Canton fire chief Ernie Russell

I ended up spending most of my day in Canton, Ill. working on two assignments. A basketball tournament in the evening (posted below) and a portrait of the local fire chief earlier in the afternoon. Ernie Russell is the interim fire chief in Canton, but he was previously a fire chief in Peoria and the Illinois state fire marshal. I was trying to say “firefighter” with these photos even though Russell wasn’t dressed in a fire suit. To do this, I gelled a Nikon SB-800 red and placed it a couple feet behind him pointed downwards to create a sea of red under his feet. I lit him with a second SB-800 fired through an umbrella at 1/4th power. It was a fun shoot, and afterward Russell insisted that I stick around the firehouse to watch the end of the Auburn-Alabama football game. Russell is a really nice guy, and his personality is reflected pretty well in the second photo below.