Before he moved to California to become a photographer, August Bradley had what he calls “the coolest job I can think of in corporate America,” brainstorming on long-term concepts for major clothing brands.

Yet he was bored out of his mind. So Mr. Bradley, who went to Harvard Business School but grew up tinkering with lighting in his mother’s high-end portraiture studio in Ohio, moved to California and took up photography.

On a recent visit to New York, Mr. Bradley — who is based in Los Angeles and focuses on commercial work — switched gears yet again, embarking on a project that might surprise some of his business school buddies. He spent a day at Zuccotti Park pursuing his project “99 Faces of Occupy Wall Street.”

The photos he’d seen of the Occupy movements focused on the environment and the signs. Mr. Bradley wanted, instead, to look into the protesters’ eyes, seeking the personalities behind the leaderless movement. “I think that’s really exiting to me,” he said of the journalistic shift. “It’s something I haven’t done much of, though I did bring a very studio sensibility.”

On Oct. 31, he went to the park with two assistants, a medium-format digital Hasselblad and a portable lighting setup. He wanted to capture the faces, no frills. The park was too crowded for a formal backdrop, but the situation was better suited to roaming. “We had to move from person to person,” he said. “They weren’t moving. They were camped out in their spots.”

August Bradley

Most people took part, though one group — police officers — were “not willing,” Mr. Bradley said. “I thought it would be nice to have some of them in there. They were part of it. Their presence was very apparent.”

He asked all his subjects to say why they were at the park. He didn’t want to advocate, but sought to give them a platform. He was drawn to the diversity of his subjects: both vibrant characters and next-door-neighbor types. “It is sort of a universal question of, ‘Can’t we do better than this?’ ”

One subject didn’t have much to say: a dog who had been camping in the park for about three weeks with his owners, who had been there since the beginning.

And yes, he was one of the 99.

“He was part of the occupation,” Mr. Bradley said. “It seems fair to me.”