Event Photography – Page 2

Category: Event Photography

Fran & Coz

Coz contacted me a while back to schedule a “top secret” mission. I was to shoot his proposal to his girlfriend Fran.

As I waited in White Point Garden, which is the park along the battery in downtown Charleston, I was surrounded by bus loads of children. A bald guy with a goat tee in his mid 30’s hanging around a park alone with a camera. I was sure the cops were going to be called. Luckily, the kids left before my couple arrived (I wonder if they were just creeped out and it was more of an escape).

The glow and energy of what transpired was infectious. They really lifted my day up with their happiness. We walked around the battery afterwards and took some engagement portraits as well.

In the short time I spent with them, I could tell they were going to be a happy couple for many years to come. Congratulations Fran & Coz, I hope you two look back on these photos in 50 years and remember the day you got engaged. Don’t forget that bald guy with a ridiculously long goat tee who scared off some school children to capture these memories 😉

Brewvival 2013 – A Tale of Suds & Mud

A couple of years ago, my buddies Chrys & Robert asked me to cover Charleston Brewvial. Last year I couldn’t make it, but this year I was determined to go as a participant so I could fully enjoy one of the greatest events in the greater Charleston area.

I originally planned on taking my P&S P7000 with me, but when I woke up on Saturday morning I realized that the rain was not going to be forgiving and I would be happier using my free hand to hold an umbrella instead. The rain was such a presence, in fact, that it became one of the stars of the event.

Not one sit idly by without letting the photographic itch consume me, I did make proper use of my iPhone to capture my experiences. This shot just above was of the first of many who decided to not give any fucks and start playing in the mud. Put thousands of people on a muddy field and someone’s gonna get dirty. Add beer, and a whole lot of people will join in happily.

Photo by Chrys Rynearson of me taking the shot above

Lets not forget the true star of the event. Beer.

This year, sour was all the rage. Most of the brewers had a signature sour beer and they were almost all fantastic. I only dumped one glass the whole day because I just didn’t like the taste at all. While that might sound sacrilegious to some, when you have a tasting event like this, if you don’t pace yourself you will most likely end up like the guys in the photos above. That means choosing wisely. The best part is when I found a beer I truly enjoyed, I couldn’t wait to share it with my friends (and even some strangers).

There are countless articles written about the benefits of having a camera-phone like the iPhone because the best camera is indeed the one that you have with you. My piece of advice with iPhonography is the age old photographic wisdom of “If you think you’re too close, get in closer”. Be concise with your storytelling and know the limitations of the camera. For events like this, it’s all I need because the lighting was perfect (cloudy and outdoors), it fits in my pocket, and I can focus on the experience with friends because I’m “just another guy with a camera-phone”. Besides, it’s nice to let your photog friends do the heavy lifting while you tip a few back and act stupid:

I could have sworn Robert took this photo, but I guess Chrys was standing next to him! I’ll give the credit to Robert Donovan anyway since I was exposing myself to him 😉

Check out the rest of my photos in this Flickr set, also be sure to check out Chrys’ set, CHSBeer.org, and the official Brewvival Facebook Page.

Help-Portrait MUSC Kids 2012

Photo by William Long

On Friday morning, I was joined by 5 great volunteers to gift portraits to the families of children at MUSC Children’s Hospital in Charleston, SC. This was the 3rd Help-Portrait event I’ve led at the children’s hospital and every year it gets better.

Top Row: William Long, John Lindroth, Joseph Nienstedt
Bottom Row: Katee Cornette, Jen Pfeffer, Kathy Hare

Due to the nature of the event we hold and HIPA, I don’t ask the subjects too much about the nature of their conditions. Instead, my philosophy is a little different than most other Help-Portrait events. My goal for the team is to make these kids and their families feel normal. We treat them as if they were coming into a studio and walk them through the whole process. We also provide them with craft photo frames that they design for their portraits, which is always fun for the kids.

Photo by William Long

One of the children asked to see my camera, so I showed him how it works. Then he wanted to take pictures of our next subject, so we let him – and the portraits turned out perfect! In fact, we printed those out and gave them to the subject, and they loved them. This is exactly what we wanted to provide for these families – a fun event that made them forget why they were in a hospital.

