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Category: Insight

4th Annual Worldwide Photo Walk

Scott Kelby has organized the 4th global photowalk this weekend, and this year Charleston had two groups of walkers. After sweating my way in the daytime during last year’s photowalk, I opted for the evening walk led by Eugene Mah.

The group met at the fountain by Charleston’s waterfront park. I swear, I never made it out of the park! While we were setting up to take our group photo, I noticed some dancers practicing in the grass. As soon as the walk started, I walked up to the dancers and asked them if I could take some pictures of them. They were no strangers to the lens, so they were more than helpful models! Taz started out by doing leaps over me as I laid down in the grass:

Natalya was up next. I decided to mount my SB-600 on my tripod to try and illuminate her face as she was jumping. It was not easy trying to time the leaps – I’ve got about a dozen shots of her just before or just after the precipice of her jump. I did get this one though, which is all I needed 😉

While I was rolling around in the grass with a camera to my eye, a familiar face popped up – It was my local photog buddy Marty! He got some great shots of the girls as well.

As Natalya was resting, I made a casual portrait:

The sun was setting, so we moved over to the barrier wall to take advantage of the beautiful sky. Unfortunately there were no clouds, but I think the clear sky definitely influenced my compositions.

The light was quickly fading, I focused on shooting Natalya, while Marty was shooting Taz. We were both using off-camera flashes to light out subjects. I shot most of my shots with a Tokina 11-16mm ultra wide angle lens wide open at f/2.8. Natalya was doing splits (pictured at the top of this post) and stretches on top of the wall that would make a parent squeamish. She was awesome at this!

At this point, Marty and I realized that we spent almost the whole walk in one spot! More like a photo shoot than a walk – so we headed over to the fountain to get some long exposure night-shots of the water.

After that we went to the rendezvous point, a cool bar/grill called The Griffon. While waiting, we decided to shoot the old Chevy parked in front of the gelato place next to the bar.

I do love to take long exposures of people walking. This group of sailors made this shot:

We met up with some other walkers and went inside the Griffon to tell our war stories and watch the last half of Clemson’s trouncing of Virginia Tech. I shot the table next to us just because I had the shooting bug in me and found it hard to stop.

Marty, Eugene, & I went up on the roof of the parking garage where we were parked and tried to get some last minute shots. I had nothin’. It was late, surprisingly cold, and I was tired. My tiny little travel tripod was not having the wind up on the roof, and the shots I took up there are proof! Instead of making excuses, I made my way home 🙂

You can check out the full set of shots I made on my Flickr set. Also check out Marty’s set while you’re over there! Chuck Boyd was also on hand as were many members of his 21st Century Photography Group.

Which One: King Of Pops Umbrella

Chase Jarvis has a bit that he does on his blog where he asks his readers to pick from two alternate versions of shots he’s made and explain why you like one over the other. Here’s an example of his latest one. I thought I’d try it out here with two shots taken within seconds of each other. They are also shown in the order they were made in. I shot these with my Nikon Coolpix P7000 at the 2011 Carolina Green Fair this past Sunday in Marion Square. The subject is the iconic King of Pops rainbow umbrella.

Shot #1

Shot #2

So which one do you like, shot #1 or shot #2? Why? Sound off here in the comments, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Lola Fishing

Let’s talk about this photo for a minute. This represents the number one reason I love photography. Technically, the photo is an utter mess. The main subject is in the middle of the frame and out of balance, the color of the light is totally mismatched (and speaking of the light, there is a lamp growing out of the back of his head), there is a lot of distracting clutter (thanks to my kids sleeping on the couches because their mother is out of town for the weekend – which translates into instant domestic anarchy), and the composition is rushed so that the context of the bowl of pasta becomes just a bowl and it’s hard to tell exactly what it is my son is feeding Lola, our Pomeranian pooch. On paper, this photo is crap.

I love it.

