Possibly the most extraordinary prison in America today is the State Prison at Angola, about an hour from Baton Rouge, LA. Warden Burl Cain (author of Cain’s Redemption) hosted Ruth Graham and friends this past weekend, and I was doing the photo work to document the teaching ministry to the inmates. We walked among, talked to, and had fellowship with with life-sentenced murderers, rapists, and other violent criminals. They were like brothers to everyone on the team.
This was my third visit to Angola, and come away each time very moved by the depth of spiritual understanding and true spiritual freedom that these guys have.
Book cover photography has been an integral part of our work since we first started. With several new covers to our credit lately, here’s a collage of some of our best.
I had a wonderful opportunity recently to partner with the Total Living Network to do the production stills of the taping of a promotional video. The featured spokesperson was Gavin MacLeod, a well-known TV actor, noted probably best for his role as the captain on The Love Boat TV series and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. The new product series is called “Character Classics,” published by the Character Building Company, and written by very well known children’s author Tony Salerno.
To learn more about the above:
The Total Living Network www.tln.com
For more information on Character Classics, please contact Carie Villotti at 630-801-3627 or email her at cvillotti@tln.com
Rick Schroeppel at Abingdon Press gave us another interesting book cover photo opportunity. This new book, “Fourteen Pews and a Casserole” is by Jason Byassee, an executive director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School. We did this photo set up at Gary United Methodist Church in Wheaton, IL, and our thanks go to Dave Brewer, the church business manager, for giving us another chance to do some creative work in their sanctuary. (see links below.)
Every summer, Chicago puts on a spectacular air and water show, and this year, we were privileged to join our friends Don and Kris Lake on their boat to see the event from out on Lake Michigan looking back towards North Avenue Beach. (yes, we were with the Lakes on the lake.) This collage will give you a preview of what we saw, but definitely not what we heard. Some of those thundering jets soared just above us and it’s amazing the sounds they generate. By the way, the photo in the upper right hand area is not a Photoshop trick. That seagull was actually in my view as the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds screamed by. Honest.
We enjoyed a few days away in Ohio to visit family and friends, and spent a hot summer afternoon at Cedar Fair’s Wildwater Kingdom water park in Aurora, OH. This park is one of many in the Cedar Fair Entertainment Company’s nation-wide attractions. You can visit their site at: www.cedarfair.com, and they happen to be a publicly-owned company for you investers. It was fun and refreshing, and visually very interesting. Check out this video:
Outreach, Inc., based in southern California has quickly grown to become the largest provider of outreach products and services in North America. They also publish Outreach Magazine, and we just recently connected with their director of creative services and art director, Tim Downs, and were able to provide a stock photo image for this article:
Over the years, we’ve worked with an excellent graphic designer from the Northwest, John Berge. (Berge Creative Group.) He has just completed the summer newsletter for one of his clients, Kids Alive International. www.kidsalive.org
The photos that John selected are from our photo library from multiple trips to Africa. On our stock photos site, www.whitmerstockphotos.com, we have a specific gallery from Africa, that we call “Africa Today.”
You can reach John Berge at this e-mail address: john@bergecreative.com
We had the privilege this month of working with senior designer Rick Schroeppel at Abingdon Press in Nashville in doing a custom photo shoot for a new book entitled “Listen My Son.” It’s always a pleasure to turn over the digital files from a shoot and our Photoshop work to a creative individual who can really do justice to our work. We are very pleased with the result of this new product. You can see dozens of other book designs by Rick at his site, Elm Tree Design Studio.
We have been fortunate to consider Abingdon Press and the United Methodist Publishing House a part of our client base for over 30 years.
The author of this book is Lee H. Butler, Jr., a professor of theology and psychology at the Chicago Theological Seminary and is well known as an African American pastoral theologian.
Each year, our church hosts a free community 4th of July picnic, offering free hot dogs, snacks and drinks, plus kids’ activities, to anyone who stops by. (The church is located where the parade begins.) To help give a visual overview of this festive occasion, Mary and I did a video slide show, using the background music from our good friend, Huntley Brown. The track is from his CD: “God Bless America” – which we also did the cover photography for. www.huntleybrown.com
