Attention paddlers and wanna-be paddlers!!!! Visit your local pro-shop and pick up the latest issue of Rapid Magazine! The good folks up there in the nether-regions of North America have always treated me well.
In this latest issue you'll see a kayaking pic a took in Mexico of my friend Ben Kvanli. Ben is an Olympic lunatic who must paddle every day, lest his brain explode. This photograph was made at the Cascada de Tamul. Where the Rio Gallinas and the Rio Santa Maria rivers meet to form the Rio Tampaon, you will find the Cascada de Tamul... a behemoth. Ben, in his infinite wisdom, figured it would be a good idea to try to paddle as close as he could to the falls.... Now Ben is a strong dude... he paddled in the 1996 Olympics when they were in Atlanta (though the kayaking events were held on the Ocoee River in Tennessee), and like I said, it is very rare that Ben goes a day without paddling. Thank heavens he wasn't strong enough to actually make it to the falls... I don't think anyone would be. The air current alone from the downdraft of the thousands of cubic feet of water pouring over that cliff was thankfully enough of a barrier to hinder his self-destructive attempt.... because I guarantee if he made it all the way he would have been pummeled to death by the ferocity of those waters.... boooooo... no one likes it when a friend is pummeled to death.
Anyway... at least the attempt made for a decent photograph. :)
Meet George Hincapie... George has raced in the Tour de France 15 times! He is one of only 2 riders to have raced on 8 winning teams. George currently races on Team BMC and rocks his own line of clothing, Hincapie Sportswear. George is a total badass, and a completely nice guy.
I have had the good fortune to shoot for the good folks at Bicycling Magazine a few times now. When their photo editor, Stacey Emenecker, first called, I hadn't done any real riding in at least 10 years. I found my bike, immediately scraped off the rust, and dropped it off at the shop for a tuneup. They had to replace all the wires, but before you know it my $400 bike was ready to shred (my chicken-legs would be another issue all-together). The first story I shot was just a one page expose of Asheville... they printed only a few pictures, but man had I gone all out! Since then Bicycling has assigned me to shoot various rides and trails in the area, of which I rode and photographed happily. But the kicker came late last year when they asked me to shoot portraits of George Hincapie...
Of one of the upsides to this down economy is the fact that magazines are less willing to fly folks places, and more will willing to look for local photography talent. I'd bet that 5 years ago Bicycling probably would have flown someone in or driven someone up from Atlanta for this shoot, instead of even considering a local shooter.... Thankfully, they asked me, and I was thrilled.
What started out as a mostly fashion shoot morphed into something very conceptually cool: Street George and Racing George... Street George is a bit more relaxed... he rides a top-of-the-line commuter bike and wears casual clothes... he smiles a lot... he is on your level and approachable (notice height of camera - at mid level). Racing George is tougher... he is competitive and fierce... he rides a top-of-the-line racing bike and wears sleek racing clothes... he gazes intently and stands above you, heroic (notice height of the camera - low as can be). Side by side, they are quite the dichotomy... notice even the cross of their arms...
The coolest thing of all: Bicycling printed both as covers!!! Yup, two versions of the same magazine... same on the inside, but different on the outside. So not only did I get my first national cover, but I got it doubled! I was quite thrilled and honored. I can't wait for another Bicycling shoot.
Getting ready to launch a new website.... so if you are in need of a documentary, editorial, commercial, or portrait photographer in or around Asheville, North Carolina or Greenville, South Carolina, visit me!
How is it lit? In a selfish effort to completely whore myself and my blog, I am giving away a free print (up to 12x18) to the person who diagrams most accurately the setup from the photograph above. It is the most intricate lighting setup of all the portraits featured in this layout, and I wanna see who guesses it... and it ain't all that hard. Please include, if you've got the voodoo, the under/over readings for each light as well!
Please submit your conjectures in the comments field... email an actual diagram if you so dare! I'll send a 100% coupon to whomever is closest... you can choose any picture you want off my site.
And since I've been neglecting this blog for so damn long now, I bet that I get very few responses, so your odds are quite good!
You've got all this week... pass it around.
BTW, that photograph is of stage producer, new cafe/bar/performance-house owner, and all-around neat fellow Chall Gray. Go and see him, have a beer or coffee, and enjoy show at The Magnetic Field in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC.