Why? Because it’s real. I could set the same scene up and get everything right, and I bet I could make it look spontaneous as well. But, this is a real moment that was happening. I had my camera out and I was busy doing some stuff on my computer when I turned around and caught my son sneaking the dog some of his dinner. I crept up and put the camera down on the table and let the shutter rip. This was the result. I know what it is, I will remember it, and one day if my son has his own kids and they do what every kid seems to do if they have a dog, he will have a photographic moment from his childhood to make him smile about it. That’s the reason I was initially drawn to photography – To capture life’s moments so that we can look back or share them and connect with each other.

A photo doesn’t have to be perfect to have meaning. Capturing the moment is always more important than the technicality of the shot, although capturing the moment perfectly is always what we strive for. Careers have been made by the perfect blend of skill and being in the right place at the right time. A perfect shot of a lost moment is meaningless nonetheless.

It’s also another reason of why I love my iPhone. Today, my son Kegan had to tail me as I did some work with a client of mine, which happens to be a veterinary emergency hospital. He had a blast playing with the dogs there, and I was able to grab this shot with my phone as he let a Chihuahua play “King of the Mountain” on him:

Practice

I ordered a new backdrop last week for an upcoming event and I needed to set it up, iron/steam it, and test it out with my lights. I grabbed my kids as my test subjects and started to fire away. On my camera’s LCD, the shots looked great, but once I imported them to my laptop, I noticed that they were all underexposed. Sounds like a case of check the histogram! Digital cameras make a lot of things easy, but this is an example of the easiness working against you.

As you can see from the shots above, I was able to brighten these photos up in Lightroom. Sure, that’s a solution to a problem, but it’s a bad solution. The shoot I’m doing this for will be of a lot of different subjects in a short period of time. This means I need to get it right the moment I click the shutter. I will not have time to fix these shots, so I need them to be correctly exposed. I moved my lights to fill in more shadows, I added a reflector to the setup as well. I also increased my aperture by 1/3 of a stop to let in more of the flash. Most importantly, I turned on the histogram on my camera’s display so that I knew that the shots weren’t under-exposed. I’m also going to tether my camera to my laptop and not even bother to judge my camera’s screen.

This is the reason I like to test everything out on my own time. Sometimes very basic things will plague you, and I would rather make those mistakes during practice than while real paying customers are in front of me. I should make use of a light meter and test the backdrop and subject to find the right exposure, but I’m not shooting with studio strobes, I’m using speedlights. I am manually setting them even though I could use Nikon’s iTTL system, because I really want to have full control over the exposure. If anyone has a good light meter they want to give me, I’d be glad to make use of it 😉

I think we all have had plenty of occasions where we took a bunch of photos that looked great on the camera’s LCD screen, but once we looked at them on a computer screen the problems became very obvious. What’s your horror story of a blown shot?

Keep Shooting

I made the shot above after pouring a bowl of Cap’n Crunch for my son the other day. I liked the natural light coming through the windows and the vibrance of the colors of the cereal and bowl. After I shot it, I was working on my computer and I looked over as he was eating and saw a whole different shot of the same scene. I remembered being a kid and reading the entire cereal box while I would eat my sugary breakfast. Kegan was doing just that and when I picked up my camera again to capture this:

Same scene, but two completely different shots. I couldn’t say which one is better or more effective, but instead of one shot, I now have two that I love! I also recently parked near a church in downtown Charleston and decided to break out my camera. I started with the straight “real estate” shot:

First Scots Presbyterian Church - Charleston, SC

I walked around the church looking for interesting shots, and the view of one of the doors through the iron gates just screamed Charleston to me. Iron gates are one of the signature elements in the Holy City, as are the many churches.

I then recomposed for a vertical shot which turned out to be a very different photo:

As you shoot, it’s so important to move around and look for different approaches to the subject you are shooting. Joseph Stalin once said, “Quantity has a quality all of its own”, and as nutty as he was it makes a lot of sense. The more you do something the better you will get at it, and the more you produce, the better your chance of capturing the perfect moment or composing the perfect scene. In short, keep shooting.

