Photographing the Mayor in the River

A few weeks ago I had an assignment to photograph the mayor of Beaufort, SC, Billy Keyserling, for a local magazine article. After talking with the mayor we realized that we both wanted to do something a little different for some of the images. My photographic guideline from the magazine, was to photograph him in casual clothes in his home, and with Billy wearing a suit with a prominent Beaufort background. Here is one of the resulting images, used as the cover of the publication. Billy Keyserling in the Beaufort River, with downtown Beaufort and the marina in the background. I think that we accomplished our goals with this picture.

This location is one of his favorite places, “The Sandbar” in the Beaufort River, which is a popular place for boaters and swimmers to hang out during our warm weather, and it gives a great view of downtown Beaufort. Billy was a great sport in suggesting this spot for photographs and arranging or water transportation out and back. My assistant Charlotte, Billy, Rick the boat owner and I headed out to “The Sandbar” on a beautiful November afternoon. Below are some behind the scenes pictures and then more of the photographs that are from the article and some that did not make it into the magazine. The first image below shoes Charlotte and Rick in the boat as we were loading up for our little expedition.

My great assistant Charlotte on the boat ride out. She is the one who took the behind the scenes pictures.

Here are some of the other photographs that we made during our two different shoots. These images below were taken at his beautiful home in Beaufort that is full of artwork made by local artists. A few of the photos of Billy in the river also show Beaufort’s iconic Woods Memorial Bridge in the background. We all had a fun afternoon and I feel we made some great images.

I also teach photography and people often ask me technical info about my photographs. So here is some of it. I used a Canon 5D Mark 3 camera and most of the outdoor images were made with a Canon 70-200 mm 2.8 L lens and a few with the Caon24-70 mm 2,8 L lens. As a fill light on the sandbar/water images I used an Alien Bee Einstein light with a beauty dish powered by a Vegabond Mini battery/inverter. The indoor images were made using the same camera and the Canon 24-70 mm lens. Feel free to ask me any more questions about this or any of my other images.