Inspiration – Page 2 – JWNPhoto.com

Category: Inspiration

Being A Tourist

For my last post about my Caribbean trip, I wanted to showcase some “touristy” shots. That is about capturing the events, people, and places that make a trip special.

I love a good landscape, but I love a pseudo-landscape shot with other people in it even better. The shot up at the top as we docked in Mexico, or the shot just above in Haiti as a tourist takes some landscape shots. This shot below is more subtle, but there’s a bartender in the background getting the bar ready for the day in this sunrise shot.

And why not hand the camera off to somebody else to get yourself in the shot? In fact, I often go out of my way to offer up cameraman duties on trips like this to strangers because I know how important it is. Here’s a picture of my wife and I taken by our tour guide as we make a stop during our dune buggy adventure in Cozumel.

And here’s a shot of me snorkeling – I handed the camera off to my wife for a while so I could play:

Haitian fire-eater? Yes please!

I also put some collages together from each excursion to showcase the moments from each day. Here’s one from Jamaica, where we visited Bob Marley’s childhood home and mausoleum.

This particular trip was exciting – we took a 2 hour drive through Jamaica and got to see so much of the real countryside and villages. It’s a beautiful country. One of the things that make the Bob Marley Mausoleum an interesting place is that they honor his Rastafarian roots and allow the purchase and smoking of Marijuana. Even this cat looks like he partakes in the tradition:

In fact, the first thing you see when you exit your vehicle upon arrival is this guy in the window selling his wares.

And last, but not least, don’t forget to participate in any local customs or touristy attractions. Yes, that’s a healthy mixture of joy and fear on my face…

– TTFN

In The Water

In my previous post, I showcased some of my favorite sun-related shots from my recent trip to the Caribbean. Today’s post will feature some shots in and around the water, mostly with my Pentax Optio W80 compact point-and-shoot camera. I bought this camera a few years ago after realizing that a proper underwater DSL housing costs more than a DSLR. I just wanted to play around, so a point-and-shoot was perfect for the job. Nowadays, waterproof point-and-shoots are relatively inexpensive and every major manufacturer has something to offer. I highly suggest picking one up – they make capturing moments like these a lot simpler.

The shot of my wife Amy at the top was taken at Stingray City at Grand Cayman. This is my favorite shot of the whole trip because it tells a very concise and complete story of the day, which is simply that we rode out to Stingray City on jet skis and kissed some ‘rays. The shot just above was from Cozumel. After a long day of riding up and down the coast on dune buggys, I was able to rinse off some of the dust and sand in the sea. Here’s a shot my wife took of me while we took a break during the buggy adventure:

Here’s a shot of Amy snorkeling off the coast of Grand Cayman:

This last shot was taken with my D90 on the coast of Haiti. While I’m not technically in the water, I was right at the shoreline trying to capture the sea-spray. I must have looked like a maniac shuffling back and forth trying to avoid getting doused every time the water broke. But, I got a few shots from it that I like:

Check back again soon for some more Caribbean coverage.

Happy 2013!

New years eve/day is a time to get with friends and loved ones and have a great time – I hope everybody reading this was able to celebrate in their own special way, and I hope you make 2013 the best year ever!

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:

Fun With Shapes & Holiday Lights

Here’s something fun that you can do with your DSLR (or any camera that lets you shoot out of focus).

1) Cut a shape into an index card
2) Set your camera to manual focus and defocus it so that it’s completely out of focus, or use a large aperture and shoot something in the foreground in focus so that the background is out of focus.
3) Hold the index card in front of your lens and try to center it so that all of the points of light take your cut-out’s shape.

Here’s an example with something in focus in the foreground (the shapes are less dramatic here, but you can start to see some more creative possibilities):

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.

Lovely Reminders

Last night as I was laying in bed, I had this thought in my head about losing touch with photography by getting wrapped up in one of the multitude of aspects surrounding this business. When I first realized that I love this stuff, I was like a teenager head-over-heels over his first real relationship. Those amazing and wondrous emotions in the beginning that consume you as you explore what it is about this person you’re obsessing over that makes your stomach ache at the mere thought of them. Then, the feelings mature and you become more functional and less passionate. Sometimes when the fog of love clears a bit, you find out that she really isn’t all that interesting to you anymore and then you move on.

One of the greatest fears that plagued me when I decided to take the plunge and become a professional photographer was idea that I might find the work less than intriguing over time and become merely functional instead of inspired. Instead of searching for the light, I’d be searching for a compromise. Instead of creating, I’d be replicating. Instead of loving it, I’d be simply going through the motions.

This morning as I walked down the steps of my front porch, something caught my eye. In the center of one of my wife’s little succulent plants that she’s been collecting for a project she’s working on was this giant water droplet. It caught the light and was glowing like a diamond. I was absolutely entranced by it and went back inside to grab my camera. Then I noticed how all of them were retaining water in a similar fashion.

As I moved from plant to plant I realized that I was shooting for the love of it. I saw something interesting and captured it in a way that conveyed what I felt. Like an answer to a wish, I felt a calm come over me as I realized that I’m still in love.

Required Viewing For Head-shot Sessions

Duncan Davidson: Why do we hate seeing photos of ourselves?

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:

Faces

I just love faces. I’ve been making my subjects let me shoot close-up shots of their faces lately because I just find them so interesting, both in a human sense as well as an artistic one. That human face is such an amazing and dynamic canvas of emotion. Every split second is different than the next (at least if I’m doing my job right – I don’t like it forced).

The photo above is Eileen’s face as we got ready to do her bridal shoot. The one just below is my daughter’s friend Michaela who got nabbed as my test model while I was setting up my lights.

Next up is Lindsay, who came by the studio for a killer maternity shoot. She’s pregnant with twins and was so gung-ho to get some cool shots. I was amazed by how good she did!

Finally it’s Gabriel, who is not getting his senior portraits done for another 16 years…

I’ll have a few new posts coming soon to show some of my favorite shots from each shoot (you can see some of those now on my Facebook page). I’m also shooting at another art show at the beginning of next month, so check back soon for details on that as well.

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