I’ll be the first to admit some time has passed since I last shot in the mindset of a travel photographer and when I did shoot for travel magazines around the country I certainly did not have an assistant with me.

I’ve shot the North Carolina Travel Guide, Asheville Visitors Guide and Images of Asheville at least three times each. But I haven’t been a staff photographer for the publishing company that produces those magazines in a long time. So when I got the call to shoot travel images for Asheville under my own name, the first thing that came to mind was what can I do now that I wasn’t able to do then? How can I create something different, more interesting, and more creative then the last images I produced for them?

Having an assistant helps.

More after the jump…

When I worked at the Greenville News I became friends with one of the photojournalist. A guy named Ken Osburn who for decades made his living as a commercial photographer shooting automobiles in Detroit and Paris. I remember he would bring in theses sheets of 8x10 negatives (yup. 8 x 10 negatives) and start talking about how he made each one. I could listen to him talk for hours, mainly because I thought it was crazy what all he had to go through just to get one shot. One picture. You have to remember I was shooting digital for a newspaper at the time. Each assignment I went on was 50-100 images with captions. I could hardly fathom the idea of spending a week making one photo. Plus he walks with a 35mm Leica around his neck and shots just as much film as he does digital. That’s the kind of guy you

I’ll be leading a 2-day workshop out of the Light Factory in Charlotte NC on Saturday and Sunday July 16 & 17.

We’re going to spend the weekend learning everything from the very basics of how to get your flash off your camera to walking into any situation, being able to make a compelling portrait and everything in between.

You can get more information and register here.

I've had a few emails come in from people wanting to see the images I created during TEDxGreenville after my presentation. You can view all 125 of them on my FaceBook page. The idea was to have the audience help me create something interesting in the spirirt of TED. I had 5 dry-erase boards out so people were able to come up with their own message before stepping onto the backdrop. I shot during 3 one-hour breaks during the day. The real challenge was trying to