Robert Holt is proud. That’s the first thing that comes to mind describing the Army veteran who owns Southern Draw Cigars. Every interaction I’ve had with Holt leads me to believe: he is proud to be a veteran, proud to be southern and proud that his products are produced by A.J. Fernández.

Robert Holt

This portrait was taken in Addison, Texas using a Canon 5D Mark III and a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens set at 24mm and f/4.5. The shutter speed was 1/100 second at ISO 320. There were two sources of light: car headlights right in front of Holt and video lights held to the right of him by Charlie. The photograph was then converted from RAW and color corrected in Adobe Lightroom before being adjusted for color, contrast and sharpness using custom actions in Photoshop CC.

The bio for this post was written by Charlie Minato, the photograph and photography notes are all produced by Brooks Whittington.

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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.