Thank you all for playing!
Hmmmmm.... who is closest...???
Camera setting: ISO 400 1/60 @ f4.
Lamp is ambient as-is (but it is not lighting the room.) What everyone missed is a speedlight @ -2 popped into the ceiling to light the room. If I had used the lamp to light the room it would have blown out and created a very warm-tomed room.
Key is a squished up silver umbrella to direct the light at subjects upper body / to keep it from spilling into the whole scene.
Subject fill is a RING LIGHT @ -2
Outside light is an Alien Bee with reflector and lots of blue gel. @ +-0
And so, EVERYONE WINS! Email me with your image choice (anything from my website) and I will send you a 100% coupon with a link. Sorry, but you will still have to pay shipping... there is no way around that.
We will do this again someday soon... I'll try and find a harder one.
I never really post just the spreads, but I think I will this time around, because this is one of my all-time favorites. The super talented folks at WNC Magazine whipped this one up. Huge props to Denise Szakaly who just got promoted to Art Director... Yay Denise! As a photographer I've seen my images butchered in a bad spread, and I've seen them flourish in a good one... here you see them thrive.
I was hired to shoot 8 remarkably stylish folks from their fields... theatre, art, architecture, interior design, personal fashion... and I had a lot of fun doing it. I think this is my favorite type of project right now, the location portrait. Sometimes I get to scout, sometimes not, but I always have to show up and figure it all out. It's the greatest form of a puzzle... all the pieces laid out before me, and I get to choose how they go together.
Greetings to all! Yes, I know that it has once again been forever and ever since I've posted on this thing called the blog... sometimes I just want to take pictures and forget everything else... I'll try to get better at that.
This is October's issue of Our State Magazine. My first cover for them. Mike Crowe Jr is the Cherokee on the front... an awesome guy, Mike portrays legendary Cherokee warrior Junaluska at Unto These Hills, a spectacular nightly historical performance in Cherokee that I can't recommend highly enough. They allowed me total behind-the-scenes access to the show and I was blown away by the amount of production that goes into it... it was incredible.
Shooting this story for Our State was a somewhat humbling and awakening experience... I'll write more about it, and include some awesome outtakes, in the coming days. In the mean time, I'd say go and see Unto These Hills, but the show ended last month... set aside a few days for 2011 to visit Cherokee, it's worth it.
Meet Wesley Corn... a fellow photographer. I've never photographed a photographer AS a photographer... I've used photographer friends for models, photographer friends for stand-ins, etc... but I've never been asked to shoot a portrait of a photographer and represent his or her craft. I'm not sure if I was nervous or excited about this shoot, maybe both. Thank heavens Wes is a cool dude... relaxed, patient and just into it. I must say, shooting artists is usually quite pleasurable. They know the deal... they know what goes into creating something... they know not to expect something totally rushed, totally smooth, or totally without trial and error.... and for that, I thank them all.
I showed up at Wes's place, his grandfather's old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, not knowing what the hell I was going to do. Wes was selected for the On The Verge show based on images he had created of himself in front of an American flag, so without completely ripping him off, I wanted to incorporate that somehow... for the simply reason that I wanted the portrait to look good, and not out-of-place, when published alongside Wes's work in the magazine spread. Other than that, I was completely winging it.
I toured his place, brainstorming ideas... I eventually settled on the inside of his grandfather's workshop... it was dusty, filled with wood scraps, wasps and saw blades, and had an awesome set of windows. The plan was to use the indirect light streaming in from outside to backlight the flag hanging in the window... throw a couple of kickers, a beauty-dish and a ring-flash on Wes, and presto! Well we hung the flag and went outside to gather more equipment and (this is what makes the fluid creative environment fun) after taking one look at the flag hanging in the window from the outside, I knew that we had stumbled across something even better!
