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Charleston Fashion Week 2012 (Wed. Show)

Last night, I shot my first runway show at Charleston Fashion Week. It was a pretty intense scene, but it was also very light-hearted at the same time. Lots of people dressed to the nines, but no feeling of pretention or fashion snobbery that I saw. It was actually a lot of fun for this fashion show noob!

The festivities kicked off with a musical number by King Sing. The first designer, Tommy Bahama followed.

JLINSNIDER is a local favorite, and the place was buzzing to see what the Charleston designer had to show.

I have to admit, I really liked the cyborg themed stuff:

After a break, the Emerging Designer contest began. Here are some of my favorite shots from them:

Bob & Kris Galmarini took home the people’s choice award, but come on, they might as well of had puppies on stage! How cute are these kids dressed like it’s 1995??

And the winner who’ll move on to Saturday’s finals is Angela Sum (who’s collection is featured at the top of this post):

Prior to this event, I’d searched high and low for a decent picture of what the photographer’s pit looks like at a fashion runway show. I couldn’t find much, so without further ado, here’s the photographer’s pit at Charleston Fashion Week:

I have a ton of photos from nearly every look at the show, you can check those out here. I also have a bunch of candid shots, and I’ll be posting those soon as well. Make sure to follow The Digitel Extra on Twitter for full live coverage of this week’s events. I’m heading back into the pit on Friday night, so hang tight as there is more to come…

OPK Are Much Easier

If you read Sunday’s post about my kids’ gift to their mother for our wedding anniversary, you heard me gripe about how difficult shooting your own kids can be. While we were shooting, some of the neighborhood kids came over to play with my son (our house is the place where the neighborhood kids like to congregate – I blame the cute dogs). Bryce & Olivia took an interest in the photo gear that I was breaking down and asked what we were doing, so I showed them the finished photos of my kids. They thought it was really cool, so I asked them when their mother’s birthday was, to which they replied next week. I asked them if they wanted to make a photo collage for their mom for her birthday, and they were ecstatic over the idea! I told them to dress up nice and come back the next day and I’d take their pictures.

They were so easy and cooperative! Every direction I gave was taken without complaint. OPK (Other People’s Kids) are a joy to shoot. They even convinced my son to get into a shot with them, although he was wearing a T-Shirt and his hair was a mess – it’s still a cute shot of some awesome friends.

Now hopefully their mom doesn’t read this blog, or else her birthday surprise is ruined! Although I’m sure she got a clue when here kids asked to get all dressed up to go over to the photographer’s house down the block…

Lucky 13

Yesterday was not only a day for dying the river green in Savannah, it was also my 13th wedding anniversary. My wife Amy had to work during the afternoon (the weekends are prime time for real estate agents), so I took advantage of the time to put together this collage for her with our kids. I initially wanted to do a triptych featuring two portraits of my children and this shot that I thought up of:

The problem was that I couldn’t find a picture frame that was oriented correctly, so I went for a four photo shoot and added another shot of the kids together, which was the most difficult to shoot. Your own kids are the most challenging subjects for portraiture and I think I figured out the reason – they lose patience quicker than a kid that doesn’t know you! They know what the limits are already, and aren’t timid to straddle that line. You really get a couple of frames to get it right and then they bolt. And the chances of getting them both looking decent at the same time are like winning a triple crown – it doesn’t happen often. I begged, pleaded, and came very close to losing my cool to get them to get it right. Don’t let them forget that you already bribed them with milkshakes to do this in the first place! Note to self: Milkshakes should come after the shoot, not before.

Here’s a shot of the finished product:

The shot at the top of this article was used in my Facebook post to my wife celebrating the best part of our marriage, which is our beautiful kids. Ahh, the power of still photography – if it was a video you would have seen what goes on between the shutter clicks, like “Look it’s a bee – AHHHHHH – RUN!!!” or “He’s touching me” or “Hurry up dad, I wanna play Zelda”. Photos are so much more romantic 😉

Haley (Part II)

Welcome to my second post of photos of Haley from her photo shoot. This time, it’s all about composites. This first one uses this picture of a road on a foggy morning in Landrum, SC.

The rest of these are a combination of multiple images found on Flickr as free backgrounds and textures, such as these from Flickr user Moosebite. There are a plethora of different types of images that are offered completely free for this purpose.

