Mike Powell

Like most photographers, I feel more comfortable when I am behind the camera, but last Thursday I found myself on stage in front of five hundred other photographers with the lens pointed in my direction.

I was at the Washington D.C. Convention Center with my dear friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer for a daylong seminar on lighting using flash, taught by Joe McNally, an internationally-known photographer and a great motivational instructor.

During one class segment, Joe pulled me out of the crowd to serve as the model for a mini-shoot. I was more than a little shocked when he pointed in my direction and asked me to come forward. I was a little self-conscious about the fact that I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, but at least I didn’t have to worry about how my hair looked.

While I was up on the stage, Cindy decided that she needed to capture the moment and initially took some shots with her iPhone. She was unsatisfied with the results, but didn’t have her camera with her.  Suddenly she remembered that my camera was in my camera bag underneath my chair. Although she is a dedicated Nikon shooter, she grabbed my Canon and got these shots of both the setup and the resulting images from one of the large video projections screens.

In an interesting side note, this is actually the second time that I have been photographed by Joe McNally. In March 2012, when Photoshop World was held in Washington D.C., I was observing one of Joe’s lighting demonstrations at a vendor’s booth. He had just demonstrated beauty lighting with a very photogenic couple and said he needed a subject to demonstrate character lighting—and pointed to me.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.