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Category: Projects

Krista at CharlestonRIDE

My friend Krista is a spinning instructor at CharlestonRIDE and she asked me to help her make some environmental portraits at their studio in Charleston, SC. I was happy to oblige! We went for several different looks last Friday evening and I think we nailed it.

At the top of this post is an edgier look – very athletic and fierce. Just below it is a more traditional shot with here among the studio’s equipment. This shot is Krista with a bike, looking quite instructorly if I do say so myself:

The view from the windows at CharlestonRIDE are stunning, it’s a very inspiring place to work out! I needed some shots of Krista’s beautiful smile as it doesn’t always come through in a sports themed shot where the subject is usually putting forth a look of determination instead of a happy-go-lucky one. Here she is in front of one of their windows just after the sun went down showing off her happiness:

And here she is, in full on instructor gear at the head of the room:

Her daughter came along for the shoot, so of course…

I love working with awesome people like Krista, you can see the rest of the shots we made that evening here. I’ve also shot Krista before, as you can read about in this post.

Generations

Janice called me up to ask if I could document her husband Bill’s four living generations, as well as some other family pictures while we were at it. Challenge accepted!

This photo above is of Bill’s mother and this is the first time in her 90+ years of life that she’s ever worn blue jeans! Below is the women of Bill’s family all together. The man’s got his hands full.

Here’s a shot of the newest generation, Aurora, with a baby blanket made by Janice:

The full set of photos is right here. We had a fun afternoon getting everyone together for this shoot. Thanks to Janice for pulling it together. Here’s a portrait I did of her while we were at it:

Baby Gabriel

Tamara & Michael’s newest addition, Gabriel, joins his big brother Jackson. If you’ve been following along with this blog, you may remember Tamara from her maternity shoot not too long ago.

These two are so sweet together, it’s pretty incredible. I don’t think I was ever this close with my brother 😉 It’s no wonder that my favorite shots are of the two of them interacting.

Here’s one more shot – an unexpected photo with dad who just happened to pick up Gabriel in the right place at the right time. You can see the full set right here.

I hope Gabriel’s future is bright and filled with good things, and he’s got a great family to get that life started with!

Lindsay’s Maternity Shoot

Lindsay’s maternity shoot was a gift from her friends to her and her husband Dustin. Needless to say, I was flattered to be asked to do this! I also had to deliver on something magical because she’s bearing twins, which makes for an interesting shoot since I feared that she wouldn’t be able to do too many adventurous poses. As you can see by the photo above, my fears were unnecessary. Using a piece of white fabric I picked up for the shot just below, I had Dustin holding the back of the fabric and while a fan blew it upwards, he threw the fabric up so it would catch the wind as she did her dance pose.

Lindsay also had some other shots in mind. I love a subject who is engaged in the shoot and has definite goals set. You know she’s working hard if she comes prepared. This one was one of her suggestions, a simple vintage looking shot of her holding her belly outside:

She also wanted to do the traditional hand-heart-belly shot, which we nailed, but then we took it one step further by making this shot with some eggs bearing their twins initials:

I love it because it’s a somewhat abstract family photo. I did the selective color because we only had brown eggs on hand, and I wanted them pink, but it looked odd in full color so I went with this.

We also did some clean studio shots on a white background. Lindsay was a trooper for this shot. She tried to keep those legs up, but the twins didn’t allow it 😉 We had Dustin hold her feet and I removed his hand in post.

We had to get at least one traditional family photo:

And finally, I wanted to share this shot. I simply love the look of pride in her expression.

I wish the best of luck to Lindsay & Dustin and their future family! You can see the full set of photos right here.

Eileen’s Bridal Shoot

Just a few minutes before the shot above was made, it started to drizzle. We were questioning if we would be able to catch a decent sunset or if we were just going to get rained out. I had the shot in mind, and in fact it was going to be the “closer” of Eileen’s bridal shoot. Everything was leading up to getting a sunset shot at the Battery, even though we got enough stuff for her to pick one as her bridal portrait. This shot was purely in the hands of mother nature, and man oh man did she deliver a powerful display in the air on Saturday night!

We started out in the studio to get some close-ups of Eileen’s pretty face. Once I got the shot I wanted, we jumped in my car and headed into Charleston. The first shot I planed was at the Judicial Center on Broad Street, but while we were parking, I drove down Magazine Street and remembered this cool church at the end of the street on Archdale. I pulled over and we quickly made this shot:

Next stop was the Judicial Center. I love to play with the square columns. There’s a lot of fun to be had in this little breezeway. I had Eileen’s matron of honor, we’ll call her VAL (Voice Activated Light-Stand), next to her hiding behind a column holding a softbox on a pole.

Next I wanted to get some classic Charleston going, so we headed to Tradd Street to take some shots.

Up next was a trip down East Bay Street to shoot some portraits at Charleston’s iconic Rainbow Row.

And then it started to rain. Just enough to make us nervous. We were so close and ready to go. As we were driving up the Battery to find a clear spot, the rain let up and the sky lit up. It was amazing. I parked quickly and was running across the street, C-Stand in hand trying to wave off a person who was going to park right where we were setting up. Time was of the essence, and that lady would have to just understand (thankfully she did with no question).

Just a note to all of you dog walkers out there: Can’t you just clean up after your dog? I stepped in doggie droppings while doing this shot, which thankfully was pretty dried up, but still… Gross. Didn’t matter in the end, because we got the shot we wanted and all was right in the world.

