Meet Donald Holmes, an incredible man!

This week marks our 4 year anniversary here in Nashville. We moved here two days after the devastating flood 05/05/10. What a terrible thing to see as I moved into our beautiful city, but as the posters said, we are back!

I've been blessed to make many new friends here in town, one of those men is Henry Hamman from Sewanee. A few years ago he asked me if I would be interested in being a substitute photographer for the college there. You see, they already had a GREAT photographer, in fact he works for a little magazine called National Geographic! Yep, he is the real deal for sure.

Now I'd like you to meet a brand new friend, Mr. Donald Holmes. To say this was the most enjoyable session I've photographed in a while would be an understatement. I enjoyed everything about the short time we spent together, and I feel like I made a friend in that time. He came in wearing this hat, and I loved the way it set off his suit and provided a final touch to his outfit.

What I need to explain is that typically I wouldn't have selected a black velvet background, but this is the spec for the college and their "Wall of Fame" where his official portrait will be displayed. I sure am glad that's what they like, because I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have ended up with this beautiful image. Technically there were some challenges, but these were all solved by simply adding a light at a time and metering them with my Sekonic 478 meter. This image is out of the camera, no exposure adjustment at all. A little skin retouch is all that's been done. There is just no substitute for incredible lights and an accurate, calibrated meter!

Tech Specs: Fuji X-E2 camera with Fuji 55-200 lens, Elinchrom lights, Rotalux soft box and Interfit Strip bank with LightTools fabric grids. Sekonic 478 meter and my Manfrotto 055 tripod with Really Right Stuff ball head.