I still wanted the flag illuminated from behind, so I set up a 1200 ws Whitelightning inside the shed aimed at the flag. I took the other lights outside, substituted an umbrella with a speedlite for the beauty-dish, and started loving what I saw. Now the question... what the hell to do with Wes? How do I show him as a photographer? There was no way in hell I was going to have him hold a camera... there is nothing a hate more than the awful portraits of photographers holding cameras. How many of those have you seen on photographer's "about me" web pages or in the contributors sections of magazine? Maybe you are one of them? Shame on you!!! Well, I started out trying an equally lame idea: I had him hold up an empty frame in front of his head. Ouch! And then we dug up an old self-portrait headshot that he'd taken... There was one Wes uses for online dating that he wouldn't even let me see, and then there was this awesome goofy one. Just so happens that the color of shirt in the headshot very closely matched the one he was wearing, so I was happy and knew it would work. I had him hold it in a few different ways, yada yada yada, and there you have it. Oh... and that is a remote trigger in his hand controlling an off-set camera that was recording stills of the whole thing... no, not as lame as holding an actual camera. (you'll see a few of those pics at the end of the behind-the-camera video... my G9 battery died before I wrapped up the shoot, so Wes sent me a gif animation... thanks Wes!)
BTW... rather than speed up the whole shoot to 1 minute in length like I do the rest, I left this one long (2 minutes) because I like the song so much. It's The D Bag Rag by The Avett Brothers.
Meet Dustin Spagnola... the second artist I shot for WNC Magazine's On The Verge contest. Dustin uses images of famous folks he finds via Google, blows them up really really big, and incorporates them into his oversized, super fantastic paintings. As a photographer that idea bothered me: using someone else's images without credit or compensation... so I knew going in that I would ask Dustin about it (though I have used uncredited music in some of my behind-the-camera timelapses). I wasn't there two minutes when Dustin preempted my protest and, unlike millionare "appropriation artists" Shepard Fairey and Richard Prince, offered unsolicited admission to stealing the pics from Google. I applauded him for that, the admission, but I am still a bit apprehensive about the execution. True, images are forever being borrowed by "Art," reworked and repurposed, but where would the newfound masterpieces be without the original masterpieces themselves? I guess I wonder what's wrong with a little credit where due... For much more brilliant conversations on appropriation art, click here and here... google more and inform yourself... come to your own conclusion.
Dustin's portrait and video are among my favorites of the whole series. Just like the rest of these portraits and videos, it was a one-man, one-camera production. We shot at two locations... his old studio for the portrait, and his new one a few weeks later for the video.
Sometimes, when I walk into a location for the first time, I don't have to do much studying to find what I like... other times I do. After seeing the plastic Dustin had hung in his tiny studio to trap in the warmth during wintertime, I could think of nothing else for the backdrop. To simplify the background I'd drop the plastic as low as I could get it. The window would make a nice frame for his head. The rest of the space would be filled with Dustin's work. I gave him the task of setting up the scene as I set up the lights. Dustin's got a great smirk... just add a cigarette and a rim light and the picture takes itself.
I aimed to create a mini narrative with each video... two hours of shooting, 30 minutes of recorded conversation, then a night or so worth of editing. It was all on the fly, and all a ton of fun. I asked each artist to come up with the soundtrack themselves... I wanted to incorporate what they listen to while they work, and since I didn't want anything with lyrics I had to dig up a few karaoke versions... for Dustin I used a Fugazi song that he loves.
Meet Severn Eaton.... He's a cool cat: a father, a husband, a ginger-ale brewmaster, and an artist. Severn's paintings are right up my alley: they have meaning. In one of my favorites black helicopters emerge from a wasps nest... and in another a soldier walks among a field of poppies.
I shot Severn as the first in a series of western North Carolina's top emerging artists for WNC Magazine. I gave myself a challenge: all images were to be taken in the studio of the artist, wether that be a basement, a bedroom, or a warehouse... nowhere else... no scouting, no building sets, no assistants... just show up alone and keep it real. The plan was to spend about an afternoon with each artist shooting a lit portrait and a bonus: SLR video footage that I'd edit down into a 2 minute mini-documentary.
I've attached the behind-the-camera-timelapse of the lit-portait, but this one is a bit vague... see if you can figure it all out... feel free to comment.
And here is the 2 minute doc... It's been years and years since I've shot any video... as I post these in the coming days and weeks you may notice that the videos get better as time and practice assert their valuable toll.
