How executive portrait photographers master the five-minute photo-op.

Digital technology is accelerating the means of delivering images to eyeballs, but the world’s hunger for news about people, and fresh portraits of them, will never be satisfied. So says Seattle-based photographer David Perry, who specializes in what he calls location people scenarios for annual reports and magazines.

"We have become image junkies as a society, " says Perry. As a result, he see...