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Category: Insight

Patriots Point Seabirds

There’s a spot at the Charleston Harbor Marina to the side of the marina offices out in the water where there are six pilings whose only purpose seems to be as a resting spot for the local seabirds.

I find myself working in those offices and usually walk around the side of to check out what’s going on on the pilings – usually, I’m only armed with my iPhone, which was used to take this photo below:

Last week I decided to bring my camera with me out on the docks and took some shots of the pelicans, seagulls, and cormorants.

This double-crested cormorant just landed after taking a swim and needed a place to dry off:

I haven’t posted anything in a week, so I thought I’d share this with you. I’ve got some fun things coming up, so don’t think I’m slacking off or anything!

Valero At The Oasis

After the rise of the super moon last night, I stopped over at the Oasis on Folly Road in James Island to catch a set from Clemson’s emo rock band Valero.

While I was somewhat prepared to shoot the moon over the ocean, I wasn’t prepared for a live band and I was really wishing I packed a f/1.8 prime lens with me because the lighting in the Oasis is just plain harsh. One side of the stage was red, the middle was green and blue, while the other side was barely lit at all.

I had my f/2.8 Tamron 17-50mm lens with me, so I set my auto ISO threshold to max out at 3200 (I usually have it limited to 1600) and varied between 100th and 125th of a second for my shutter speed, which was just enough to freeze the action. I did try to use my flash for some shots, but I wasn’t feeling it, and I didn’t want to annoy the band with a lot of flash activity. I tried to make the best of the lighting situation and get some low key shots such as these:

I also tried to play of the club’s Christmas themed stage colors which gave some interesting contrast to these shots:

Go ahead and check out Valero’s Bandcamp.com page to listen to their latest recordings, or check them out on their Facebook page. You can also check out the complete set of shots from Saturday’s show on my Flickr stream.

Super Full Moon 2011

Last night at sunset, the Perigee Moon rose in the east. This is the largest full moon since March of 1993 I gathered up family, friends, and neighbors to head over to the Morris Island side of Folly Beach to watch the sunset and moonrise.

Taking moon photos at the beach is not an easy task, as I quickly learned. I usually weigh down my tripod with my camera bag, but the wind at the beach made it less stable with the weight than without! Paired with the rapidly decreasing light, long exposures, and quickly moving orb in the sky, it was quite a challenge to get a decent photo of the moon. The other major challenge was the haze – it was quite difficult to focus clearly through it when the moon first appeared. By the time it cleared the haze, it looked no bigger or brighter than any other full moon. No big deal though, as I had the image on the top of this post envisioned when I set out. I wanted a simple graphic image of the scene and I got just what I wanted! I also wanted a moonlight reflection on a soft long-exposed ocean, which I got in the second shot – so I’m quite happy with what I accomplished. I would have liked to have made a shot from behind the trees, but most of the other photogs were getting that shot and I’m sure some of them got some really good results from there.

I was able to grab a couple of shots of the sunset when I arrived, and I think these fulfilled my “through the trees” shot aspirations anyway:

Robert Donovan was on hand as well and we got a chance to talk about photography while waiting for the big show. In fact, there were a lot of photogs there – I thought it looked like a photo studio when we crossed over the dunes onto the beach!

Here’s a shot of my daughter Mac at twilight. I think this was the only split second she wasn’t running around with the other dozen or so kids on hand.

There were plenty of kids running around and having fun, and this girl playing in the sand was the subject of my favorite photo of the evening:

Bees Up Close!

1/160th of a sec | f/10 | 100mm | ISO 160

While I was washing my car on Sunday, I noticed that the bees are out in full force in the bushes in my front yard. It sounds like a beehive in 2 of my bushes, with mostly honey bees, a couple of bumble bees, and even some wasps getting in the mix. After I was done with the cleaning, I grabbed my camera and started shooting.