PS... didn't mean to be absent from the blog for so long... this was a big project and a lot of things fell by the wayside... on that note, I'm sorry, Katie, mi amor.
Meet Wayne "Wayner" Dickert... Olympic paddler and all around awesome fellow. I shot Wayne over the winter for the Canoe & Kayak Beginners Guide magazine (on newsstands now). We had one of the toughest winters on record out here in North Carolina, and when C&K asked me to shoot Wayne I don't think they had snow and ice in mind... but snow and ice is what they got. I figured, if you got it, flaunt it... so I showed up early and scouted the most brutal location I could find.
Wayne is the head instructor at the Nantahala Outdoor Center... which according to National Geographic Adventure is "one of the best outfitters on the earth." Though they paddle many rivers in the south-east, the NOC is built upon the Nantahala River, so I limited my scouting there. There is a section called The Cascades, class V paddling with awesome waterfalls... that was my initial idea, but the access was way too treacherous due to ice ice everywhere... I'd hate to kill my subject (almost happened once... more on that another day). I tooled around in my truck with my dog looking for the perfect spot, and then I found it, down a long snow-covered dirt road. Tucked back in a little cove with decent access was this cascade... the mist coming off the waterfall affected by weeks of freezing temperature had created a frozen white winter wonderland... everything was covered in snow and ice.
I went and picked up Wayne and we bushwhacked our way through the forest. I selected the exact spot, tied a few branches back out of the way, and set up one light. Using just one light is not typical for me (unlike the immensely talented Zack Arias), but I didn't have much of a choice this time around. Despite my sometimes ridiculous devotion to building the perfect shot, I wasn't about to ford an icy river all by myself to set up kickers on the opposite shore... I was just going to make it work. I used a beauty dish on a White Lightning connected to my own battery powered rig (12 volt lawnmower battery and an inverter - cheaper and with more power than a Vagabond). I underexposed the ambient by about 1 stop, dragging the shutter to blur the water, and popped a bit of light onto Wayne with a 1/2 sun gel to even further cool the background color temperature and allow Wayne's warm flesh tone to stand out against the blue environment. A few minutes and a few frozen fingers later... (sorry, no behind-the-camera timelapse on this one... but I've got a ton of good ones coming up in the future)
One of the things I love about this job, location portraiture, is the challenge... seems cliche, I know, but that's one of those things about cliches: they are often true. I get to shoot a lot of "everyday people"... not rockstars or movie actresses, but folks like Russell Stall who run Greenville Forward... Folks with an office, a cluttered desk, an assistant, and something a little different about what they do so as to warrant their portrait being made.
The challenge for me is showing up and making something out of nothing. In essence, I don't have an empty canvas, I've got one already cluttered... In the case of Russell, one filled with filing cabinets, computer printers, papers, desks, books, and a pretty nifty poster of Einstein on the wall. I enjoy the fact that I've got to take all these elements, sculpt them into something framable, then add light and paint something intriguing. It ain't always easy, but it is usually fun.
I chose an exposure dark enough to overpower the ambient light: 1/200 @ f/4.5, ISO 100. I used a white reflective umbrella as key and placed two Speedstrips as kickers (yes, build demo coming soon... probably the next post). I started with a ringlight as my fill, but I had to give it up because I needed to use that Speedlite with a snoot to illuminate the painting, so I used specular reflective fill under the camera instead.
(I start the timelapse after I've already cleaned up the place).
I'm currently working on a series of portraits (still and motion) of emerging artists... They won't be published for another month or so, but they are going to make for a neat set of posts... lots of behind-the-camera-timelapses and some portfolio worthy shots. Fun stuff.... stay tuned... and check back for the Speedstrip build demo coming soon.
Patrick Cavan Brown :: Editorial and Commercial Photographer :: Asheville, North Carolina
Kym is the Executive Vice President of the Downtown Greenville Development Initiative, ThriveDowntown.com. Their basic goal is to lure businesses into the downtown area... They've got a neat website, check it out.