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.

Change For Change Portraits

The 2nd installment of the Change for Change Art Show has come and gone, and organizer Darryl LaPlante did a fantastic job of putting this whole thing together. Don’t let this bad ass look fool you, the man is a giant softie:

I had originally planned on attending and checking out the festivities like a citizen, but after a photo shoot got rescheduled at the last minute I decided to lug out my gear to the Mixon Barn and setup a portrait studio to work the show like a soldier instead. I had about 3 hours to plan the whole thing out, including designing & printing up these fliers to hand out:

Setup under a canopy strategically located between the bar and the porta-potties, this is where I made all of these photographs:

Show Me The Pictures

Sooooo, if you are one of my ~~victims~~ subjects, you’re wondering what I’m doing with all of those portraits we made. Well, on Facebook, you can check out the whole set here. Please go ahead and like my page and tag yourself or your friends in the photos. Share the whole album with your friends!

Also, If you really dig the photos, you can purchase prints of them here. Profits from the sale of these portraits will go to Change For Change to benefit Water Missions International. If your significant other got his/her portrait made, you pretty much will get the best Karma points in the world for buying him/her one of these, so get on that!

Here’s a slideshow of them all:

I definitely had a blast interacting with everybody. Some familiar faces, some new ones, and some I didn’t even know that I knew. Some of the Charleston art scenes’ best were on hand and I had a blast talking shop with them all.

Since there were also some talented local photographers in attendance, I was able to hand my Nikon over to one of them. Ryan Belk took over shutterbug duties and snapped this shot of me:

It’s nice being on the other side of the lens every once in a while. A beard like mine demands to be seen!

Thanks again to the organizers – I hope we made some loot for the cause 😉

Cinco De Awesom-o

What started as a bummer of a photography day after both of my scheduled photo shoots fell through at the last minute, turned into an awesome one! After reading this post from lighting master Joe McNally, I realized that this shit happens to even the best of the best. Instead of sulking around my freshly cleaned house wondering what to do with my newly found free time, I decided to take up an invitation from the local kiteboarding group (thanks Kathy) and head to the beach for some extreme sports shooting.

The timing was great – the sun started to set and the light was beautiful.

The crew of surf flying athletes were stoked about the news that just broke about Kiteboarding being selected for the 2016 Olympic games in Rio. Very exciting news indeed, I wonder which of these boarders could make it?

As the sun fell down in the sky and the boarders packed up, I stuck around to get some shots of the Perigee Moon, AKA, the Super Moon! I shot this moon last year at Folly Beach. This is what I got this year:

So I turned a disaster of a photo day around and met some cool people in the process. A bad day is only as bad as you let it become. You can check out the rest of my shots from yesterday in this set on Flickr.

Baby Aurora

If you’re a regular reader, you might remember Aurora from this post. Just as a reference, this was her home for the first couple of months of her life:

It’s hard to believe how perfect this little kid has become after such a scary start to her life. It’s also hard to believe that she was under 2 pounds when she was born – Look at those chubby little legs on the photo below!

Now, she’s able to do this:

It’s simply amazing how far she’s come. Aurora popped over to the studio this weekend to get her infant shots done, and we had some fun with her indeed. Nothing is sweeter than a sleeping naked baby though…

And you can’t forget to capture the details. Baby hands and feet don’t stay little for long 😉

And here’s a moment with her proud mommy, Crystal:

There’s magic when a baby connects for a split second with her eyes. It’s a special frame that you hope works out, because these looks are fleeting and hard to come by at this age.

You can check out the full set of photos on Flickr. I think the fact that we could even have this shoot was so much more special than anything I could say about it, so I’ll just post another pic to wrap this up…

Oh, she’s so cute I can’t stand it, just one more and then I’m outta here:

Michelle

I was approached by Dawn, who works with one of my clients, about her daughter Kayla who is showing an interest in photography. She wanted to see if Kayla could tag along for a photo shoot to see how things work beyond just clicking the shutter. I said that that would be cool, and it would be even cooler if we got Michelle (who also works for the same client) to be a model for us.

You can see why I chose Michelle, she’s pretty easy on the eyes as they say in the biz (or pretty much anywhere on the planet for that matter).As we were just going to be shooting different lighting scenarios, most of the shots we did were facial portraits.

We did some experimentation with gels and generally played around. She was a trooper!

And then I brought out one of the silly hats from the morning’s birthday party shoot 😉

She’d also make a pretty good country star with this look:

I also did some post processing in CameraBag 2. Nevercenter, the creaters of CameraBag, are running a sweepstakes with a pretty impressive prize, a brand new Canon 5D Mk III! You may recall that I’ve reviewed this software before. Here’s my entry into their sweepstakes:

So here’s a deal for you fine readers – the folks at Neversoft sent me some licenses for Camerabag 2 to give away to help promote the software and their sweepstakes! I’m going to give away 3 of them right here on this blog post. All you have to do is put a comment in this post (Make sure you use your real name and email address so I can send you the license key – don’t worry, your email will not be published anywhere). The first 3 comments get a copy of CameraBag 2 – That’s all there is to it!

Here’s another shot of Michelle using a similar filter as above:

One last shot of Michelle for you for now. I’ve got a bunch that I haven’t posted as well, but these are my favorites so far. I think she thought I was a bit insane when I asked here to do this last shot, but I absolutely love the look:

OK, so make with the comments people! I wanna give some stuff away 🙂

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