As for the art of making a composite, I used Photoshop and experimented with different blending modes, opacities, and manipulation of the images through Free Transform. I also used a combination of Snapseed and Color Efex Pro from Nik Software to finish these off.

The challenge for me is not to overdo it, as I did in this photo. It looks like the 80’s threw up on the 90’s and had a bastard child of a background, and poor Haley is stuck looking pretty in the midst of it all. But, it’s about experimenting for me, and I think the photos above work for their intended purposes.

In other news, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me as I will be shooting some stuff at Charleston Fashion Week. It will be my first time shooting a runway show, so I’m pretty stoked! TTYL.

The Shaniqua Brown Final Show

The Shaniqua Brown

Last night, I went down to The Pour House in Charleston to catch some loud and sleazy rock n’ roll. It was the last show for the local rock band The Shaniqua Brown and they were pulling no punches. I’d never seen them before, and I’m sad to see them go, but I was happy to be there.

Lead singer Rachel Kate Gillon took the stage with a fury that made you feel like she was fighting for survival and if this was goodbye, she was taking the crowd with her.

CUSSES

This was the second time I shot CUSSES, the last time was at Kulture Klash 7. This three piece band sounds like a wall of crushing sound thanks to guitarist Bryan Harder’s recipe for making one guitar sound like four.

Hailing from Savannah, GA, they’re hot off the release of their debut record. Singer Angel Bond screams out with such power while slithering across the stage, she channels part Mick Jagger and part Iggy Pop in her movement, but she’s got a voice all her own. Let’s not forget that their drummer is a fucking madman, and that’s a good thing.

Bully Pulpit

Bully Pulpit is a fucking heavy blues band from Charleston. Reminiscent of the classic punk rock sound of the Dead Boys and the New York Dolls, I felt like I was back on Bleecker Street as they tore up the stage. I think it’s safe to say that these guys aren’t capable of doing anything quietly. They also have one of the coolest band names I’ve heard in a long time.

Heyrocco

Heyrocco is another local up & coming band. I shot them once before about a year ago at the Change For Change Art Show. In the time since I’ve seen them, they’ve really grown into their sound. I was very impressed to say the least.

They just successfully funded a kickstarter project to release their debut record, which is due to come out very soon. I’m looking forward to hearing what they come up with, because they have a really interesting sound live.

I also got to shoot alongside Tracy Grant, who was on the receiving end of my elbow when I got blindsided by a pit dancer. Pataford was also there taking shots, both from the crowd and with his camera!

I have a full set of photos on Flickr for you to check out. Have a great weekend!

Visualizing Rebecca

Rebecca is the latest friend to come to the home studio for a portrait session, and man is she amazing to photograph. It’s becoming quickly apparent that it’s impossible to get bored with portraiture when you have amazing people to work with who are creative and are game for anything. This time around, I had several shots pre-visualized before we began. The first one is this natural light portrait using windows as the light source. We took advantage of the fading afternoon light and went for a bedroom scene (in my dining room).

I put a bed sheet on an ottoman to act as a bed. The problem was that I forgot how tall Rebecca is, and any shot that showed her whole body on the ottoman looked quite strange. It made her look like she was in a toddler’s bed, which is less than sexy when you think about it. No problem, I just shot tighter on her and got an implied photo. Sexy’s back!

Next, I wanted to showcase her amazing long auburn hair. We broke out the industrial fan and had her whipping her head from front to back to get her hair to catch the wind like a sail.

My goal was to have her flip her head enough times until she passed out. Not really, but I’m sure it felt like that to her. This kind of shot is all about timing. Hit the shutter at the perfect time while the hair is spread out and her face doesn’t look like someone who’s moving up and down vigorously. That’s not an easy shot to get without a lot of attempts. Saying that she’s a trooper is an understatement.

This is my final pre-visualized shot. I wanted to get this angle showing the piano and guitar on one side of the wall and Rebecca on the other side. This is one shot – not a diptych. I was inspired to use some of my old records in it after a friend of mine from back in my punk rock musician days posted vintage photos of girls with records on his Facebook page. Thanks for the inspiration Frank!