1/500th of a sec | f/3.5 | 100mm | ISO 200

At f/3.5 in the photo of the bumblebee directly above, you can see how small the plane of perceived focus is. I hand-held the shots of the bumble bees because they moved so quickly and rarely stayed still long enough to get a sharp picture with a slower shutter speed/smaller aperture setup that I had to use a fast shutter speed and large aperture to get a properly exposed sharp image. I used my Tokina 100mm macro lens. Even though the lens can shoot at f/2.8, typically when shooting something like this, it’s best to use a smaller aperture. Since it’s a 100mm prime lens, some amount of bokeh will be present at even the highest f number (smallest aperture). In order to get more of the honey bees in focus, such as the shot at the top of the post, I needed to rely on my tripod.

I set the tripod up very close to the subjects, composed the image of the flowering parts of the bushes, grabbed my ML-L3 remote, and waited. A little patience and sooner or later a bee would come along and start gathering pollen. Prior to grabbing my remote, I was trying to stand behind the camera and manually fire the shutter. Besides being a bit nerve-wracking, I noticed that the bees all seemed to have moved to the other side of the bush while I was standing there. I guess they were more intimidated by me than I was by them. After I stood back a bit and used the remote, they came right back to the front of the bush again.

Much like shooting the hummingbirds in my front yard, the key ingredient is patience. If you can allow yourself to slow down enough to wait out shots like this, the reward is much more than just a cool picture, it really is a zen-like experience.

Water & Western North Carolina

A few weeks ago my family went to the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina for a weekend getaway in a tiny little cabin on the side of a river in a town called Bat Cave. We did some hiking, checked out waterfalls such as the one above at Pearson’s Falls, spent a day at the Biltmore Estate, visited Chimney Rock (pictured below), and of course shopped at all the touristy shops.

I also took some time to try and teach the kids a little bit about photography. The kids love when I let them shoot with my D40! This shot below is of my son on the side of Hooker Falls sporting the greatest little DSLR ever made.

I used this shot below as a lesson on using long exposures to shoot running water. I showed them that if you set the aperture to a really small setting (which means larger f number), then you are able to set a really long exposure time which gives the running water a glassy and smooth effect. This was shot at f/22 for 1/2 a second. I used the guard rail on the edge of the trail to brace the camera since we were sans tripod on the hike.

I like hiking in the mountains, everything just seems so photogenic. Maybe it’s the change of scenery from living near the coast, or maybe it’s the way things are designed to compliment the environment such as these steps on a mountain trail.

There are times when we’re driving through the hills and I scream “pull over now!” so I can capture scenes such as this:

I’m sure when people come to the beach, the plantations, the city, or swamps of the low country, they get the same kind of excitement. Physically taking yourself out of your comfort zone can be a very inspiring act. It’s quite true that the spark of inspiration is easily lit by doing something different. The struggle is finding the new inspiration in your own backyard!

This is my family on the last day of our adventure – what a rag-tag bunch we were after a few days in the back woods! Gotta love that ML L3 Remote in my right hand – I was over 50 feet away from the camera outdoors, and it worked like a champ.

Evans Rehearsal Dinner

I had the pleasure of shooting a wonderful couple’s wedding rehearsal dinner at Waters Edge at Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant, SC this weekend.

Beau and Kathryn Evans are two beautiful people whose awesome mother, Donna Evans hired me to shoot this event for their family.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite pics from the evening. We had a great location at a great time of day with perfect weather – You couldn’t ask for a better combination!

There was music, shagging, and shucking, oh my!

The more events I photograph, the more I realize how important it is to know your camera inside and out. I can’t tell you how often I double-check my camera and almost every time I do I find that a crucial setting has been changed, a button mashed, or dial spun that would have otherwise ruined or missed a moment. I don’t know how many times I would find myself chimping the LCD screen in the past – after a number of phantom setting changes, I do get real paranoid that I’m blowing the shots! The more I do this though, the less I need to check my screen because I accept that while I’m communicating with subjects, and squeezing through crowded bars, my camera is busy taking on a life of its own, so I check my settings before I press the shutter.