Photo-Centric Social Media Explosion

I’ve been quite a busy bee lately, and unfortunately I’ve been neglecting you fine readers. One of the things I’ve been doing in my spare time (which is sparse) is checking out some of the newest social media sites. The one that’s been most intriguing to me has been Google’s Google+ (or Google Plus).

With it’s fair stance on content ownership, which basically reads that what you post is yours, not their’s, a large amount of Facebook-hating photogs have rushed to the new platform. There’s even a nifty Google Spreadsheet of thousands of photographers that are currently using the site. This is a very vibrant community that is still in Beta, and so far I find it a lot more fun and interactive than Facebook. It’s like a cross between Facebook and Twitter in that you can follow strangers/celebrities, but better because you can share only with specific groups of people as you see fit. I’m interested to see what happens when Google opens it up to the masses. Hit me up in the comments if you need an invite, as I usually have some in my account.

The next site I’ve been messing around on is 500px.com

500px.com started as a LiveJournal community back in the early oughts by two photographers, Ian Sobolev & Oleg Gutsol. The name came from early limitations the group set on photo sizes due to CRT monitors and slow internet connections. The original idea was to have a place for photographers to receive constructive criticism on their work. The site still aims at commentary by your peers, and it differentiates itself from Flickr by attracting artistic work instead of being a dumping ground for your cell phone shots or last night’s party pics. I find it very inspiring to browse the site’s most popular photos.

Finally, its a very quirky social experience that my wife turned me onto, Pinterest.com.

When my wife first told me about it, I thought Pinterest was going to be another bookmark site like Delicious.com. Once I looked at the site it reminded me more of Tumblr.com if it exploded all over your screen. It’s actually quite addicting, albeit hard to describe properly. The best advice I could give you is to go there and sign up (or hit me up for an invite in the comments). My first impression was that it was very feminine, but I quickly realized that it is what you make it by who you follow and what you post. Much like Delicious.com, they encourage you to create a “Pin It” link in your browser’s favorites to easily add any content you come across on the web to your “boards” (which are virtual cork boards that you can categorize your “pins” with).

Let me know if there are any other cool social sites for photographers that you use. Here’s my current list:

Flickr
Facebook
Twitter
Tumblr
Google+
500px
Pinterest

B&W Nikon Coolpix P7000

Since I started shooting with the Nikon Coolpix P7000, I’ve found that I really like converting a lot of the images to black & white in post. It’s not that the color images are lacking, but I think it’s more the style of shooting that the P7000 inspires me to take.

Much like when shooting with my iPhone, I find myself experimenting in more social situations. I don’t mean just hanging out with my friends, but being out amongst people. I’m sure it’s mostly in my head, but when I’m shooting with my DSLRs I feel like people are paying more attention to what I’m doing. When I pull out a point-and-shoot, I get the feeling that people write you off in comparison.

When I shot the Archers of Loaf, I was able to walk in with a camera in my pocket, and not get questioned by a doorman on a power-trip (or one just doing his/her job). I could get up close and shoot the whole night, which was pretty cool.

At the recent Tunguska Event art show held at Tivoli Studios in Charleston, SC, I could act like a fly on a wall and people just carried on without putting on pouty smiling faces.

And while hanging out at a friend’s house, I could focus on an interesting composition in between sips of beer and conversation without missing a beat.

To me, monotone images don’t take away color, they take away distraction. A black & white image simplifies the act of conveying your photographic message. With a smaller camera, I feel like I’m more care-free in my photography because I feel like people are more care free about me taking photos with it. While I love well thought-out shots that are purposeful, I also love capturing moments in life using the creative reflexes I’ve developed by shooting with my DSLR for the last few years. Both my iPhone and now my P7000 allow me to bridge that small strange gap between casual photography and artistic shooting. Strip a shot down to its composition, depth, and meaning, and you make a statement that begs for further attention than a color snapshot might ask for.

