Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing everyone a Happy and Thankful Thanksgiving. Now is the time
not to worry about the things you don't have, but to be very Happy for
the things you do have. Try hard enough and I am sure you will come up
with something. Being alive is one of them.

Legion Photo is up and running

So it has been a while since I put regular blog entires and I do apologize for that. But I now have a lot of catching up to do as I announce the release of my new photo agency, Legion Photo. This is a creative collaboration of 8 other amazing photographers from my military family. Each with a unique talent they all have very diverse styles, but combined we make up the top military background photographers around. Our mission will be to cater and target to a high end editorial and commercial client with photo and video needs in the aerial, machinery, military and special security and service genre.

Take a few moments and check out the site. I am sure you will be incredibly impressed.

Legion Photo is
Stacy Pearsall, Jeremy Lock, Andy Dunaway, Shane McCoy, Lance Cheung, Brien Aho, Johnny Bivera, Tom Sperduto and Aaron Ansarov.

2009 Black Team video

If you don't know about the Eddie Adams Black team then you really haven't lived. Each year a collection of the top passionate people in the industry get together to create the Black Team at Eddie Adams Workshop. Sure the workshop is greta and all, but being on the Black Team is probably the most important life altering experiences on can have.

Anyway, one of the many many things that black team members do (other than mowing lawns, setting up chairs, driving VIPs from NY and other things) is a Black Team video.

Here is 2009's video which was accomplished even with the heavy economy hit. Simply amazing!!! Great job guys.

Living magazines are coming. Get over it! Love it!

If I ever here one more old (ph)ogie tell me that video convergence is a fad, I will just cry.

Watch this now!

Living Magazine Cover & Spread - Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Firemen rescue a cat. News at 11

So there was Anna, sitting on the corner of a street with all the gear, waiting for me to park the car. Then she hears it, meow meow meow. So she starts looking around and what do you know, right down a storm drain was this little baby kitten sitting on a ledge a few feet from the grate high above a ten foot cavern below.

So here I come walking slowly not to break a sweat before shooting another VIP when I see Anna waiving her hands and crying to me, "the cat, the cat." So I asked her. Did you shoot it? With an obvious look on my face like it was so obvious that why I should even ask the question. "No!!! Go get help!" She says.

SO I went to a bank nearby and asked if they could call the non-emergency number and within minutes this huge fire truck was on scene. Then I told Anna, "Here they are. Now shoot it!"

It took only a few seconds before the courageous firefighters lifted the steel grate and swept in to grab the cat. One of the ladies in the bank told me that if no one wanted it she would take it.

There you go. We saved the kitties day. And did a nice street portrait of the fire crew as a thank you. Now back to work as we photographed the owner of the Sun Sentinel newspaper. Oh, did I mention that the building next to us was the Sun Sentinel newspaper. Damn I should have brought the images to them.

Watch the video here.

an Iguana found me

This is just one more example of a fact to me that there is a divineintervention in my life. Recently I got the call again from a majorpublication that is interested in possibly a feature about my backyardproject. I won't mention the name (ng), but will say it will be a very cool part of my life.

Only problem for me though was I hadn't photographed a backyard creature in a while. It just seemed to dry up. I do feel like I send out radio waves that attract these things. How else can I explain that this giant 6 foot long Iguana appear out of no where. He showed up this morning right next to the porch. We had one apple in the house and a bag of carrots we were going to throw away. Anna cut them into pieces and we started tossing them to him. Because these guys can be very rough if threatened I chose to try not to catch him, but let him come into the house on his own. After about a few minutes of coaxing him to our open door, he just walked right on in. I was a little unprepared for this (mostly because I wasn't thinking he would come in), but I set up my Elinchrom Ranger RX battery kit with two S heads. One with a soft box and another with a grid reflector for some backlight. Because I didn't think I would have much time with him, I didn't even set up stands and just rested the lights on the floor or a nearby chair. As a backdrop, I used two pieces of giant 4x8 black foam core, cut to fold in half. He had no problem walking onto it and posing for me. As long as there was some carrots to occupy him.

Actually it was pretty freaky how good he was. Almost as if he was
modeling for me. Watch the video Anna shot of the event here.

What to learn from this? Take advantage of every opportunity God gives
you. No matter how trivial it may be. Don't get lazy. Just create.
This has to be one of the coolest shoots from this project yet.

Of course I could have done without the Iguana leaving a human sized
poop on my foam core, but I can't complain.

Socialnomics

Saw this on Ian Summers' blog and had to post it. It is very real and exciting. Just think about our parents and them saying, "If I only knew to invest in this or that company way back when..." Well, here we are on the edge of a shift and seeing the ones that are succeeding. What are you waiting for?