One of the frustrating things about shooting for regional magazines is the lack of budget. If I need an assistant I've got to call in a favor or borrow a summer intern, so I am almost always by myself. Usually that works out fine... I shlep all my own gear, stand in for my own setups, brainstorm everything myself... it can be very satisfying... though to be sure, sometimes very frustrating. An example is the video below... you'll see me running around like a crazy-man, moving lights here and there during the shoot, when I could have just said "please" and "thankyou" to some poor unpaid intern. But all is good... I love it. I only have to buy lunch for myself.
BUT, one of the most wonderful things about shooting for regional magazines is the fantastic folks who hire you... you get to know them as friends, rather then just as voices on the other end of the phone or computer... you share a beer, a dinner, a birthday party... you hike in the woods, paddle on the rivers, play with their dogs... I'll take that over an assistant any day of the week.
Kym needed to be shot downtown, as that's her gig. It was another cold winter day, breezy but no rain or snow. I'd picked out a nice spot in front of the newspaper next to a hotdog stand... I thought that would work well to show "downtown", but the hotdog man got bored and left before our scheduled shoot time. My backup plan was the clock, so backup it was.
I underexposed the background by about a stop and used an umbrella with a Speedlite as my key: ETTL +1 stop to compensate for the white coat (your camera's meter will see that coat and try to underexpose it, seeking middle-grey). For some minor edge definition I set up two Speedlites as kickers, low power. Mother Nature handled the wind-machine and styled her hair with flare. I sat in the street and got low with the camera to emphasize Kym's "power" and to deemphasize the street. I took my shots between passing cars and pedestrians and dodged a few cars myself. If I hadn't been using my tripod as a sand-bag, and if I'd had enough ND to slow the shutter without losing my shallow depth of field, I may have gone for blurry pedestrians and cars instead of empty streets. I could have composited a scene in PS, but I wanted everything in-camera. The shoot lasted about 4 minutes (I had another shoot scheduled for a short time later), and Kym was a natural... never take for granted the fortune of having someone who knows what they are doing.
Meet Peter Waskiewicz of Sow True Seed. A couple of years ago he starting a small seed company in Asheville that is now exploding... they specialize in open-polinated, heirloom, and organic seeds. We dug tilled the garden this weekend (my back hurts) and plan on filling it with Sow True's seeds very soon... I'll include pics when I update this post, so check back if you are interested.
I was tasked with shooting Peter, the founder, on a rainy and blisteringly cold January day. I tracked down one of his vendors, Reems Creek Nursery, because I needed to hide the winter and highlight "growth," what Peter and Sow True is all about. The nurseries weren't quite in full swing yet, too early in the year, but I the good folks at Reems Creek had one table of young plants that I could utilize. I got low with my camera, right over the plants, to emphasize them in the foreground. I cleaned up the background by moving all the other plants to the floor. I used a couple of bare Speedlights as kickers, and one with an umbrella as key. I underexposed the ambient by about a stop, to both help the subject "pop" and to reduce the influence of the strange color created by the natural light filtering through the plastic ceiling. We tried a few different poses and positions, and I liked the one with Peter holding a flat of new plants the best.
Is there any other information that you would like to see covered in these posts? Leave a comment and let me know...
Heading up to Mount Mitchell, NC for a few days... shooting a picture story on the lives of the Park Rangers who live on the highest peak east of the Mississippi during the winter.... over 4 feet of fresh snow... should be fun!
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.
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...
Just found an interesting website, ISSUU.com, that lets you upload and "publish" a PDF... I embedded it in my website HERE and am now doing so on my blog too. This is the most recent update to my printed portfolio, the one I mail to folks I want to work for. I've got some cool shoots coming up in the coming weeks, included the former governor of SC, so this sucker will be updated regularly... but here it is for now. What do you think?
The holidays are upon us... in reality today is Tuesday, but in life the workweek is just about over... time for family begins. And so in that spirit I want to introduce you to 3 spectacular families; these are couples who, once they began having children, gave up their normal office dayjobs to turn their homes into workplaces that allowed them to actually be home. While shooting these 3 families I was consistently impressed by the togetherness that they exhibited... they each gave me grand inspiration for my own future. Read the stories at WNC Magazine here.
Meet the Scales (above), Cate and Ben and their kiddos. Cate is an interior designer, and Ben is an attorney and a fantastic musician. They both work from home so that they may be close to their children, and close to each other... The benefits of such a lifestyle are powerful, and let me tell you, the Scales prove it. They treated me to an impromptu bluegrass concert in their living room and they are all quite talented. The picket fence doesn't make it "perfect", they do... perfect.