Family Vacation Photos 2011

I just sat down with my family and my visiting mother to do the old-fashioned post-vacation slide-show deal where we sat in front of the TV and went through our trip pictures shot by shot, reliving the adventures all over again. It brought me back to my childhood when my Grandfather would break out his slide projector and we’d shut the lights and close the curtains to watch them up on his portable movie screen. The technology has changed but the tradition remains, and I thought I would share some of the hi-lights of our recent trip with you.

Our trip started out at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL (I had a previous post with some of my shots of Hogwarts here). Our first stop was Olivander’s Wand Shop, where my daughter Mackenzie was chosen to be the wizard who gets to have a wand choose her.

While we were there mainly for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we did take advantage of the rest of the park, including Jurassic Park.

Kegan posed nicely on this typical photo attraction:

After a long day in Orlando, we drove over to Tampa to stay the night before embarking on our cruise. I shot this from our hotel room just after the sun went down:

The next morning, we woke up early and got some last minute shopping for stuff we forgot to pack and then headed onto the boat. We ate a quick lunch and greased our vacation wheels a bit with some umbrella drinks, followed by a jump in one of the pools. Luckily I had my Pentax Optio W80 in my pocket all charged up and ready to shoot.

Kegan stole some kisses from his mommy in the hot tub, while Mac took a spin on the slide:

As we departed from Tampa, I tried to get all artsy with the port scenes using my D90 with a 55-300mm lens.

As we left Tampa, we had to go under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which our cruise ship, the Carnival Legend, clears by only five feet.

The sunsets heading into the Caribbean are always a must-see show.

We spent a day at sea relaxing by the pool, drinking fruity cocktails, and eating soft-serve. Kegan shows us here how to walk on water:

Our first port call was in Mexico on the island of Cozumel. We woke up next to another huge cruise ship across the dock.

The plan for the day was to ride ATV’s through the jungle. Here I am with Mackenzie on our ATV adventure:

And here’s Kegan under a hole inside a cave followed by a shot of him holding a baby crocodile:

Here I am, all dusty and sweaty as we hike through some Mayan ruins wearing my Wild Tours helmet:

That was a blast. I wish I had grabbed a shot of Amy holding a python, which is something to behold if you know how much she hates snakes, but they asked us not to take pictures of their snake. The next day we visited Belize where we went cave tubing courtesy of CaveTubing.BZ.

We had to hike a mile through caves and the jungle with our tubes in hand.

After about 40 minutes of walking, eating fallen coconuts, and tasting termites, we arrived at the launching point.

We ventured into the dark caves, linked together, lazily meandering through the Nohoch Che’en Caves Branch Archaeological Reserve.

After the long journey, we were treated to lunch and all-you-can-drink Rum punch back at cavetubing.bz’s compound.

Before we got back on the ship, Mackenzie had to get some braids in her hair by the infamous Ruth Smith.

The next day brought us to the island of Roatán, where I awoke early to catch the sunrise as we pulled into the shipwreck ridden bay.

After a crazy taxi ride, we arrived at the Bananarama Beach Resort on West Bay Beach to hang out and do some snorkeling.

Amy & Mackenzie got to take a ride on the banana boat, where the whole island could hear Mackenzie yelling “BANANA!!!” at the top of her voice:

Since the West Bay Beach is a public beach, there was no shortage of locals trying to earn a buck from the tourists. These guys were at the least entertaining. Why not make a hat on the end of a dock or maybe catch a barracuda with your bare hands?

The kids had fun swimming out to the floating platform, and jumping off it as well.

The water was fantastically perfect. This was the one day I brought my D90 with me on the excursion and I couldn’t of picked a better place to make photos of paradise. I was able to do a little photo-walk on the beach alone for a little while and take in the sights.

At one point in the afternoon, my wife called me out of the water and told me to look up. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a full rainbow encircling the sun! I wanted to find an element to place it and decided that having the sun peek out from the palm fronds would be the perfect Caribbean scene.