Katie, who works with Rebecca and is also just plain awesome, was helping out with the shoot and got drafted into a similar shot. I’m blessed to know such beautiful people! This shot rocks almost as hard as Katie at an Avett Brothers show at the North Charleston Coliseum (I’m still indebted because she invited me into the box seats with her friends at that show).

The above shot was a suggestion of Rebecca’s, which was to shoot her on a magenta background to compliment a green dress she wanted to wear. With such big bright blue eyes and the rich colors of her dress, her hair, and the background (I used a speedlight with a magenta gel on it to get that), I wanted to get a big smiling portrait. Rebecca’s such a fun girl that it’s more than easy to get a natural reaction out of her.

This was the final frame of the shoot. I love to do a head shot like this at the end of a shoot because at that point the person has been coached so much that they just easily connect with the camera. They’re all warmed up and comfortable, and it’s also quite a slow-down from the rest of the shoot. I just use the modeling lights and a 50mm lens, and really tone it down. I can fire off multiple shots while talking and complimenting the subject on the work we just did, and it really makes for a beautiful expression.

As I do this more, I’m really seeing the importance of vision over technical ability. You need the technical ability for sure, but without the vision, making a good photo becomes a game of luck. Why take only chances? The photo at the top of this post is an example of free-styling it. It might be one of my favorite shots that I’ve made in a long time, but it really was a lucky shot that I got while we were working out some fashion poses. Her expression is amazing and it was a decisive moment that was lost in the very next frame of the same setup. The blowing hair shot though, which was heavily planned and worked on, was destined to succeed because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like before I took the shot. Sure, luck is a great thing, but it’s not predictable. Hard work and visualization can be.

Kicking Ass With Krista

I met Krista soon after we moved to Charleston back in the mid oughts. She was working at the local gym as a personal trainer. She approached my wife and I and asked us if we want a free personal training session, to which we happily obliged. I can honestly say that in a fight, not only would she kick my ass, she’d run circles around me while doing it. But, beyond the fact that she’s built like a UFC fighter, she’s also a very beautiful woman.

I invited Krista over to the studio with the goal of demonstrating how dynamic she is. Together I think we swung for the fences and hit one out of the park. We started out doing some fashiony type poses.

Then she put on her workout clothes as I went for an edgier and athletic look to compliment her. She’s a pro at this, so all I really had to do was be there, but when working with any model it’s truly a partnership. You collaborate with the talent and they put their trust in you to capture them at the peak of their performance. In a situation like this where someone spends their life doing something and you’re in charge of conveying that to an audience, it’s important to understand how to use your craft to capture it effectively.

Even though she had a much busier task of watching five kids all by herself during the shoot, my wife Amy still was able to put her fingerprint on this shoot by suggesting that Krista bring her wedding dress. Only problem was, when Krista got married she was wearing the dress for two (she was pregnant, slowpoke). Ahh, the versatility of spring clamps to the rescue. Those things are only second to gaffers tape in importance in your photographer’s tool kit. With this look, I wanted drama, both in Krista’s look and with lighting.

Finally, we went total glam as I set up some speedlights behind her to get a ton of lens flare and backlighting. I totally think that experimenting and playing around after you get the shots you initially wanted to get leads to some of the best shots you’ll make. The model is loose, your photographer juices are flowing, and things just seem to click.

After that, I handed Krista the camera and asked her to make my new Facebook profile picture. She’s just getting into photography and has taken a few lessons, so I was more than happy to get her to turn the camera on me. I think she got it 😉

Chiseled

Let me tell you about the new cool. It’s not happening in a cubicle, it doesn’t involve knowledge of the latest social networking trend, and it certainly does not call for a fresh supply of hand sanitizer. While the last couple of generations have been training a virtual workforce, the real rebels of America are learning creative skills.

Let me introduce you to Joseph & Katie Thompson of Joseph Thompson Woodworks:

About twenty minutes off the interstate right smack in the middle of South Carolina, Joseph & Katie are busy working in their workshop making custom furniture out of socially responsible materials, repairing antiques, and building a family business.