It’s also handy to keep a mental baseline of settings for each environment you shoot in. That way you can quickly reset the camera to that baseline and work up from there. I still find shooting people at sunset is the hardest time because the light changes so drastically with every passing second. Event photography is very fast-paced, so any method you employ that will gain you precious seconds looking through the viewfinder is the difference between getting a great moment or just missing it.

Biltmore Estate in the Winter

A couple of weeks ago we spent the extended weekend in western North Carolina. One of the days was spent at Asheville’s Biltmore Estate. How do you shoot a touristy estate that forbids photography inside and is littered with pixel peepers on the outside?

Well, one answer is to get in close and get the detail. Try and isolate a subject and create a graphical image of it in its surroundings.

The property is littered with great statues – most of them with a major subject and a minor subject interacting. The challenge is positioning yourself in a way that incorporates the background in a non-distracting way. The image directly below uses the lines of the staircase to draw you into the figure of the cherub, while the bushes behind provide contrast.

Getting in physically closer, but zooming out shows how a similar composition can look completely different! I had to depend on color to get the right contrast to isolate the statue here.

And this photo of a statue works best by getting low and letting the blown-out cloudy sky act as a white background.

During the winter months, some people wouldn’t see much value in a landscape devoid of lush vegetation. I tend to enjoy the look of the barren trees and yellowed grass mixed within the evergreens.

Finally, capturing a moment is one of the most exciting things to do when shooting in a place like this. It’s like a little gift when you have an amazing background and a subject to place within it. The couple was enjoying the view when I happened upon them (from the stairs in the pictures above).

That’s how I attack a situation like this – by getting closer, moving around, and seeking out moments. What’s your method?

Second Sunday On King St.

Late last year, the city of Charleston decided after the success of the “Do the Charleston” festival to regularly close King Street to traffic on the second Sunday of each month so that the pedestrians could take over (you can read more about the origins here). Today I was finally able to bring the family for an afternoon downtown and also to do some street photography.

The diptych above was a group of people watchers in Ye Ole Fashioned Ice Cream and Sandwich Cafe. They were having a blast commenting on what everyone was wearing, and I told them I was turning the camera on them next!

1/100th of a sec | f/4.5 | 62mm | ISO 200

It didn’t take long for me to start looking for some decent light and interesting people to shoot. It was mid-day, so the light was harsh and three quarters of the street was in shadow. I found that the slivers of light between buildings was a great side-light opportunity and looked for opportunities to use it.

I also looked for people who were doing just ordinary things, like eating some lunch…

…or drinking some coffee…

…or talking on the phone…

…or walking their dog…

…or flipping me the bird while double-fisting some beverages…

…or looking as happy as can be…

…or just as pretty as can be.

I was hoping to get a lot of shots of people dressed up as characters from the “Where’s Waldo” series as there was an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people dressed like Waldo in one place (more info on that here). Unfortunately, they fell quite short of the record. I did grab a shot of these two festive Wandas:

As with any outdoor Low Country event, the dogs were out en masse. I think the next time I attend one of these Second Sundays I’m gonna focus on capturing the dogs – there were so many awesome dogs out.

Getting down to the dog’s perspective makes for an interesting composition:

These dogs looked really excited to be out and about:

I also made some black & white shots – I knew when I shot this one that it would be perfect as a monotone image – the contrast and negative space are just shouting to be devoid of any distracting colors.

All in all, I had a blast and cant wait to do it again. I have a hefty set of photos on my Flickr stream if you want to see some of the other shots I made today. Street photography is a fun and exciting way to exercise your creative mind, and you end up meeting interesting people in the process.