Phew… only one more shore excursion to go. Here’s a shot of Kegan in our cabin making plans for the evening:

The next day brought us to Grand Cayman.

We decided to take it easy and took a quick cab ride to Calico Jack’s where I bought a bucket of local beer and floated in the ocean for a few hours.

We had one last day at sea before we returned to Florida. Here’s Amy getting ready for dinner:

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of one of the photographers that lined the sides of the atrium on the way to the restaurant.

On the last night, I took my wife outside to do our own photo-shoot. Here’s my favorite of the batch:

After spending a week with your service staff and if you’re lucky to get good people helping you out, you can’t help but get attached to them. Here’s Fernando & George with Mackenzie & Amy:

And this concludes my vacation presentation. I remember enjoying those “boring vacation photos” as a kid. Our vacations would go by quickly, but the photos brought us right back whenever we would view them.

Many of the pictures featured here were taken on my little Pentax point-and shoot, which, for a tiny little camera with a tiny little sensor, can be a convenient way to freeze your dirty, wet, and hot memories forever. That sounded dirty. Anyway, as usual, I have a slew of photos on my Flickr set.

A Day In NYC With A Nikon P7000

Last weekend I was in New York to catch the Archers of Loaf reunion shows, and on that Saturday, I had a few hours to kill before meeting up with my friends to go to the show. I had just received a new camera, the Nikon P7000, and really wanted to familiarize myself with the camera during this trip. Instead of doing a typical review of how the camera works (you can read those here and here), I figured I would just show you what I made with them and let you decide if you like the camera by what it’s possible of. If you’ve been reading my blog here, you know the kind of photography I make and you can see how well these photos stand up to my other work.

I started out in Astoria (which is a neighborhood in Queens for those of you who aren’t familiar) and walked a couple of blocks over to the train station.

I love public transportation in New York. During the day you don’t need to wait long for a train – who needs schedules?

After about 10 minutes, I arrived at the Fifth Ave./ 59th St. station.

I emerged from the subway to the sights and sounds I lived in for so many years in a past life.

My first stop was the cube Apple Store, which was completely covered with boards because it is under renovations – Not a problem, it makes for a more interesting atypical photo! Because it’s such a busy scene, the lines in the crosswalk come in handy as an element to draw your attention to the construction site in the center of this shot:

Just outside of the Apple cube was a brass band which was drawing quite a crowd. I snuck in from the street side and got in close – you can see my bald-headed reflection in the horn!

I was getting hungry and thirsty and I knew exactly what I wanted: A dirty-water dog. I didn’t have to walk far into Central Park to find a cart and a bench to sit on.

As I sat and enjoyed my mystery meat on a bun, I started to compose the scenes around me. Right across the way was a guitarist and girl eating her lunch. While the guitarist was interesting, I couldn’t get a good shot of the girl that was flattering because she was munching on her food the whole time. I figured I’d drag the shutter a little to get a pedestrian walking by and capture the motion. This was the result:

To the right was a pretty lady getting her portrait made:

I ventured further into the park, past the zoo, and through this tunnel to see what moments I could capture.

Isolating a person in a scene is a lot harder than you can imagine on a perfect Saturday afternoon in the park. I found this girl hanging out on the rocks – she wasn’t alone though. There were 8 other people on the same rock, but I found this angle to single her out:

As I walked further into the park, I started to hear live amplified music. I followed my ears until I came upon the Summer Stage. I walked in just in time to catch a set from Fitz & The Tantrums!

Fitz & The Tantrums at Central Park 2011

Boy, did that put me in a good mood! By the end of their set, there was nothing but smiles in the crowd. I had food in my belly, a song in my head, and a new camera to break in. You couldn’t ask for a better place in the world to be at that moment. I ventured back out into the park and stumbled upon some people doing the Tango in the middle of the path. I knew it was the Tango, because someone was kind enough to spell it out for me on the ground.

