CHARLES JOHNSTON, LIGHTING & PHOTOGRAPHY TRAINER
Charles conducts on-site lighting and photography seminars. The sensitivity of today digital cameras brings exciting new options to shooters these days. Charles seminars show time-crunched photographers how to get the most out their gear.
Most Promotion Directors in broadcast TV start out as producers or working in news, but Charles started out producing commercials. Actually, before that, he started out as a photographer (still photography) after graduating from the Photography program at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Not the standard track in TV. From there he worked with MetroVision in Chicago producing commercials. Lots of them. From there, he left the cold to work in Phoenix, Arizona as a Photographer/Editor (video), in the Promo Dept. at KTSP, the CBS affiliate (now KSAZ, a Fox station. Go figure). Being a writer too, he caught the attention of the competition and became a Writer/Producer at KPNX across town (where he first worked with Graeme Newell!). Later, he returned to KTSP as Senior Producer and produced the station call-letter change campaign to KSAZ (The Spirit of Arizona). Last time he was in town, they were still using the footage from the film campaign he produced back in That campaign won him a Silver Promax award. After Phoenix, Charles moved to in Washington DC as Manager, Marketing & Promotion at WRC, the NBC O&O there. There he produced (and shot much of the film for) the well-known Working 4 You campaign. After DC, NBC moved him to NBC13 (WVTM), as Promotion Director to the station they'd bought in Birmingham, AL. There he developed, shot and produced their We've Got You Covered image campaign, which is still their tagline today.
Next, Charles became Director of Creative Services for WTKR [CBS] in Norfolk, VA. One of his favorite projects there was producing the Welcome Home, Rudy celebration on the Navy Base in Norfolk, to welcome home the star of the first Survivor series (and well-known Navy Seal), Rudy Boesh. Charles arrange to have Rudy make a grand entrance by flying over a crowd of about 15,000 in the Virginia Beach police helicopter. That was quite day.
Today, Charles owns Burning Hand (Ltd.), his production company in Atlanta, GA, but his favorite gig is teaching news photographers in his hands-on seminar on Location Lighting that he calls CameraPalooza.
Charles was born in Hendersonville, NC and was high school pals with Graeme Newell. Who would have thought that they both wind up working in TV 27 years ago in Flat Rock, NC Charles now lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia where he fantasizes that film star Kate Beckinsale wants to have children with him. That, and the thing about Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes. No one ever said he doesn have a healthy imagination.
Contact Charles Johnston