For three years he worked in emergency medicine at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, focusing on the management of traumatic shock.
Soon after Seeff arrived in New York City, his photographs of the people he encountered on the streets of Manhattan were discovered by the famed graphic designer Bob Cato.
As the former Vice President of Creative Services at Columbia Records, Cato was renowned for his album cover design which had won two Grammy Awards.
Cato became an important mentor to Seeff and gave him his first major photographic assignment producing images for the Band's Stage Fright album.
Seeff's iconic image of the group was re-produced as a poster inserted under the album's shrink wrap, which when unfolded, became a hugely popular collectors' item.
His early work also includes images of Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol as well as other New York City personalities.
At the end of 1971 and on the recommendation of Cato, Seeff relocated to Los Angeles to become creative director of United Artists Records.
His innovative approach to collaborative art-direction resulted in multiple Grammy Award nominations for graphic design.
In his evolution as a photographer of public personalities, Seeff realized that to accomplish the vitality and authenticity he was looking for in his images required a paradigm shift in his interaction with artists and innovators.
Creating the session as both a nurturing and challenging environment for a co-creative relationship with artists, it evolved as a laboratory for the exploration of the fundamental dynamics of creativity from the "inside" out.
Responding to the emotional authenticity and depth of the creative communication between himself and artists, Seeff brought a film crew into a session for the first time in 1975, beginning with Ike and Tina Turner.
For Seeff, the session became the art-form itself, transforming into a multi-disciplinary process of photography, filmmaking and creative communication.
He has interacted with creators and innovators including Ray Charles, the Carpenters, Joni Mitchell, Guthrie Thomas, Kiss, Steve Jobs, Steve Martin, John Huston, Martin Scorsese, Billy Wilder, Bob Fosse, will.i.am, Tina Turner, Alicia Keys and Francis Crick.
In 1990, Seeff applied the spontaneous and co-creative approach he had developed during his photo sessions to working with actors in television commercials.
During the 1990s, he became an acclaimed, award-winning director of hundreds of national commercials for major brands including Apple, Levi's, Glaxo, Nissan, Toyota, General Motors and Motorola.
Seeff returned to photography and the documentation of his sessions in 1999 in order to produce a documentary exploration of the artist's journey for the opening of Paul Allen's Experience Music Project and sessions with the stars of Paramount Television and Caltech's many Nobel Science Laureates.
It was the latter assignment that led to Seeff being invited to work with the NASA space explorers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and to the production of his documentary film Triumph of the Dream.
In the film, Seeff uses the [[:|Seven Stage Dynamic of the Creative Process]] he developed in his photo sessions as the underlying narrative structure.
Seeff views himself as a conduit for the voices of the hundreds of creative and innovative individuals working at the higher reaches of human potential he has interacted with over many decades.
He is now preparing this multi-media and multi-disciplinary content for global release via multiple interactive digital platforms.
Seeff lives in Los Angeles with his wife Sue Kiel and works out of his studio in Burbank.
However, Cato loved Seeff's image so much it became the major design feature of the album as a poster insert.
The poster rapidly became a collector's item and helped launch Seeff's career as one of rock n roll's leading photographers and album cover designers.
Prior to his death, Seeff's photos of Zappa and his daughter Moon were also featured in a 1989 LIFE magazine article.
Boomtown Rats 1979 : Featuring Bob Geldof was shot for a LIFE magazine article on new music.
Sir Francis Crick 1982 : Seeff photographed the Nobel Prize winner, the discover of the double helix, both at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and at his home.
These are iconic images of the young Steve Jobs in the early days of Apple's success and one was chosen by Walter Isaacson for the cover of his biography that was released in October 2011.
Soon after Jobs' death, Seeff's shots also ran on the covers of Rolling Stone as well as TIME magazine[7](different photos).
Ray Charles 1985 : The classic image was used by Concord Records on the album Genius Loves Company.
Jim Henson 1986 : Shot for a series on American film directors including an image which became a US Postal Service stamp.