Required Viewing For Head-shot Sessions
Duncan Davidson: Why do we hate seeing photos of ourselves?
4th of July Fireworks
I was on my way to Folly Beach to catch their fireworks display for the third year in a row when I remembered that I forgot the batteries to my camera in the charger at home! We had a long day – our neighborhood hosted a July 4th picnic and parade which my wife had a huge hand in organizing with the Indigo Women’s Group. It was ridiculously hot today, and there may have been some rum in my sodas.
I was also tasked with shooting the event and taking some portraits. Here’s a shot of my daughter Mackenzie wearing some crazy patriotic hat:
So after the parade, I put the battery in the charger and downloaded all of the pics to my computer (I still haven’t even gone through all of those yet except for the two in this post). I then took a nap before heading to the neighbors house for an Independence Day cookout. I timed my trip to the beach without much room for error as to enjoy maximum grilled bacon-wrapped jalapeno goodness. When the time came, I hopped in my car and got about 10 minutes into my journey when it dawned on me that my battery was still in its charger at home. Damn you sun and rum! I did the math and realized that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the beach in time. I had to come up with a plan B.
I know from history that any family event in Mount Pleasant is always over-populated. If I was going to catch the fireworks over the U.S.S. Yorktown, Waterfront Park in Mount Pleasant has the best view, but also the most people. I was going to take a chance anyway since it was also the closest. I got very lucky in so many ways. 1st, the bridge was still open (they close it during the show). 2nd, I found a place to park within a 5 minute walk to the park. 3rd, I found a relatively people-free spot right on the marshy banks of the Cooper river. The stars had aligned and I was able to capture these:
You can check out all of my shots here on Flickr, and also on my Facebook page.
I was thinking earlier today about one of my favorite things about living in a free country. For all of the bitching and moaning we do about what’s wrong with our government, the fact that we can bitch and moan about our government is something I think we all take for granted. Freedom of speech is something our founders were willing to die for, and it’s something our military, which is a volunteer military, is still willing to die for. It truly is my favorite freedom.
I hope you all had as sunny and bright a day as I did! Happy 4th of July!
Yogi Portrait
Grace, one of the owners of Charleston’s Eco Fitness and Blue Turtle Yoga studios is also a photographer who’s new to studio lighting so she asked me to help her out with a portrait session with Mark, one of her studio’s Yoga instructors. Grace’s idea was to capture some images of her staff members with an item that helps to define them. Above, Mark’s posing with a dragon fruit, and below he’s with his harmonium.
Of course, I needed to shoot Grace. I told her to give me her “sexy librarian” and this is what she gave me:
And here’s Grace in action with Amy assisting. This was a shot of the mirror behind us in the yoga studio.:
These were all shot with my new Nikon D800 with the 85mm 1.8G lens. I cannot stress how amazing this combination is for portraiture. Looking at the full resolution files is just stunning. The clarity is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before from a digital camera. Just tack sharp, amazing contrast, and full of detail. It’s truly a game changer for me. A new camera or lens doesn’t change my style, my lighting, or any of my other abilities. What they do do is expand my ability to capture the images more like the way I actually see them. I can achieve a great look with nothing but my iPhone, but I can’t achieve the level of professional quality that is possible with the D800. Grace was using a kit 18-105 lens with her D7000 (which is another fantastic camera), and then I let her use my 24-70 f/2.8 and the difference in quality was quite obvious even on her camera’s LCD screen. I’m not big on pixel peeping, but when you’re editing portraits in Photoshop with such high resolution files, the quality of lens is obvious – and it makes your job easier as there’s a lot less work to do in post.
Here’s one last shot I want to show you. It’s Amy, who was assisting us on the shoot today. She was very playful in front of the camera, and this was about as serious as I could get her 😉
Eileen & Gary
On a beautiful summer’s day in June, 3 people joined together as a family. Eileen & her son Tristan joined Gary Turner in matrimony at Rockville Presbyterian Church in scenic Rockville, SC. This is their story in photos.
