DHG Leadership Conference

One of my favorite corporate clients in the world is Dixon Hughes Goodman. The entire organization has an amazing culture, attitude, and authenticity about it. Plus I LOVE their “no jerk” policy. 🙂 So it was a great honor when they contacted me again to photograph this year’s DHG Leadership Conference!

Most of the conference centered around The Mills House, in beautiful downtown Charleston. But activities like historic carriage rides, ghost tours, volunteering at the Lowcountry Food Bank, and the grand gala on The Yorktown, took us to various parts of town. From the many keynote speakers and motivational leaders, to the team-building excercises, to the amazing food and fellowship, to the community outreach activities, to the awards presentations, to the fabulous banquet…it was one of the most amazing conferences to be a part of!
Here are just a few favorites of the zillions of photos from this fantastic 3-day event…

Double Your Pleasure

I used to love those Wrigley’s commercials…”Double your pleasure with double-mint gum”.  J 

At my workshops, one of the questions I get a lot is “how do you get enough power out of those little flashes for big groups”?  Well, I double (or even triple) them up.  I have a couple home-modified umbrella brackets that can hold 1, 2, or 3 flashes.  Basically, a flash like an SB-800 puts out around 50 watt-seconds of power.  So if you need more power, putting two together gives you 100ws, putting three together gives you 150.  Another reason for ganging flashes together is so that you can use a lower power setting on each, thus increasing your recycle time AND extending how long you can go before replacing batteries.

This is my 3rd year photographing the ESPN Charleston Classic.  The event is kicked off with a huge Welcome Dinner on the hanger deck of The Yorktown, a decommissioned aircraft carrier.  At the event, I have to photograph a group shot of each team.  The first year, I brought my big AlienBee studio strobes.  Well guess what I didn’t think of…wall outlets are EXTREMELY rare and hard to find on an aircraft carrier!  The last two years, I’ve made life so much easier by using my wireless lighting system; no hunting for outlets…no McGyvering several extension chords together…no taping down cables. 

I simply set up my light stands with two flashes in each, firing into a shoot-through umbrella for soft, even illumination.  Each flash is set to around ¼ power and triggered via a RadioPopper.  I’m using my D3 at iso 640, f5.6 for plenty depth of field, and 1/30 of a second for ambient light in the background.  If you’re still using studio lights on location, I recommend doubling up your flashes.  You’ll love the freedom of going wireless!

ESPN Charleston Classic

Earlier this month I had the honor of being ESPN’s official photographer of the Charleston Classic. This is the second year of this college basketball tournament. And it’s my second year photographing it!

Here are a few shots from the Welcome Banquet aboard the USS Yorktown…

Team coaches with ESPN Commentators Jay Williams and Justin Kutcher.

Jay Williams delivers the Keynote Address.

Special guest Rachel Edwards, a cancer survivor at MUSC, poses with Coach Darrin Horn of the University of South Carolina.

Each team got their photo on the deck of the historic USS Yorktown.

High Dynamic Range Photography

High Dynamic Range (or HDR) photography has fascinated me for some time. So I finally decided to take a crack at it. It involves photographing a series of bracketed exposures of the same image, then merging them together.


I used a popular HDR program called Photomatix. Here are a couple of my first attempts from last week. Any thoughts or suggestions on what I could do different?!?