MEP

Master Exercise Practitioner.

Kevin Guthrie is one of a hand full (less than 300) of certified Master Exercise Practitioners (MEP) nationwide.  This shot was taken at a recent training session where Kevin was certifying Exercise Evaluators to take part in large scale simulation exercises designed to test the capabilities and readiness of governmental emergency services capabilities (police, fire, medical, etc.) in their response to natural and man made disasters or terrorist events like 9-11.

These exercises, known as Full-Scale Exercises, take an unbelievable amount (months) of preparation, planning and training and huge numbers of people to pull off.  Their value is made apparent when disasters strike like the tornado in Joplin, Missouri.  As it happens, Kevin was providing this training in Springfield, Missouri, about an hour's drive from Joplin.  The Greene County Office of Emergency Management hosted the training, planned before the tornado.  They were heavily involved in the relief efforts in Joplin as were most of the Emergency Management offices in the Kansas/Oklahoma/Missouri/Arkansas border area.

Set up:

• Key:  580 EX speedlight with dome diffuser in a 24x36 softbox, camera left about 3' from the subject.
• Fill:  580 EX speedlight with dome diffuser in a 16x16 softbox, camera right and 7' from the subject.
• Accents:  Gridded, Sigma EF 530 DG Super, camera right and behind subject about 10' away.  Another 530 DG with dome diffuser directly behind the podium, pointed up, about 5' from the wall

Ozark Mountain Hideaway

Couple of quick posts to get this thing kicked off.  Haven't run a blog since I returned from Indonesia, but it's time to get rolling again. 

This shot is of one of my best friends and academy classmates, Steve Ijames, in front of the log cabin built primarily by he, his son and another good friend, Mike Lucas.  I have wanted to take this shot for a couple of years since the cabin was finished and the timing was finally right this Spring. 

Steve had a vision a number of years ago of finding an authentic, turn of the century log cabin, dismantling it and re-assembling it on some property he owns in the Ozark hills of Missouri.  He found his cabin and painstakenly dismantled and labeled each log to aid in getting things back together correctly.  He then transported the logs to his property and unloaded them.  The dismantled logs sat, neatly stacked, for a few years through several starts and stops until his son, Chris, finally decided that it was going to get built if he had to do it himself and started on the foundation.

Once Chris started, Steve got motivated again and that got several of us motivated to help them.  The end result is an authentic log cabin nestled on an overlook of a beautiful river valley in Southwest Missouri. No running water, toilets, or electricity.  A real man cave and absolutely peacefull hideaway.

Shot taken in the late afternoon when the sun was low enough to eliminate the shadows.

Set up: 

• Key: Canon EX 580 with a 1/2 CTO and dome diffuser in a 16 x 16 softbox camera right and about 2 ft from subject.
• Fill: Canon EX 580 with a dome difuser and 7" reflector camera left and slightly behind camera.
• Accents:  One Sigma EF 530 DG Super with a 1/2 CTO and dome diffuser clamped to a porch rafter to light the wall behind a lit lantern.  Another 530 DG is inside with a full cut CTO pointed straight up to light the interior.