David McLain Bio
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 02:21PM 
I built my chops the old fashioned way shooting feature length assignments around the world for National Geographic Magazine. While the stories varied, the mandate was always the same: work with every kind of person under any kind of condition and create timeless images for a client with the highest visual standards on earth.
This experience has informed my commercial work in two important ways. It makes me want people to look at the images I create for companies and feel inspired rather than sold to. It is also the basis for a hybrid production model that allows me to work with a small crew and execute on art direction without losing the ability to improvise.
As the old paradigms for content creation and distribution began to change, I co-founded Merge with Jerome Thelia. Our boutique production company combines the eye of a National Geographic photographer with two decades of production and post production expertise in motion pictures and broadcast. Together, we have the expertise to inhabit the sweet spot between still photography and filmmaking by merging the paradigms and traditions of both of those disciplines.
Our production and post production capabilities take traditional needs and seamlessly express them in old ways, new ways, and ways that have not been thought of yet. Whether it is our nimble production model, a blend of art direction and improvisation, the integration of stills and motion, 3D, site specific digital cinema installations, or the use of dynamic technology like 5K EPIC and Scratch. What people who have worked with us understand is that we are naturally adaptable and thrive at the intersection of tradition and change.
At home, I live with my family in a 200 year old farmhouse and work out of a big post beam barn on 2 beautiful acres just outside of Portland, Maine, a place that has always triggered an instinctual sense belonging in me. My family, my home, and Maine ground me and fuel the boundless sense of possibility and hope I bring to my work.
I continually marvel at how endless the opportunities are. Now is the time to start exploring them.
David McLain
July 2011