A Baltimore Sun photographer who started a blog and changed the photography business

According to veteran photographer David Hobby, the old guard in the professional photography world is too paranoid. “There’s a lot of information-hoarding, and [a sense that] if I teach this person how to do this, he’ll become my competition.” Hobby’s gone the other way and educates aspiring shutterbugs with his free Lighting 101 course and blog posts at Strobist. He offers cheap solutions and lessons on how to get good lighting from portables flashes, cereal boxes, and ball bungees. He believes lighting is about “what you do with it, not what you spend on it.” It’s working too: He sold $1 million in tickets on a recent tour, hundreds of thousands read his posts each month, and manufacturers have even named lines of equipment after him. [thx JK]