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After The Sun Goes Down

I was supposed to take some beach portraits today, and had my camera ready for the job. Unfortunately the shoot was postponed at the last minute. I did, however, find myself on the beach this evening anyway. I was crossing over the little bridge that connects the Isle Of Palms to Sullivan’s Island just after the sun dipped below the horizon. The sky is just awesome on the southern coast in October. I don’t know the meteorological reason why, I just know that this is the month for getting fantastic sunset and twilight photos in the Charleston area. So, after I crossed the bridge I made a quick judgment call and pulled over.

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As I was grabbing my camera it dawned on me that I didn’t have either my tripod or mono-pod with me. Way to be prepared, boy scout! In all seriousness, I didn’t pack the tripod because the portraits were supposed to have been done in the middle of the day and the models were three little girls – no need for a tripod for that. Luckily I had my new Tamron f/2.8 lens on my camera for the portraits. I needed to pump the ISO pretty high if I was going to be hand holding this scene. I walked up the beach and grabbed this shot at ISO 640:

And then walked up to the rocks and got down real low and composed this one followed by the one up at the top of this article. I had to up the ISO to 800 for these as you could see the sky got much darker within minutes.

These aren’t perfectly sharp shots, and if I had remembered my tripod, I would have used a deeper depth of field to add to the sharpness of the overall shot. I think this type of exposure worked in spite of my normal intentions. They have a bit more depth of character and emotion with their slight “imperfections”. Atlanta based photog Zack Arias has an interesting post sampling some of his purposefully imperfect shots. I couldn’t agree with him more. Some of my favorite shots are less than perfect in their traditional execution, but absolutely perfect as my interpretation of the scene or moment. The limitations that get imposed on you can often be used in your favor if you can creatively work around them.

Free, As In Kittens

I was doing some work at the Vet today, and as usual, I got asked if I wanted an animal (or three). The first time they asked me, I walked out of there with a Pomeranian! Since then, I guess I’ve been labeled because I get asked all of the time to rescue an animal from them.

These little kittens were found on a boat. Their mother was killed in an accident with the boat’s motor, and the owner of the boat found these little ones stowed away. They are still quite young, but are ready to be adopted. It would be nice if they could be kept together, but they will separate them. If you are looking for a new kitten and can make room in your home for even just one, they would be very grateful. If you’re in the Charleston area, you can call Veterinary Specialty Care at (843) 216-7554 if your are interested.

The photo of the kittens were taken with my iPhone using it’s new HDR feature. They were being very typical kittens, meaning that they would not sit still for a picture. I could have gone to the car and brought in the DSLR, but the moment would have been lost. A minute later they were all in that box napping! Even still, I think the iPhone does a terrific job of capturing moments.

Here is a shot of my other dog, Jackson, relaxing on the couch. He was a rescue dog that came from the pound. He’s such a good dog (although he took a long time to house break). I took this using a new flash bracket that I ordered for some beach portraits I’m going to be taking tomorrow. It let’s me move the flash off of the camera while still using the hot shoe, which for outdoor portraits is very important because I can get a very fast sync speed when shooting in TTL.

Don’t forget to check out the new store, I even added Canadian and UK services yesterday!

The Store’s Open, Come On In

Today marks another landmark for this website – It’s the grand opening of the JWNPhoto.com online store! There is a new link entitled “Store” in the menu bar of this site.

I’ve selected sixteen photographs that I would hang on my wall (in fact, a few of them already do). I’m very excited to share these with you as I have put my heart and soul into this craft and without you as an audience it has little meaning.

A professionally printed photograph is a lot more than the stuff you get at the local CVS or WalMart. These are printed on premium papers using state-of-the-art processes, as well as good old fashioned human skill. Each photo is color corrected to give you a precise representation of my vision for the medium you choose. All prints are inspected by a photo lab technician who is skillfully trained before they are shipped out, not some guy who rings up your milk and cigarettes and is pining for the next coffee break. The shipping rates are very reasonable and the turnaround time is amazingly fast. I can’t stress enough the night and day difference a good photo lab makes in printing photos. I’m proud to say that the photo lab I have chosen is Mpix, which is the online division of Miller’s Professional Imaging. The shopping cart is powered by Zenfolio, who is a trusted and secure e-commerce platform that makes ordering and customizing the art in a way that works for you a breeze.