Photo by Kathy Hare

Here’s one of the portraits that Tyreq made:

Photo by Tyreq

There are a lot of meaningful things that the families and hospital staff say, but one that sticks out was a parent who’s child was too sick to leave the room but really wanted to participate. Because it was the parent requesting it, we were able to send a photographer into the room and take their family’s portraits – something they haven’t been able to do because of their situation. The photograph meant so much to the parent that she figured out a way to make it happen. This was such an example of the power of a photograph and what it means to someone in need.

Photo by William Long

Please take a moment and watch this slideshow of images from the event. I hope the images move you even slightly as much as they moved us:

Country Wedding in the Fall

Congratulations to Bryan & Kara Peck on their wedding! I shot their engagement session in downtown Charleston, and now their wedding out in the country.

The wedding was outside on a perfect fall afternoon. Sunny weather, traditional BBQ, and great people made for a perfect day.

My wishes go out to Bryan & Kara for a long and fruitful marriage. I don’t think it will be long ’till I’m shooting some maternity/baby shots with the way these two lovebirds are going 😉

CupcakeCamp Charleston 2012

Listen, I just can’t find any more things to say about CupcakeCamp that I haven’t said here, here, or here. But, you need to understand that it still remains the greatest event ever conceived. Bakers make cupcakes. People eat cupcakes. Nobody loses.

So how could we improve on this experience? Easy, you bake cupcakes for it! That’s exactly what my wife decided to do. She did the research and narrowed it down to two recipes:

Harry Potter themed “Butterbeer” cupcakes

“Sweet Potato Casserole” cupcakes

I’ll tell you what, those Butterbeer cupcakes barely made it onto the display. As soon as I took these pictures, they were snapped up in record time! Don’t mess with the power of Harry Potter.

Here’s some other shots of cupcakes for your enjoyment:

You can check out the gallery of shots in this Facebook album as well. Be sure to tag yourself in any of the shots! See you at CupcakeCamp Summerville on Saturday, April 13, 2013 at 3 pm!

2012 Worldwide Photowalk Decisions

Kayaks at Shem Creek

Paddleboardering Under The Bridge

This past weekend was the 5th annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk all around the globe. We had a couple of groups participating here in Charleston, and I opted to walk with the evening group in Mount Pleasant.

Above are my two favorite shots that I made from the walk. I got a bunch of stuff I thought turned out well for a photowalk, as these walks are more about hanging out with other photographers and helping each other out than making a world-class photograph. I had the pleasure of hanging out with my daughter Mackenzie who was shooting with my Nikon P7000:

Mackenzie scopes out the graffiti under the Shem Creek bridge

She also volunteered to take the group shot, but I wanted her to be in it, so I grabbed my tripod and set the timer on my D800 to take this shot of the walkers:

Backlit sunlight, shade, and incandescent lights? The D800 fared pretty well at dealing with this mixed bag of lighting in the shot!

So anyway, the worst part of these photowalks is deciding which photo to submit as your favorite shot that you took on the walk. I’m torn between the two shots at the top of the post. The kayak shot is definitely more striking and grabs you first, and it has some excellent lighting as it was taken just as the sun was setting. The paddleboat shot is a bit more dynamic in my opinion. The subject is just plain awesome, I love the kid looking up at her dad while he’s paddling. I love the sidelight of the bridge trestle and the pattern that it creates. I love that the subject is framed within it. Ugggh!

While the sunset itself wasn’t spectacular at all (no clouds = boring sunset), I did get a descent photo of it here:

But, I’m not gonna submit that one because it doesn’t speak to me the way the other two do. So which one do you prefer? The Kayaks or the Paddlboarder?

Cusses/Royal Teeth/Heyrocco

3 bands. 3 shots. 3 exercises in ridiculously low light photography at The Sparrow in North Charleston…

Cusses

Royal Teeth

Heyrocco

You can see more pics here on my Facebook page.

Help Help-Portrait 2012

First off, lets start off with some great news, the date has been set for my Help-Portrait group’s now annual visit to the MUSC children’s hospital. We will be shooting on Friday morning, December 7th 2012. The actual worldwide date for Help-Portrait is the 8th, but the hospital can’t do this on a weekend, so we’re as close as humanly possible this year! The Help-Portrait community website hasn’t quite settled on what back-end technology they are going with yet this year, so I’ll be using this Facebook page to get organized. This leads me to the next thing I wanted talk about.

