A Military Family In The District of Columbia

What are two things Duke Ellington, Al Gore and Bill Nye have in common? All were born in the District of Columbia, and all are featured on page 56 in Future American President.

During the process of driving from state to state to make Future American President, I had a lot of time to think about ways to make this project stronger. One idea that came to mind was to include iconic people from each state, so children can learn about other great American's from their state. In the coming days we will release the digital version of Future American President, and each spread includes likes to all of the iconic figures throughout the book, along with links with information on each of our 44 presidents. Children will be able to learn about great people from their state and all the presidents by simply clicking on the link. Everyone from Zendaya and Misty Copeland to John Sheehan, Selena Gomez, Mary Lou Retton, Florence Sabin and many more.

The family featured in the District of Columbia spread, are like many military families in America with one exception; Both mother and father have served in the military and the father is still in active military service. I loved photographing this family and being able to highlight them in the book. I learned a lot from the mother, who taught me a lot about social media and hosted my first Twitter chat ever. 

Stay tuned for the release of the digital version, coming in a few days!

Always Dream Big

Happy Memorial Day

As we celebrate Memorial Day today, I think of all the military families I met throughout the country as I worked on Future American President. I really enjoyed working with the family pictured below in the District of Columbia, but they are currently stationed out of the country. Today I salute all those who have served and currently serving to keep us safe.

To create this image of the family above, I thought first about the location. I wanted an image that showed Washington D.C. in a manner where it wouldn't dominate the shot. I wanted the children in the photograph to stand out and become the hero of the photograph. For that reason I decided to layer the shot. The main subjects are in the foreground, with the parents behind holding the younger child. To emphasis the daughters I used a Profoto strobe light and balanced the strobe to be just slightly over the daylight reading. For example, if the daylight was reading F16 @ 1/125, I adjusted my strobe to read F.16.5. This way the strobe light is just 1/2 stop over the ambient which helps my main subjects stand out, but keeps the parents within a good exposure as well. 

I loved photographing this family and the kids were all great. Watch out for these little girls in the future. One day, one of theem may run the country. 

Always Dream Big