Brief Summary
Gregory Wrenn Smith
… is a photographer, writer, editor and multimedia producer. For 25 years, the Maryland native has called home a house he built along the tidal May River near Bluffton, S.C. He began his career as a photojournalist, and photography remains his primary vocation and creative outlet. But Greg has spent much of his professional life writing and editing. He continues both. His byline has appeared over stories, under pictures and on mastheads published across the U.S. and around the world.
His career and volunteer work have focused on the diffusion of good ideas and converging technology. He has tracked and contributed to collective efforts concerning imaging, the business of imaging, journalism, the environment, wildlife, local history, land planning (particularly coastal issues), recreation, travel, tourism, education, the arts, government and politics. Greg has been a strong and steady advocate for the rights of creators, particularly photographers. With the latest technology of the time, he launched several publications in the 1980s. He attended the first Platypus Workshop in 1999, learning the language of video with other still photojournalists. Involved in digital imaging for more than a decade, he purchased his first professional digital camera and printing systems in 2003. Before and since, he has carefully studied, implemented and continually refined the latest digital-workflow and color-management solutions.
In 2003, the University of North Carolina Press published Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way, a cookbook and reminiscence he helped write and photograph. Greg has been a frequent contributor to professional e-mail forums, international imaging standards efforts and several online publications.
In spring 2007, he returned to Ohio University to complete a master’s degree in Visual Communication, receiving credit for earlier graduate work. After spending that academic quarter in Athens, Ohio – where he studied documentary photography, Flash web design and visual newsroom management – Greg continued learning video and audio production from home to complete his multimedia master’s project about the wildlife of the May River. He graduated with an MA in June 2009. And “Keeping the May River Wild” has screened to rave reviews locally, across South Carolina and at regional film festivals.
Greg and his wife, Janet, a newspaper editor, have three mostly grown children.
