L’Atelier Imports is represented by four individuals—Pete Johnson, Dan Welsh, Sean “Casper” Johnson and K.C. Johnson. If you are thinking three brothers and a guy named Dan—you are wrong, at least blood-wise. Two are related, Pete Johnson and his older brother K.C. Johnson; Sean “Casper” Johnson is not. Welsh and K.C. Johnson are without question the more public face of the brand as the two of them are on the road and in shops much more frequently, it’s at one of those visits we met up with the pair and took this portrait.

K C Johnson

This photograph was taken using a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 50mm  f/1.2 lens at  f/2.5. The shutter speed was 1/60 second at ISO 1600. There were two main sources of light: ambient incandescent light from the backlit windows behind him and two video lights lighting his face and cigar. The photograph was color corrected in Adobe Lightroom and further fixed in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.