When you step inside one of the rooms of their shop, the first thing you notice as a soft-fingered white collar guy like me is the amazing aroma of split wood. Then there’s the dust. Wood dust isn’t like machine shop dust though, it doesn’t feel “dirty”. The floors are covered in wood shavings, which reminded me of the butcher shop around the corner from my childhood home. The orange glow makes everything feel cozy and warm (not to mention it was 80˚ in the middle of February, so that helps). I guess what I’m trying to say is that the place just feels right.

Joseph Thompson grew up in Orangeburg, SC and while attending Clemson University he decided that it’s not his place in the 9-5 world, so he transferred to the Silva Bay Shipyard School on Gabriola Island in British Columbia. There he learned the basics of woodworking, ship building, and furniture making. He got motivated to pursue furniture making and furthered his training at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine.

Katie Thompson is a College of Charleston alumnus who specialized in non-profit arts before she picked up the table saw. I met her a few years ago while she was writing for TheDigitel and she’s been involved in the Charleston art scene for quite some time. She’s one of the people to follow on Twitter if you want to know what’s going on here.

In a world of high speed cell phone data, 9 month cycles of technology standards, and buzzword wikis, it has become rare to meet people with a desire to create something with their hands. There’s something in a man’s DNA that makes us want to build stuff (maybe it’s there in women too, but I don’t want to speak for them ;)) The idea that skilled labor in this country is dwindling is a scary one. When you see the quality that people like Joseph and Katie are putting into their work, it makes you sad that we’re settling for disposable press-board garbage from Ikea and passing it off as furniture. It also makes it quite lucrative for today’s skilled craftsmen since they seem to have very little competition in the quality department. I truly believe that the most important things you can bestow on your children to compete in tomorrows world are creativity and the passion to do things ethically.

As a side observation, I think that most people would love to have their dogs with them while they work. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed about the south that differs from the north – a lot more people do bring their dogs to work here. A working dog is a happy dog, and a dog with you at work makes for a happy human.

We talked for a while about creativity and craft, and love and marriage. Katie and Joseph knew right away that they were meant for each other. They didn’t wait to see if things work out, they just knew and jumped right into it. It’s the kind of passion that artists deal in – acting from the heart and trusting your instincts. It also takes a lot of patience to live and work with your spouse, the kind of patience that someone who builds from scratch has to master. Watching them work together is a pleasure, as they seem to flow like water through the tight spaces in their shop and compliment each other’s strengths.

Shooting creative people is my muse. I look for the similarities, I look for the contrasts, and I look for the life of it. Finding the threads that hold us together as a race and exposing the beauty in it, both figuratively and literally, is what drives me in photography. I discovered a while back that it’s people in photographs that excite me, and when they are being real and frozen forever in that moment of life, they obtain a bit of romantic immortality. The Thompsons and I talked about that during my visit. Katie had asked me if I was shooting video yet, and I explained how I currently don’t get as excited for video as I do for still photography. I explained that it’s kind of like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie. The still is open to interpretation. You are free to look at an image and remember the scene the way you felt it, or if you are looking at someone else’s work you can imagine the story behind it and connect it back to yourself. A movie is 100% of what the filmmaker is trying to show you. Visually, sonically, and emotionally. There’s a lot less room for interpretation – you are being handed exactly what they want you to see in the order and pace they want you exposed to it. That’s not to say that there isn’t room for interpretation in movies and it’s not that I don’t love film, I do. It’s just that right now in my life I’m really digging the world of still photography as my creative outlet because of the romance of it.

I also challenged myself not to talk about the technical stuff of this shoot in this post because it seems to be a crutch I like to lean on when writing about my photography. I’m trying to focus on talking about the cerebral part of the craft since the technical stuff isn’t all that important to most people (and it changes all the time anyway). I may do a separate behind the scenes post for some of these shots to talk about the strobe outside of the window with the tri-grip diffuser covering the glass or the gelled speedlights in the back corners… Dammit, here I go talking tech!

Make sure to like their Facebook page, follow them on Twitter, and look at their gallery of work online.