Something borrowed: a family heirloom…
The church – Rockville Presbyterian:
The ceremony:
The newlyweds:
The Family:
The Friends:
The reception:
Time to head out on their honeymoon:
Walking With The D800
Warning: Nerdy Photographer Talk Below
After Nikon announced the D800, I started watching for the D700 prices to fall enough to where I felt justified in purchasing a previous generation body. But the day after I rented a D800 from CharlestonAVGear for a wedding I found myself placing an order for Nikon’s newest (and IMO finest) camera.
Then I started reading the various photography forums and panic started to creep in because it appeared that I might not get this camera until August!
I had a delivery estimate from Amazon, and then early last week the estimate vanished and was replaced with “unknown”. Gahh! I started following this thread on NikonRumors because some posters were letting people know when various retailers had stock available. I got lucky on Tuesday morning because someone posted that NikonUSA.com had them listed in stock. I quickly ordered one and moments after I placed my order they were listed as out of stock again. Regardless, on Wednesday morning I had the new camera in hand! The funny thing was that I got a notice from another fine camera retailer, Robertscamera.com, later in the day on Wednesday that they had some in stock, so I shared that info on the Nikonrumors forum that helped me out and some other shooters were able to get D800’s from them. Paying back on the forum that helped you is a good recipe for internet karma. And as of now it seems that a lot of people are getting the camera’s they’ve had on back-order for months, so I am assuming that the supply is reaching the level of demand to some degree.
So, I was itching to go out and use my new tool, since it’s a very different animal than my previous body. The local photography group, the 21st Century Photography Group, was hosting a photo-walk at the College of Charleston on Sunday. A perfect opportunity!
I brought my son Kegan along, who was shooing with my P7000.
Unfortunately it was quite hot and he was not feeling the whole walking part of the photo-walk. He did get a box of crackers to snack on, but even that couldn’t sooth the savage Kegan 😉
I’ve been shooting with a cropped sensor for so long now that switching to a new full-frame sensor is introducing a whole new way for me to approach the things I am used to. The focal lengths are now properly represented, so my 50mm lens is a true 50mm instead of the 80mm equivalent on a cropped sensor camera. This means I’ve got to get closer! That has the effect of decreasing the available depth of field, so focusing properly is crucial. The 36 mega-pixel sensor in the D800 also brings another challenge: The resolution is so high that it is not forgiving at all if you have bad technique hand-holding the camera. You can see the effects of camera shake when you view things at the full resolution. Luckily, most people aren’t viewing your images like that, but I think it’s a valuable thing because it challenges you to improve your technique!
It’s not easy changing the class of bodies either. My D90 is laid out very differently than the D800, so I’m constantly hitting the wrong buttons because they’re not where I’m used to finding them. That’s OK, it’s only a matter of going out and shooting as much as possible that will quickly remedy it. I did have some moments of panic when shooting a wedding with it, but I’ll talk more about that in a future post.
I can’t wait to shoot some studio stuff with this camera. The resolution is so amazing. I’ll be sure to write another post soon about that experience. For now, I’m buried with post-processing from previous shoots. The good news is that my computer seems to be dealing with the giant NEF RAW files from the D800 quite well, so one of my biggest fears has been put to bed. It does take a tremendous amount of time uploading the full resolution jpegs to Flickr though, but that’s something I can happily deal with 😉
On a side note, I checked out one of Apple’s new Retina Display MacBook Pro’s this afternoon. Holy Balls. My D800 photos look even better on that thing than I could have imagined. It looks like I’m going to need to book a bunch of these real soon!
Summer 2012 Senior Portrait Package
Announcing my Senior Portrait Package & Facebook Friends Special!
Here’s the deal, if you book this package for the extremely reasonable price of $399, I will knock it down to $379 if you share the ad shown above on your Facebook wall with your friends! You’ll need to make sure you “Like” my page here. Then you can easily click the “share” button on this image here.
Also, if you book this package and then successfully refer a friend who also books any type of session with me, I’ll give you a 2nd 11×14 print!
Here’s the package details:
On Location Shoot With At Least 4 Different Looks
Digital Copies of Final Edits
High Quality Prints:
1x 11×14
2x 8×10
4x 5×7
6x 4×6
Contact me today and book this package and let’s make a special portrait for your senior.