Meet the Hammonds (above), Mary Ellen, Jim and their son Sidney. Together (yes, Sidney too) they run Milestone Press. They've got terrible jobs! They hike and bike all around the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains then write and publish guidebooks. A fantastic family with a fantastic home life. They raise chickens, harvest honey, and have created a perfectly wonderful and envious existence for themselves. Kudos!
Meet Lupe Perez and Monroe Moore (above). As a costume designer for Mars Hill College, Lupe took paternity leave after the adoption of each of his 3 children, but he soon realized that wasn't their perfect solution. Raising kids is in his blood, so in 2007 he began a new career at home as a tailor. A super fantastic and wonderful family, they also have bee hives and one of the best tomato gardens around. The kids were my personal photo assistants, and I've never seen folks laugh so much... Awesome.
Meet Tom Davis... Tom is the brewmaster of Thomas Creek Brewery in Greenville, SC. Let me tell you, it's good beer.
I shot Tom for G Magazine, along with a few other artisans whom I'll highlight in the coming days... Tom got the best time lapse, so he goes first.
I don't like going into portrait sessions blind, without having scouted the locations beforehand, but that is happening more and more regularly... sadly, it's mostly a result of the economy, having to maximize my time by cramming more into less... and that is what happened here. It all works out, I just stress about it a little more. One of the primary reasons I've been loving this whole editorial lit-portrait thing is it's challenge: the process of starting out with only an idea, a box full of toys, and my two eyes, and inventing an image from scratch. I love the method of brainstorming and executing an original idea with story as intent... that is what makes location portraiture fun for me.
Patrick Cavan Brown :: Commercial and Editorial Photographer :: Asheville NC, Greenville SC
Who would a' thunk it... Me shooting fashion? Well it happened... and it was a whole lot of fun and didn't turn out half bad.
The shoot was for G Magazine... The editor, Jack Bacot, came to me with the idea of combining fashion and art... in the sense that we'd actually stage the shoot in an art museum. The initial plan was to use the galleries of Bob Jones University... they claim their museum to be "recognized as the finest collection of religious art in America." It is in fact amazing. When asked, they said no... for obvious reasons.
The Greenville County Museum of Art, on the other hand, was willing to assist and absolutely amazing to work with. Mary McCarthy, the media relations director, and her fellow employees were more than helpful. There were some really neat works of art which provided fantastic accompaniment and contrast.
I had some awesome folks backing me up... Mary Ann Sudnick and Taryn Scher styled the whole thing... They were crucial in the selection and pairing of the clothing to the art pieces. Karen West came in from Charlotte for the hair and makeup. These images are as much theirs as they are mine.
Matt Tierney, Paul Mehaffey, Sally Morris, and Jay Vaughn were also more than crucial to the entire project... a big thanks to everyone. You can see the rest of the images and the story here at G's Website.
She is a young lady, early twenties, and has already made a bigger dent in 3rd world malnourishment than most of us will with a lifetime of participation in "...only 30 cents a day..." charities. Angel Cruz spends her days in El Salvador teaching folks how to develop successful community farms.
It was a rainy day, the day we were slated to shoot her portrait. I met Angel at a coffee shop in Burnsville, NC. I had scouted a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm called FireFly Farm; Angel knew the owners and they were gracious enough to allow us to shoot there. I wandered around the grounds looking for an awesome (dry?) place to shoot... what I found was not dry (look closely and you can see the raindrops!). The saving grace of shooting battery-powered small portable strobes (Canon Speedlites), is that they fit inside of ziplock bags. I wrapped my camera in my raincoat, sacrificed my warm dry clothing, asked Angel to stand patiently in the rain, and with 2 kickers and 1 umbrella I had my shot.
Please visit Angel's blog and show your support to a damn cool chica.
Who would a' thunk it... Me shooting 
The shoot was for 
The 
Matt Tierney, Paul Mehaffey, Sally Morris, and Jay Vaughn were also more than crucial to the entire project... a big thanks to everyone. You can see the rest of the images and the story here at 
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