One Year Ago Today

I was searching through my Flickr stream for some valentines day photos when I realized that one year ago today, Charleston, SC was buried in snow! I know my buddies up north aren’t that impressed, but I think it’s surreal to see palmetto trees covered in snow:

Mac Reenacts A Scene From "A Christmas Story"

The snow started vanishing by that afternoon, but the kids made the most of it while they could. They built snow forts:

Had snowball fights with the neighborhood kids:

Tried to make a snowman:

And of course, made snow angels:

With all of the snow that the rest of the US has gotten this season, we’ve been able to grin as we put on nothing more than a sweatshirt to stay warm here in the low country. These photos remind me that it’s very possible to be put back in our places with a good old fashioned snow storm. My hammock just doesn’t look so relaxing in all of that snow!

Looking back on the technical side, I should have manually set the white balance on these shots – it’s all over the place when using AWB in the snow.

Walking The Shem Creek Bridge

1/30th of a sec | f/2.8 | 17mm | ISO 200

Last night I was driving through Mount Pleasant as I find myself doing on a pretty frequent basis, and the time was right, the location was right, and I was prepared. I approached Shem Creek just as the sun was bidding adieu to the coast of South Carolina and pulled into a parking lot. I slung my camera on my shoulder set to manual mode with a fixed ISO of 200 and started walking up the bridge. As I approached the middle, I quickly brought the camera up to my eye and checked the internal light meter. As I tend to do, I made it set to be ever so slightly under-exposed and started firing away. this is what I caught:

1/80th of a sec | f/5.6 | 55mm | ISO 200

I dug the foreground of the boardwalk, so now I wanted to isolate the mid-ground area a bit more. I took a few steps forward and zoomed in a little to get this:

1/100th of a sec | f/8.0 | 72mm | ISO 200

All the while I keep adjusting my exposure values – specifically the aperture and shutter speed. In the moments just after a sunset, every second that passes dramatically changes the light. Once again I took a few more steps forward and zoomed in a bit tighter to get this:

1/60th of a sec | f/7.1 | 100mm | ISO 200

I checked the back of my camera and knew I had the shot I wanted. Now It was time to explore. I kept walking and came up to a glorious blue building that rents kayaks and has a seafood market in the back. How blue is it?

1/20th of a sec | f/4.5 | 55mm | ISO 200

That’s pretty damn blue. I needed to capture the entrance to the building. When you get that kind of red against that kind of blue, you can’t go wrong.

1/20th of a sec | f/4.8 | 125mm | ISO 200

I really dug the convergence of lines from the wood siding and the angles of the metal roof. The light was really starting to fade, so I switched out to a faster lens and shot this:

1/13th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

I decided to look down off the side of the bridge and lo and behold, there were a couple of pelicans perched a few feet below me. I braced the camera on the railing of the bridge and composed some shots of the big birds.

1/30th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

When shooting in this low amount of light at pretty slow shutter speeds it’s quite difficult to capture these birds sharply. They never cease twitching their beaks and adjusting themselves when you are as close as I was. It’s best to set your shutter to burst mode and let it rip once you have your composition. You can shoot a dozen shots and possibly only get one that’s decently sharp if your lucky! You could always bring out a flash, but you’ll get one chance before you send that bird soaring to the other side of the creek.

1/5th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

I was quickly losing light, I was shooting at speeds that require bracing the camera on something sturdy, and I was getting pretty damn cold (at least for just a sweatshirt – guess I wasn’t as prepared as I thought). I only had a couple of more shots left in me, so I started to get a busy composition of the waterside of the blue seafood/kayak building when one of the birds flew right into the composition and landed in the perfect spot to become the focal point of this shot:

1/5th of a sec | f/2.8 | 50mm | ISO 200

Talk about a lucky break! I started to walk back to my car and fired off the shot at the top of this post. The color in the sky was no longer as magnificent in this location (although as I drove home the colors in the sky were unusually deep – the horizon was almost brown for a few moments). I decided to create a split-tone image which basically worked out as such: I first converted the shot into a black and white image, and then I gave the highlights an orange tone and the shadows a blue tone. The result is what you see above. It can add a little more mood to a black and white image as well as make something starkly different. It definitely stands out amongst the rest of the images I shot last night.

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