Father’s Day 2012
Sure I’m posting this a day late, but I just wanted to share some photos here. These were all shot with my old recovered Nikon D40 which is my current back-up body, and the Nikon 55-200 VR lens. This is equipment that can be found on Craigslist or eBay relatively inexpensively, but still enables you to make great photos!
I use this camera as a family camera, for things like going to the beach or day trips – it’s very light but allows you the freedom to enjoy the moment instead of trying to perfectly capture the moment technically like you would with a more professional body. I shot these all as jpegs and did minimal processing in Lightroom as there was not much room for it in these 6MP files.
It’s not a weather sealed camera or lens, it gets it’s fair share of sea-spray and sand, but wiping it down immediately and using some common sense has kept this camera in my life for many years now. The 55-200 lens is such a fantastic performer on this camera. Check this out:
If I didn’t tell you that that was a D40 with a budget lens, not many people would assume it.
The secret to photography is simple at its core. Have an interesting subject matter, find some quality light, and the technical stuff becomes terribly easy after that. Sure, what’s an interesting subject is quite subjective, and finding quality light involves manufacturing it on many occasions. Don’t even get me started on composition! And the technical stuff constantly evolves and changes – but you still can’t trust the camera to get it right 100% of the time so you need to understand the basics of exposure, which can take years of practice to fully understand and execute in real-life situations that require split-second reaction time from you.
STOP!
The moment is more important than anything else.
This moment captures the day perfectly for me because it was a happy Father’s Day:
Krista at CharlestonRIDE
My friend Krista is a spinning instructor at CharlestonRIDE and she asked me to help her make some environmental portraits at their studio in Charleston, SC. I was happy to oblige! We went for several different looks last Friday evening and I think we nailed it.
At the top of this post is an edgier look – very athletic and fierce. Just below it is a more traditional shot with here among the studio’s equipment. This shot is Krista with a bike, looking quite instructorly if I do say so myself:
The view from the windows at CharlestonRIDE are stunning, it’s a very inspiring place to work out! I needed some shots of Krista’s beautiful smile as it doesn’t always come through in a sports themed shot where the subject is usually putting forth a look of determination instead of a happy-go-lucky one. Here she is in front of one of their windows just after the sun went down showing off her happiness:
And here she is, in full on instructor gear at the head of the room:
Her daughter came along for the shoot, so of course…
I love working with awesome people like Krista, you can see the rest of the shots we made that evening here. I’ve also shot Krista before, as you can read about in this post.
Generations
>Janice called me up to ask if I could document her husband Bill’s four living generations, as well as some other family pictures while we were at it. Challenge accepted!
This photo above is of Bill’s mother and this is the first time in her 90+ years of life that she’s ever worn blue jeans! Below is the women of Bill’s family all together. The man’s got his hands full.
Here’s a shot of the newest generation, Aurora, with a baby blanket made by Janice:
The full set of photos is right here. We had a fun afternoon getting everyone together for this shoot. Thanks to Janice for pulling it together. Here’s a portrait I did of her while we were at it:
Art For Charity Photos
If you have one of these, you may be wondering if you’re in the right place, and you are! If you don’t know what this is about, read this first.
Friday night’s Art For Charity Event was a blast. I had a lot of fun shooting attendees, staff, & volunteers at the Michael Mitchel in Charleston, SC.
First things first, I want you to get to the photos.
To see and download all of the photos, please go here. You can also order prints from that website, and part of the proceeds will be sent directly to the Ryan White Program and Wellness Center!
You can also see all of the photos on my Facebook page. Please share the album and tag yourself and your friends!
At the top of this post is Katie Kern, who’s the PR of Art For Charity. Below is Michael Mitchel, who is the founder and is kind enough to host the events. These folks don’t do this for their own recognition (in fact they’ll probably hate that I’m focusing on them right here), but considering the fact that I deal in imagery, I thought it best to show them.
And here’s a shot of the volunteers for the event with staff members from the Ryan White Program and Wellness Center. All of these people certainly deserve a bunch of recognition for all of their dedication!
Most of the portraits were shot using paintings by Susan Colwell and Karen Keene Day as the backdrop! These paintings were in the front of the studio and made for the best location to do the photos. I thought it made for a very cool design element given the environment we were in.
