(FORTUNE Magazine) – I FIRST CAME to know Louis Psihoyos--the extraordinarily talented photographer who shot the picture of Michael Jordan for our cover--on a bone-cold, rainy day in December 1988, just before Christmas. We were lunching together at a very bad Chinese restaurant in Rogers, Arkansas, lamenting a mutual low point in our careers. For days we had been stalking Sam Walton, trying to persuade him to pose for a cover photo in FORTUNE. Sam, who had never posed for any magazine, would have none of it; he was hunting quail.

Eventually, the rain drove Sam in from the fields, and, feeling sorry for us, he granted us a ten-minute photo session. The world's most prepared photographer already had set up a veritable studio in the Wal-Mart computer room, and in the allotted time was able to produce the best portrait of Sam ever taken.

Since then I've been in awe of Louis's work. Last year we secured rights to the lion's share of his services, and he has presented us with irresistible covers: Michael Eisner, J.R. Simplot, Andy Grove, Roberto Goizueta, and Jack Welch.

Reared in Dubuque, Iowa, Louis became fascinated early on with the idea that you could actually be paid to take pictures. He began learning the craft on his high school paper and continued at the University of Missouri, where he was named college photographer of the year. He is a student of paintings, particularly the Dutch masters, and in my estimation is a master not only of lighting and composition but of executive psychology as well.

"I like to provide a relaxed, fun atmosphere for the shoots," he says. "I want people looking their best." And, boy, do they ever. He enjoys working for FORTUNE, he says, because "I love getting into the minds of the big guys. I get to learn what it takes to become great; I can catalogue what works and doesn't work."

Come to think of it, that's a lot of what we hope you, the reader, are getting from our pages as well--along with the chance, of course, to enjoy Louis's photos.