I believe I’m pricing these prints at very reasonable rates. I have also limited the sizes to only 3:2 aspect ratios to keep the original integrity of the images. Because of this, it would be wise to purchase a frame (which I’m offering with absolutely no mark-up above my cost) directly from the store as they can be difficult to find in your local stores. I have also noted on each photo my suggestions for the type of paper to use, and I urge you to add the “Lustre Coating” option at checkout to all of your prints. It’s a small fee to protect your purchase and will not change the aesthetic of the print. I am a big fan of the standouts – they are amazing products and I believe they are worth every penny. I recently displayed some at the Kulture Klash Arts Festival and I think they compliment my style of photography.

You will notice that there are watermarks on the photos in the gallery – they will not be printed, they are just there to protect me from theft. I’m not usually a watermark kind of guy, but the whole reason I put this store up is to make sure that the printed product is up to my standards, and if someone were to reproduce one in a half-assed way, it takes away from vision I’m trying to convey. Therefore, watermarks it is.

I really hope you can find something that fits in your home or office, or maybe as a gift for a loved one!

On a completely separate note, when my wife came home from dropping my daughter off at her Girl Scout meeting this evening, she spotted a tiny little tree frog on the front porch. I took that as my cue to slap on my 100mm f/2.8 Tokina Macro Lens, mount my camera on a tripod, and start clicking in the quickly fading light.

Instead of using a remote, I used the timer and set it to take 3 shots in a row. The exposures were a little long as I set the ISO to 200 to keep the image as clean as possible, but I also wanted to make sure I got it as sharp as possible. The depth of field was quite shallow, but I didn’t want the exposure to be too long as the frog is breathing, and that might look blurry over a very long exposure, so I kept the aperture pretty open at f/4 which called for a 2 second exposure time.

I noticed that I’ve taken a good number of shots around my home lately – I think it’s great to explore your own backyard for possible images. Have you found something interesting to shoot near home lately?

Happy Columbus Day!

Here I thought that on a federal holiday like today, nothing would get delivered. I was happy to come home to a box full of shiny (well, actually more of a matte finish) new business cards. Thanks UPS, now if only you delivered them by this past Saturday, I could have actually handed them out to people at the arts festival! Oh well, it’s my fault for using ground shipping anyway. I’m extremely happy with how they came out, I use GotPrint for my business cards – I got 1,000 double-sided full color cards on their premium paper for $20 plus about $10 P&H. They look great and you can’t beat their prices.

Today started off a little strangely for me. I went to get in the shower this morning and was startled by a knocking at my bathroom window. Pretty strange, since it’s on the second floor. I peered out the window and looked up to see a red headed woodpecker pecking away at the roof of my house. Now I love having birds around the house, but this is just plain offensive. Thoughts of loading up my 10/22 came to mind. I then came to my senses and knocked on the window to shoo Woody away. It flew off to a tree in front of my house and then I saw its nest in a hole right at the very top.

I ran downstairs to grab my camera because, well, I have problems. At that point I heard it pecking away again. This time it was knocking on my neighbor’s roof. I quickly put on my 55-300mm zoom and grabbed this shot of the interloper:

You know, one tip you will hear time and time again in the world of photography is to not forget to look behind you. I’m glad I did, because I saw this very colorful Carolina Wren perched on the antenna of my car. If I was still doing my 365 project, this would have totally been my shot of the day, and if I didn’t look the other way I would have missed it.

That’s all for now, I’m going to celebrate Columbus day with some pasta and bread – viva Italia!

