halfwheel

Icons of Cigars™ — Avo Uvezian

On March 22, Avo Uvezian celebrated his 87th birthday. As has become standard, the legendary pianist and his eponymous cigar brand has planned a limited edition birthday cigar and tour, the first of which will take place on March 28, 2013. A little while back he was in town for an event in Dallas as [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Newman Brothers

J.C. Newman is widely-known for its Dominican Republic-centric relationship with the Fuentes, which is based out of Tampa, Fla., but the two brothers photographed below are actually amongst the larger producers in Nicaragua. In 1895, Julius Caeser Newman started his cigar company in Cleveland, Ohio. Sixty years later, the company relocated to Tampa and entered [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Edgar “One Shot One Kill” Hoill

Edgar “One Shot One Kill” Hoill is a Los Angeles-based photographer that broke into the cigar industry in late 2011 through Room101′s Matt Booth. The duo launched the Room101 OSOK, three perfecto-shaped cigars that shipped in the early portions of 2012. Since then Hoill has moved to Christian Eiroa’s new Fabricas Unidas to launch EH Cigars. It’s [...]

Icons of Cigars™ —Jonathan Drew

Our final Icons of Cigars™ portrait from our trip to Cigar Safari in Nicaragua is Jonathan Drew of Drew Estate. As you may or may not recall, we had photographed J.D. before, last year at the IPCPR show, but I was looking for something a bit different out of this trip. It seems to me that [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Willy Herrera

Formally of El Titan de Bronze, Willy Herrera officially joined Drew Estate almost exactly one year ago. He has been working nonstop since that time, blending tobacco into his first release for Drew Estate, which should be ready to be introduced at the IPCPR show next month. Honestly, when Charlie and I were at the Cigar [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Steve Saka

While at the Drew Estate factory for Cigar Safari about three weeks ago, I decided to try and get portraits of all of the major players at Drew Estate for our Icons of Cigars™ project. They will be running for the next three weeks on Monday. First up is Steve Saka, President of Drew Estate. [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Matt Booth

This is the last of the Icons of Cigars™ portraits I was able to shoot at the IPCPR Show in Vegas this year… I was a bit surprised when I met Matt Booth in person for the first time. Considering his “Media Image,” I expected a stuck up ego maniac. What I met instead was a [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Jonathan Drew

Jonathan Drew is a very unique man. A true cigar guy, larger than life, always talking, always laughing, but also extremely knowledgeable about everything related both to the business and tobacco side of things. Although I just recently met him face to face for the first time, I have talked (on email, twitter, text and [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Janny García

When I started this series of portraits, some of the people I most wanted to photograph were the members of the García Family, as (to me), they represent some of the most influential people in the cigar business today. I was able to photograph Pepín with my first portrait, but the other members of the [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — José Blanco

While at the brand new Blue Smoke in Dallas, José Blanco of La Aurora graciously allowed me some time to photograph him for our Icons of Cigars™ Series. He has been photographed before, of course, but I am thinking this portrait was a bit different This was the first time I had met him, and [...]