I decided to climb some rocks and came across this fantastic view – I fell to my stomach and quickly shot this as there was a clear people-less view!

I looked around and there were so many couples – it was quite romantic. I like this scene because there is a couple on the left, as well as a single guy looking over at a single woman. When coupled with the photo that follows it, there is a story of longing going on.

I really started to focus on couples for a while. This couple seems pretty focused on something off camera:

Here’s another couple checking out some photos on the girl’s camera:

It was sunny out for most of the day, and I was very happy to have an optical viewfinder on this compact camera – it’s a lot easier to see in bright conditions than the LCD screen. Speaking of the screen – It’s the same size as my D90’s screen! It’s bright and defined, and Nikon was kind enough to let you clear all of the visible data so you can shoot and view your photos without any clutter.

This couple eventually asked me to take a photo of them with their camera as well:

As I said earlier, I try to isolate my subjects, but in this photo you can see just how close people really are to each other:

It was time to head downtown to meet up with my friends. I put on my tourist hat and started taking shots of the buildings.

I absolutely love this action of this shot of a couple exiting F.A.O. Schwartz:

All of the shots I took in this series were made using the camera’s finest jpeg setting. I could shoot in RAW, but for purpose of this camera, which for me is primarily street and casual photography, the jpegs look downright amazing right out of the camera. I like to know that if I find myself in a situation where I know I will decide to do some extreme photo editing when I get back to my computer, I can switch to RAW. I did do some light editing in Lightroom on these, such as black & white conversions, cropping, & straightening, and tweaking of brightness & contrast.

I want to briefly touch on the features of the camera that stick out for me so far. If you’re a Nikon shooter, you should be pretty comfortable with the menu structure. However, I do find it strange how you can conveniently get to important settings using the camera’s quick menu dial, but you can’t get to all of those same settings using the menu button! The separation is a bit confusing. I also wish I could change the direction of the physical dials to mimic the way I have my D90 set up. I haven’t taken advantage of the User mode presets yet, but I think they’re a great idea. I really wish the exposure compensation dial was a dedicated ISO setting dial like the Canon G12 sports – it is a setting I find I’m constantly getting into. In fact, I had my quick menu set to the ISO function 90% of the time. I know it sounds silly, but I love that it has standard strap connectors so that I can use my favorite camera strap, the Domke Gripper. A good strap is something you shouldn’t overlook for your camera – if you you’re not comfortable carrying it, you’re less likely to do so!

This shot of a man on his phone is one of my favorite shots of the day – I walked up and was immediately drawn to the geometry of it all. I love the lines of the steps leading to the man and the pots and the trees at the top that balance it all.

I also love this simple street corner by the world famous Carnegie Deli. It’s not too busy and the tone made for a great black & white photo.

In conclusion, I friggin’ love this camera. It’s capable of taking very high quality shots in a small package. During this trip, I didn’t miss lugging around my DSLR and a bag full of glass. I was able to get great shots and look inconspicuous while doing it, which for street photography is a huge plus.

I took a lot of photos that day – you can see the full set on Flickr.

2011 Fireworks At Folly Beach

We had such a good time catching the professional fireworks display at Folly Beach last year that we decided to revisit the beach again this year. It did not disappoint! This year was a bit different as they did not launch the fireworks from the county park, opting for a more central location near the pier. This made for a cool backdrop of the hotel and pier. Prior to the show, I made this long exposure of the Folly Beach pier:

I was also photographing the direction of the state park and using a long exposure got a cool ghosting effect of the beach-goers and some fireworks set off by locals:

Like last year, I set up my tripod in the shore to get the reflections of the fireworks in the water. Unfortunately, just like last year, the wind & waves made my tripod vibrate and the fireworks trails are all squiggly! Next time I shoot fireworks at the beach, I’m bringing a bigger/heavier tripod.

Here’s the entire set of photos on Flickr.

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