Recovery From The Klash

Last night was fantastic! Kulture Klash 6 was a huge success, and it was a ton of fun for my family & friends. I’d like to thank Jonathan Stout and Scott Debus for including me in this great event. Of course, I brought my camera with me, but I also had drink tickets so a lot of my shots were fuzzy due to Fat Tire. I spent most of today nursing a hangover, but it was well worth it (especially because I don’t have to actually work today).

During the daytime, Kulture Klash hosted a free art viewing. I brought my daughter Mackenzie along and we ate crepes and drank Japanese soda after looking at some really cool and unique art. It was really a good experience for her to see art like this on display. Kids don’t get a chance to check out alternative art at a professional level on a regular basis, and she ran around from piece to piece soaking it all in.

Here is a display with one of my prints on it. There is a painting on there that got a lot of people talking, as it is either brilliant or extremely tacky. Whichever you decide, it succeeds in creating a dialog which means it is a successful piece of work. It’s the painting on a panel of wood of Kurt Cobain with what appears to be blood and brains exploding out of the top and it’s entitled “Kurt Cobain’t”.

There was also a giant 3D piece that was very popular. The artist provided 3D glasses to view it and it was trippy to say the least. I love that it took advantage of the live setting as there really is no other way to take in this particular creation. I tried to take an artsy shot of the 3D glasses with part of the painting in the background, but the depth of field was really shallow when holding the glasses at arm’s length and this really doesn’t show the scope of the piece. I usually don’t agree with the sentiment “The picture doesn’t do it justice”, but this is one of those cases where it’s impossible to do it proper justice with a photo.

The Lowcountry Highrollers were on hand to skate around and eat lollipops. They also did some hula hooping, which made for some cool motion capture photos.

Another cool thing that Scott thought up was a series of carnival style character cut-outs that he invited artists to come in and paint. The theme was to make freaky circus sideshow characters and they looked fantastic.

Brian, Amy, & Mira In A Cut-Out Character

Charleston lifestyle photographer Jonathan Stout had a photo booth set up with a crime scene background and chainsaws, hammers, and axes as props. The man worked his butt off taking shots all night long, and they came out looking fantastic. Take a look at his website to see all of the awesomeness. There is also a shot of yours truly in there.

Here’s a shot of Jon hard at work:

There was also lots of different music from musicians and DJ’s. There were three stages, including an 18 & over burlesque show tent. I took this photo of one of the dancers in the tent, but decided to use an artistic saturation effect on it to create something new out of it. Here’s the original and saturated versions:

The shot at the top of this post is of a dancer who I asked to do some leaps and poses in front of a mural painted by the Mohawk sporting gentleman below. I think his name was Scott as well, but I’m terrible at remembering people’s names so I’m sorry if I screwed that up. You can view the other shots of the dancer as well as the rest of my photos from the event on my flickr set for it.

I hope Mr. Debus keeps this train rolling, because it was such an important event for our culture and it gives people like Robert Donovan and I (and most of the participants I’m sure), who do this for the love of it more than anything else, a place to celebrate our creations with other enthusiasts. I’m so happy to have been a part of this with such great company. Thanks again, and see you next time!

Ambition

When I got home from taking my daughter to piano lessons this morning I had a message waiting for me on Facebook from my friend Brian linking to the video above. What an amazing project to do with your family. Those kids look genuinely excited to be a part of it. It made me think of the question of “why would anyone do this?” The answer is simple. Because they could. It was that kind of ambition that got us to the moon in the ’60s. That desire to do. Do something, anything that will make our existence here a better one. The drive to accomplish a task no matter how crazy it seems and get others riled up for it. Even if the experiment that these people did had failed in its execution, it still would have been a cool experience for them and anyone who hears their story. What’s more, is that they undoubtedly would have picked up the pieces and learned from their mistakes and tried again, which is the true mark of spirit.

Here is an example of going out and doing something random, just because you can. No point other than to be happy and put a smile on other people’s faces. Go for it!