Help-Portrait needs your help! We’re turning to our local communities to pitch in and help us provide portraits to the families we’re serving. Here’s the deal:

Every $10 donation provides the ability for us to provide at least 3 prints and a frame to each family we shoot. What’s better is that for each $10 donation, Wacom (the makers of the pen tablet that I use to edit photos on a daily basis) is matching each donation! So for every $10 that gets donated, Wacom will also give a $10 donation that goes to our community. In effect, your $10 just magically became $20 because of Wacom! Also, if you are donating in Charleston, SC, the money raised stays in Charleston to fund one of our events (including the one at MUSC).

Here’s the link to donate: Donate $10

I know that this is a tough time of the year to ask for a donation, with schools and boy/girl scouts both doing their annual fund raising now, but time is of the essence! This is a Groupon Grassroots Campaign and is only running to Wednesday, September 26th 2012!

So, if you’ve felt the slightest bit of warmness in your heart for the service we provide, please consider helping out. Need some more convincing? Just check out my previous wrap-up posts here and here and here, and also here.

Art & Food Trucks

Charleston artist Patch Whiskey dominates the front of The Pour House

Today was another Food Truck Rodeo here in Charleston. This one took place at The Pour House on James Island.

Local food truck fans chow down on some good eats

I took my family to the event for lunch to enjoy some Roti Rolls (our favorite truck of the bunch), and my wife got an amazing sandwich from The Foodie Truck. We finished off with some peach beignets from The Creole Food Truck.

Maria Carlucci paints a flying frog mural on the backside of The Pour House

Prior to our trip to the rodeo, I had been shooting photos of some real estate for my wife, so I had my camera with me. It didn’t take long for me to break it out (I had barely given my food order for my “Abe Froman” sausage Roti Roll before I headed back to the car to get it). There were a bunch of local artists painting murals all over the pour house, including Patch Whiskey (featured at the top of this post and below), which of course piqued my interest.

Capturing artists making art while chowing down on local food truck cuisine – sounds like a good time to me 😉 See you all at the next rodeo!

CS6 For Photographers Seminar in Charlotte

I drove up to Charlotte, NC on Monday night and found myself in a Howard Johnson’s just outside of town. Sometime after 3:00 AM after watching 3 consecutive episodes of Breaking Bad on my iPad, I finally got to bed. I haven’t suffered from insomnia since I was a teenager, and boy was I unable to sleep. I knew I shouldn’t have taken a B12 supplement after dinner, but I didn’t want to get noddy during my drive after a long day of work. I can’t imagine having to suffer like that on a regular basis – its an absolute nightmare to me. Even more frightening was my alarm that went off seemingly instantly after I finally closed my eyes.

If you have ever seen the opening scene to Office Space, that was how my 20 minute drive that lasted almost an hour was as I headed to Charlotte’s convention center from my hotel. Regardless, I made it to the seminar in good time and got a great seat right up front behind the projector. The day long class, which was created by Scott Kelby, was being taught by none other than RC Conception.

RC did a fantastic job, teaching not only the material that Scott had put together, but also elaborating on it with his own insights and tricks. He’s an extremely approachable guy and it’s no wonder he is beloved by the photography community. He’s got a great sense of humor that never makes him look smarmy – he comes off as a guy you’d like to hang out with, which makes a day-long class on a piece of software much more manageable.

The photo at the top of the post is one I snapped of the classroom seconds before the start – RC is in the back of the class standing and waiting to be formally introduced by the Kelby Training tour manager. The shot directly above is of yours truly with RC. I handed my camera to one of the attendees (wasn’t hard finding a willing photographer there).

After the seminar, I walked around the downtown area looking for a bite to eat and enjoying the architecture.

There was this one mirrored sculture on a corner that this exchange student was getting her photo taken of in front of by her host family. A couple of us photogs were patiently waiting for them to be done, when I realized they were never going to be done! I walked away and came back 15 minutes later and they were still there! Well, now she became my subject!

I asked her permission first, and then explained to her hosts that the shot I envision involving this interesting art piece is of the reflections themselves. I snapped a couple of shots like this:

It was a nice little release of creativity after absorbing so much photographic knowledge all day! If you’re able to make it to one of the Kelby Training Live events, please do so. They’re not expensive at all and are a great experience.

123 4 5 6