By your side, a trusted partner
When you hear the word “sidekick,” what comes to mind?
For many people, the very word conjures an image of a trusted and unfailing associate. A person, by your side, who does what needs to be done (and does it well). Someone who never lets you down.
That’s the idea behind Digital Sidekicks, the post-production photography company officially incorporated in 2008 by Kelbi McCumber and Sam Morris, two veteran digital production professionals. Digital Sidekicks helps photographers, designers and creative firms take images from the raw file to the finished state, filing any gaps in processing, retouching and compositing.
Whether you take the photos or work with them, your time, energy and creativity is best directed to the finished product. Let a Sidekick do the heavy lifting in processing, retouching and compositing. Contact us to learn more >
Sidekick: Kelbi McCumber
There are left-brained people. There are right-brained people. And there are the (less common) highly balanced whole-brained people like Kelbi McCumber.
The creative Kelbi is a fine art photographer and commercial photographer who fuses composition and light into beauty.
The organized Kelbi is an architect of systems, in which she creates structure, manages processes, attends to details, and gets things done.
This blend of artistry and administration uniquely prepares Kelbi to serve photographers, designers and creative firms in untold combinations of ways. It’s a blend that was perfected while Kelbi served as a studio manager for local professional photographers and videographers. In these roles, she worked every angle of photo life – conceptualizing shoots, bidding jobs, finding talent and on-set assistance, scouting locations, running down props, wrangling people and animals, negotiating contracts, prepping cameras & equipment, client relations, workflow solutions and attending to infinite other details that make or break a studio.
Kelbi grew up floating around on boats out in the Gulf of Mexico, always "framing the scene". In 1996, when she planted herself in Atlanta from Florida, she also planted the seeds for a promising career. That year, Kelbi enrolled in the Art Institute of Atlanta, from which she would later gratuate with honors in commercial photography. She also held a job at E-6 Lab, worked as photographer’s studio manager & assistant for many local pros and pursued her own professional photography, proving (not for the first time) that multi-tasking was in her skill set.
The ensuing years brought a gallery of other stints and assignments, all of which enabled Kelbi to experience the many facets of photography.
Example: She tackled photojournalism for the Marietta Daily Journal, chronicling and capturing community events, town hall meetings and the occasional giant squash. Another example: She worked in every possible position at E6 Lab, serving an elite clientele of professional photographers. The years at E6 were about more than processing film, troubleshooting orders, invoicing clients and taking care of the business. They earned Kelbi the trust and gratitude of the city’s best.
When she launched Digital Sidekicks with her husband, Sam, Kelbi took her talents to a new level. She runs the company, equally applying her visual acumen and business savvy for one purpose: being a sidekick to help photographers and creative firms realize their vision. Check out her personal work here: www.KelbiPhotography.com.
Sidekick: Sam Morris
Credit the early years with helping to shape one of Sam Morris’ defining qualities: Versatility.
In his youth, he has been a prolific skateboarder, inspired illustrator, skilled movie projectionist, burgeoning commercial photographer, and early-early adopter (of new technologies).
Of these, Sam’s identity as illustrator is especially noteworthy. As a boy growing up in South Carolina, he would draw on – and draw with – anything put in front of him. These renderings of life, real and imagined, revealed both passion and talent, both of which gave rise to a successful career.
Sam earned a Bachelor of Arts in commercial photography from the Art Institute of Atlanta. While in school, he honed his knowledge of photography and image processing by working at E-6 Lab, one of Atlanta's premier photo labs. There he became accustomed to learning about (and taking care of) the wide-ranging and ever-changing needs of peope who make their living in photography.
In the early 2000s, media giant Turner Broadcasting hired Sam as a contractor to scan and digitize older film for archiving. Already skilled in Photoshop, Sam quickly made the upward leap to retouching specialist and idea man. He has conceived and created large-scale graphics for promotional tours, developed image concepts and mock-ups for marketing, and brought to life art projects for Turner Classic Movies and many of the Turner brands.
Versatile? His manager once put it this way: “Sam regularly creates unique and original designs that are not only brand-specific, but cutting edge in creativity and style. His strengths lie in both a technical and creative ability to expertly retouch imagery and concept unique designs, all to support the Turner brands.”
More than occasionally, Turner has challenged Sam to showcase imagery in highly unique ways. Case in point: When teamed with others to create a novel exhibit to celebrate the Brazilian launch of Turner Classic Movies, Sam found inspiration in two publicity images from King Kong. His idea: build a life-sized “Kong hand,” into which patrons at the event could be photographed. Sketching out a hand and forearm from which a sculptor could fabricate Kong’s arm – and engineering an array of other image manipulations – Sam created the exhibit. Like Kong himself, it was a huge hit.
Today, Sam is never without a personal project. He continues to invest time and energy into keeping up with what’s new in technology. He even writes about it. See for yourself at [http://iliketodrawonpictures.blogspot.com/ ].