A little earlier this morning I had my own little inspiration (albeit not even a fraction as grand as the one above). I was walking my dog and it was unusually foggy out. It looked like a scene from a Vietnam war movie, if Vietnam had suburban housing developments during that time. I thought it would make a great photo, but I only had my iPhone on me. Luckily, the iPhone is one of the world’s greatest cameras if you know how to take advantage of it. I took this shot and then used an app called Camera+ to add a cross processing effect to make it look more jungle-like. I then posted it to my Flickr page and sent it out via Twitter all while my dog was baking brownies. Instant gratification – no pondering the shot or massive retouching going on. Just see something, shoot it, and share it with the world. That is why I think the iPhone is one of the best cameras a person can own.

A few days ago I shot this photo with my new lens and I keep going back to it. I love the color of the early morning light, and my daughter had just woken up – she was still brushing the sleep from her eyes when I shot this. The whole feel of the photo is “fresh”. Bright colors, bright face, awesome back light.

A little later today I’m going to take my kids to the 6th annual Kulture Klash Arts Festival art viewing. I’m excited for the children to see art that isn’t so mainstream. It should be a cool experience for them. Later tonight, I’ll go to the real party, which should be a cool experience for the wife and I. I hope to see a bunch of you Charleston area peeps there!

Legal Smeagal

Yesterday, I was browsing photography apps for my iPhone when I stumbled on an amazing concept. A mobile model and property release form generator. Instead of keeping generic paper release forms in your camera bag, you can create one right on your smart phone and email it to both the model or property owner as well as yourself. The app is called Easy Release and is available for iOS (iPhone, iPad, & iPod) and Android based systems.

I was able to quickly set up Easy Release by adding my logo, business information, and my written signature in the app settings. The interface is very straight forward from there, and getting a release form put together shouldn’t take more than a few minutes on the spot. If you know who you will be shooting ahead of time you can set it up prior to the shoot and be ready to accept a signature and quickly push past the legal junk so you can get to creating. Signing a signature is not as bad as you think it would be either. It feels as natural as it could get without the use of a stylus or pen (which for some people might not be very natural at all, but for me it was fine). It also lets you assign a photo to the release so you can take a picture of an ID or maybe a reference shot of a person (which would be very handy if you are shooting a bunch of people in the same session). It’s very well thought out and could potentially save your butt so you don’t end up in a lawsuit like the poor musicians in the band Vampire Weekend.

Here is a shot of my daughter in a funhouse tunnel at the Coastal Carolina Fair in 2007:

Today I received my prints from Mpix for the 2010 Coastal Carolina Fair, and as usual, they did an outstanding job. There is something so satisfying about a company that does things consistently well, especially when it involves your livelihood! The FedEx guy commented to my wife that I must be starting a gallery with all of the prints I’ve been ordering this week. What can I say, I got excited when I saw the stand-outs that I had made for Kulture Klash and couldn’t wait to see more.

I mounted them myself on black foam core using mounting spray. I knew that I could potentially ruin a print with sticky fingerprints, so I added Mpix’s lustre coating to each one when I ordered them. Lo and behold, the first one I mounted got a little sticky, and I was able to easily wipe it clean without a trace of my gummy paw prints. I also hope to eventually frame these (framing is prohibited for this contest) and possibly sell them in the future, so I want them to survive the harsh conditions of the contest display. It’s a small price to pay for invisible protection. Mpix does do foam core mounting, but it is flush with the edge of the print, and I wanted a one inch border to avoid fingerprints by whomever handles them at the fair. Besides, buying a sheet of foam core from the store and mounting it yourself is way cheaper in the long run when you’re doing multiple prints.

Who’s your favorite printer and why? Let me know in the comments.

The Cub Sleeps Tonight

6 years ago, my son was 10 months old and would not sleep through the night. He cried. A lot. At some point I wrote this quick little lullaby for him:

Hey Kegan

We used to get to the neurotic point of insanity that could only be quelled by putting this song on repeat while driving aimlessly around Long Island in our car. I think my wife and I must have heard this song at least 100,000 times during that time of our lives, and to take a picture like the one above makes it easier to forget just how nutty raising kids can be.

