brought up multiple times in the doc. At one point, during having her build scanned to create an AI hologram, Holmes breaks down, recalling how her depiction has rotate into a sign of duplicity in the press.

This isn't the archetypal period Pines' photo of Holmes has gone viral. The attempt was used on the poster for Alex Gibney's 2019 documentary on Holmes, "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley." The attempt is additionally re-created in the 2022 Hulu miniseries "The Dropout," which stars Amanda Seyfried as Holmes. But Pines stated "You Can See Everything" has brought an equal larger motion notice to his work.

"I posted on my Instagram the complete fire in a flipbook motion piece, and it has a myriad views," Pines said. "My posts don't get anyplace near that."

The making of an iconic shot

When Pines arrived on set that day in 2014, he knew he wanted to obtain photographs that functioned as the two a picture of a young originator and a showcase of her invention.

"In my mind, I pictured a tight attempt alongside her holding item up," Pines told Business Insider.

Halfway through the shoot, he asked Holmes' squad if there was a suitable entity they could use. They obliged alongside a small vial of lifeblood (well, counterfeit blood; the genuine stuff, he was told, was in a temperature-controlled lab downward the hall).

Once Holmes held the vial up to her face, everything clicked into place.

"Sometimes whenever you're shooting, you're thinking to yourself, 'This is a gift,'" Pines recalled. "With her big eyes and that intimate, engaging expression, I felt we had something."

Unlike the representative photoshoot alongside a CEO, anywhere Pines would lone get about 10 to 20 minutes to photo his topic before they rushed off to act to another matters, Holmes was generous alongside her time.

Over a brace hours, Pines stated he took a total of 220 shots — 52 of her holding the lifeblood vial — in three distinct setups. What stood out to him the most was Holmes' persona. She was relaxed and downward to earth, chatting it up alongside Pines and his assistant. She'd done her own tress and composition for the shoot.

Pines recognized a akin uncomplicated charisma on display in "You Can See Everything."

"I cannot say if she's being genuine in this movie or putting on a forefront to Nathan Fielder, but it reminded me of my experience," he said. "I felt she was really approachable; she's humble, makes a lot of eye contact, and doesn't arrive throughout as cocky or uptight. Oblivious to everything going on about her." 

With the doc a hit at the box office, Pines doesn't think the Holmes hype volition die downward anytime soon. He's continually seeing reminders of his iconic photo.

"I was at a Halloween carnival for my daughter's school, and there were at smallest two group dressed as Elizabeth Holmes alongside the small lifeblood vial," he said. "The entire item is a trip." 

"You Can See Everything" is in theaters now.