Haley (Part 1)

Over the weekend I setup the home studio and invited Haley over to be the first model in it. I’ve been exploring the different practices of people photography lately, and I have to say that this shoot was one of my favorites. It could just be the fact that Haley was an amazing model to work with, but I really had fun. She also had fun (it shows), and my ~~assistant~~ wife Amy had a lot of fun as well. In fact, Amy played a huge part in coming up with poses as well as keeping the energy up (we shot late into the evening). Here’s one of Amy’s pose ideas:

Haley is such a natural. Every shot felt like a keeper – in fact I haven’t even gone through all of them yet. I felt I needed to share these with you fine readers, hence the “Part 1” – there will be more of these soon!

So, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of my home studio – You can see how I had the lights set up for this shoot. The giant softbox is an AB800 as the fill, the beauty dish is my 2nd AB800 as the main light, and there’s an SB-600 speedlight in the smaller softbox as a kicker in the back.

After getting some traditional poses, things started to loosen up and we got shots such as the guitar one up top. Each time she changed clothes, she brought a new energy. She also got to choose the music, which I provided via Pandora. I asked her who her favorite musical artists were and she was quick to respond with Florence + The Machine. If you’re looking for a good alt-rock Pandora channel, that one does the job!

I’ve also been reading and watching a lot of stuff from Peter Hurley about headshots lately since his guest blog post on Scott Kelby’s blog last week, and I find his style and approach really inspiring. I threw on my 50mm f/1.8 and since it was late and I couldn’t shoot with natural light, I used the modeling lights from the Alien Bees to get this:

I set the white balance to incandescent for that shot, but when I turned on the Nikon SB-600 in the kicker softbox, the flash color turned the background blue to get this effect:

In post, I decided to experiment a little on a couple of shots. Here’s a black & white:

And finally, here’s a composite I made with an image I shot at Tugaloo State Park last year. After combining the two, I used a cross-processing effect to get the color.

This was my first attempt a fashion style photography, and while I have a lot of learning ahead of me, I think Haley definitely made this look better than I expected!

More to come very soon…

Building

Isn’t she dramatic? Oh, the trials and tribulations of a pre-teen. Actually, most of the pictures of my daughter I took were of extremely goofy faces and the ridiculous looks she likes to give me when I use her as my test model. I happened to get a couple of in-between shots where she wasn’t ready with a smirk 😉 Here’s one with her grinning:

Of course, my son couldn’t let her take all of the glory…

So the point of these test shots was to try out my new giant softbox from Paul C. Buff, which is being powered by an AlienBees B800 monolight. I’ve been primarily a speedlight kind of guy for a long time, only renting bigger lights for special occasions. I’ve recently decided to expand my photography and some of the things I’m going to start shooting are more in the fashion, portraiture, and editorial style of work. That means proper studio lighting. Now, I’m not going to jump into a Profoto system right off the bat, and since I’ve used AlienBees in the past, I’ve decided to start with a couple of B800’s.

*Warning* Here comes a bunch of technical talk…

Here are the reasons I chose to go with this particular model: The AlienBees line has a 6 full f/stop range on their lights, so the highest power B1600 can only be stopped down to 20 Ws, while the B800 can go down to 10 Ws at 1/32nd power. I’ll rarely (if ever) need to shoot at full power on the B800 for the applications I’m intending them for, but for shooting wide open like I did in the two shots of my daughter above, I need lower power. Even with the B800 I had to lower the ISO to 100 (the native ISO on my Nikon is 200) to shoot at f/2.8. The shot of my son was at f/8, and you can see there is a lot more detail in that shot overall – it’s a totally different look. I like to have options easily available without having to throw light eating filters on my lens or lights. In this beach wedding shot taken in harsh mid-day sunlight, I had rented a B1600 and never went over half-power, so I don’t see myself needing the extra daylight-crushing power just yet.

The best choice of the Paul C. Buff line of lights for versatility is the Einstein, but since I’m trying to gradually build up, I know that the B800 will be versatile enough for almost 1/2 the price. In the future I hope to add an Einstein as my main light and then move the Bees to fill and/or accent lights, but for now I’m very happy with the range of the B800.

I also had one very important and extremely technical choice to make when getting the AlienBees lights. Which color to get? I really like the white since it’s different enough without looking goofy – I saw someone using a pink one lately and it was a bit much for my taste 😉 I didn’t want to go with black since the Einsteins are only available in black and I want to be able to quickly differentiate between the different models in the future. Telling a less knowledgeable assistant to move the white light is easier than calling out a model number!

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