I got some very cool news from Charleston Magazine yesterday, I hope that it all works out. I also should be receiving the prints I’m entering into the 2010 Coastal Carolina Fair photography contest today. Last year I printed my entries on cheap computer paper using a cheap color laser printer. I felt kind of silly when I saw how much better the professional entries looked when printed on quality photo paper, so this year I decided to take it a bit more seriously.

This was my highest scoring entry from last year’s contest:

Last but not least, don’t forget to come to the 6th Annual Kulture Klash Arts Festival this weekend, and check out the prints I am showing.

Kulture Klash Arts Festival 2010

I got a message a while back from Charleston lifestyle photographer Jonathan Stout asking me if I knew anything about the Kulture Klash Arts Festival. I had heard about it on the Digitel, but didn’t really know anything about it. He asked me to introduce myself to one of the organizers and send some sample photos. I started reading about the event and looking through Jonathan’s photos from previous events. Next thing I know, I’m ordering large prints of my work to display and sell at the event. Music, art, drinks, comedy, & roller derby… I’m very excited to be a part of this festival as it looks like something that’s right up my alley.

This will be the first time that I’m showing printed versions of my photography in a gallery type of setting. I know it sounds cliche, but seeing fine art photography as a printed medium is a totally different experience then when looking at it on an illuminated LCD screen. I even tried to photograph the prints, which are all 16×24″ standouts shown here in my kitchen on the bar, but it just doesn’t come close to doing these pieces justice. The color and detail of “Abandoned Trailer” really shine as a metallic print. The stark contrast and shapes of “Columns” are even more defining. I put a lot of effort into making sure these represented my vision for them and spared no expense in creating their printed versions. The pieces I chose all have very different appeal, but demonstrate my current photographic style.

I really hope that if you are reading this and you can make it to 10 Storehouse Row at the old Navy base in North Charleston on October 9th, that you stop by. There will be a free art viewing from 1-4 p.m, and then the party starts from 7p.m.-2 a.m. which will cost $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Even if you just show up for the art viewing, I think you will walk away with a very cool experience. I plan on checking out the whole festival. The Charleston Scene has all of the details here, so I hope to see you there!

New Glass

Getting a new lens is like getting a new camera without the hassle of learning how to use a new camera. Sure you have to learn how to take advantage of your new glass, but it’s always a labor of love and not necessity. I found a great deal on this lens on eBay last week and I’m happy to report that it is flawless! It’s the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 VC.

Like any new lens owner, I immediately put it on my camera and started pointing it at anything and everything. How does it look wide open, is the Bokeh nice and smooth? How’s the barrel distortion at 17mm? How fast does it focus compared to my other similar zoom lenses? How sharp it it at f/2.8? After I addressed the geekiest of geeky questions that have been rattling around my head since I won the auction, the artist in me told me to point it at something meaningful. Luckily, my family was home!

My daughter was in the fridge looking for a drink. “Hey Mac, turn around quick and smile!”

My son was at the computer playing video games. “Kegan stop for one second and look over here!”

And then there is poor Amy, who’s been laid up sick for the better part of this week, sitting out on the back porch while the dogs were outside. I think she was too tired to resist my demands, and actually looked genuinely happy to pose for a picture. That’s saying something when you are constantly being bombarded by a guy with his cameras. She’s so pretty.

So this leads to the current question on my mind: Is the only way to get a photographer’s family to smile on demand to purchase a new piece of equipment? I’m kidding, of course. I am very happy that they helped me with my impromptu experiment with my new glass.

So far I haven’t shot much else with it, but as far as I can tell, it is a real winner. I really wish I had it when I shot my first wedding a couple of weeks ago, as it would have been perfect for that. Actually, the need for a fast zoom was what inspired me to investigate the options out there and eventually find this particular lens up for auction. It was a demo unit from a camera store, and came with all of the original packaging and arrived in mint condition. The seller even threw in a Sigma UV filter! I will share more about it in the future.

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