Friday, January 22, 2010

Meet Dr. David Shi...

Meet Dr. David Shi... President of Furman University and co-author of the popular textbook America: A Narrative History. Dr. Shi is retiring this summer after 16 years as President, and plans to write another book that he began taking notes on more than 2 decades ago about loneliness in modern American culture... There are days we could all offer him some notes...

It was a very cold and blistery afternoon, the day I was scheduled to shoot Dr. Shi. I had envisioned something outside on the campus, as it is beautiful, but elected for the boardroom next to his office instead. He was a very generous fellow, however I didn't want to consume much of his time. I planned on two similar setups, one with a long lens down the length of the table, and one with a short lens over the width of the table. Dr. Shi was to stop by twice, for just 2+ minutes each.

I used 3 Canon Speedlites and the ST-E2 wireless adapter: two kickers attached to stripboxes, and one with a reflective white umbrella as the key. I generally never have great luck with the ETTL, so I manually set each strobe. As promised, it only took a couple of minutes, though Dr. Shi was nice enough that I think he would have stuck around all day.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Portraits of Hope - Haiti


If there is one set of memories that I would take to the desert island, it would be from my time spent in Haiti. It was a few years back, and one of the most impactful experiences of my life. This country deserves to be saved... who will do it?

Just encouraging you to help with the post-earthquake operations in Haiti. Here are two worthy North Carolina organizations directly involved in Haiti: Samaritan's Purse and Mission Manna.

See more of my pics from Haiti, visit the Haiti Gallery and Portraits of Hope.

Please visit the House Of Hope blog, and support them also.


Friday, January 15, 2010

Meet Trey Pennington...



Guess which city has the second largest social media club in the world? If I told you it was Grenville, SC, would you believe me? Well, that's the truth! And Greenville has Trey Pennington to thank for it, social media instigator, entrepreneur, writer, father of 6, and a really nice fellow.

I arrived at his office building, very modern - filled with concrete and plexiglass - and began searching for a location. I wandered down to the bottom-most floor which was still under construction, and I immediately saw what I wanted: a mix of old and new... established and soon to be... the cold concrete world juxtaposed with a warm, smiling, "social" face.

One light is all it took... I wanted to match the sunlight coming through the windows, without actually using the sunlight coming through the windows... Control, as they say, is the key... and only God controls the sun. One Canon Speedlite 580, one shoot-thru umbrella, one fancy office chair, one cool dude, and a bunch of chit-chatting...



You can find Trey at treypennington.com, or be one of his 62,000+ tweeters at twitter.com/treypennington. Good luck with his facebook account, he's already maxed out his allowed number of friends!
See the G Magazine article here.