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Category: Projects

Harley

I’ve got another great senior to show you tonight – Harley is a guy who loves the guitar, drawing, and cars. He hates my Prius because he says that if he drove one, his friends would kill him! I guess his friends don’t pay for their own gas just yet 😉

Here’s a shot of Harley with his brother and sister. This is one of those rare moments with 3 teenage siblings where they all did an amazing job at the same time!

And here’s a close-up headshot. Check out those baby blue eyes. I love the blue and red contrasts in this shot.

I also wore him out with lots of jumping (that’s what you get for hating on my hybrid!!!)

Harley’s a great guy who’s got a lot to offer the world, I know he’ll graduate to doing great things!

Olivia

I just wanted to share some of my favorite shots from a recent senior photo shoot with Olivia. She’s an awesome teen who also happens to be our babysitter. Our kids looooove when Olivia comes over, so I was very excited to have her over to the studio to make her senior portraits.

We had so much fun shooting at the studio that we totally lost track of time. We tried a bunch of different looks and setups.

When we went to pack up and head downtown for some sunset shots, it was already dark! Whoops… Well, I made some time for her the next night and we took a bunch of shots in Charleston.

At the end of the evening, I wanted to try something a little different. It was just after sunset and I lit the photo with a speedlight in a softbox. The ghosting effect is from zooming my lens as I fired with a 1/8th of a second shutter speed. The flash freezes the action while the zooming creates the motion. I love trying new techniques with my subjects – it gets everyone fired up when you get one that works (and even when it falls flat, it still creates a memorable experience).

I’m still running my senior session promotion, so there’s a little bit of time to get some unique professional senior portraits for this year’s crop of seniors at a great price.

Doing Shots

I shoot a lot of headshots. To some, it may seem like a pretty vanilla practice in the world of photography – A plain background and a simple shot of a face. To me, I think it’s one of the most intimately challenging things to do with a camera!

The expression says it all. The reality is that they are reflecting the vibe you put out to them. You want them to forget about the camera and just be themselves, but I’m under no illusion that that’s consistently possible in a 15 minute session. Most of my headshots are for business people who don’t have 2 hours to nail their headshot perfectly. For most of my clients, it’s a very quick interaction. For that, I’ve got to influence them as positively as possible.

Injecting confidence into a subject is tough, especially if you have 10 of them to do in a day. I’m challenged with not only keeping my spirits up, but lifting theirs within minutes of meeting them. Shooting a lot of event portraits has really tuned my skills for this kind of scenario. Once I get a rhythm going, I know the sessions will be good.

I’ve also put together a mental rolodex of lighting setups for various types of clients. the shot directly above was done with just the modeling lights and a very wide open aperture to give the portrait a shallow depth of field. This works well for some girls because of the extremely soft lighting. For guys, I like to have a sharp edge light on their cheeks like in this shot below:

My favorite setup at the moment is to literally bathe my subjects in soft light from above and below. It’s what I used on the photo at the top of this post. It’s so flattering, and also quite forgiving as it fills in laugh lines and eyes so nicely. It makes post production a breeze! Here’s another shot with this lighting setup:

Kara & Bryan

I just wanted to share a couple of my favorite shots from a recent engagement shoot I did in Charleston, SC.

We managed to get quite a few looks in two locations, the Charleston Waterfront Park and then sunset shots such as the one below at Mount Pleasant’s Waterfront Park! What can I say, I like the waterfront parks 😉

The couple was great and I hope they have an awesome life together!

The Philbeck Family

I was laying in the dirt for this shot, using my left leg to hold down some of the brush as I composed this shot. My wife Amy was on hand holding the light stand, and I think I may have disturbed an ant hill or two. The sun was falling so I had to be quick! Moments later, I hurried this family to the other side of the bridge into the tall grass.

The race was to get as many family shots off during the falling sun and to ultimately get this sunset silhouette of Allison & Eric:

My wife & I met the Philbecks a couple of years ago while we were on our first cruise. Like us, they were on their first cruise and they also got to leave their kids at home. Needless to say we hit it off! When Eric contacted me about shooting his family, I was more than happy to oblige.

It was interesting to get to meet their children, hopefully next time they make it down, they’ll get to meet our kids 😉

I was happy to give them a little personalized piece of Charleston to take home with them. Taking iconic photos in Charleston is almost cheating when it comes to location shots!

Fitness Portraits Tonight!

Sorry for the last minute notice on this, but I’ll be over at Eco Fitness in Mount Pleasant, SC tonight shooting portraits of club members, trainers, and staff at their club tonight, July 23rd, 2012. The event starts at 5:30PM, and there is also a Sushi tasting party courtesy of Charleston’s O-ku.

If you’re in the area, please come on by and say hi, have some free sushi, and get your photo made for their website!

Maybe Amy Hill (pictured above) will jump for you live in person if you ask nicely enough 😉

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:

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.

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