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Category: Projects

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?

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.

Angel Walk 2011

On Saturday, May 21st the 2nd Annual Angel Walk took place over in Hampton Park in Charleston, SC. Questioning the predicted rapture for that day, I felt the best way to find out firsthand was to walk with Angels… OK, bad jokes aside, the Angel Walk is actually a fundraising and awareness event to fight medulloblastoma, which is the most common malignant central nervous system tumor in children.

I found out about Dawn Sechevich (pictured above on the left) and her son’s story through my neighbors who are close friends with her. Her boy, Luke James Sechevich, was diagnosed with high risk medulloblastoma on January 30, 2006 at the age of 1-½. After a long battle, Luke passed away in January of 2008. Dawn organized the Angel walk for Luke and all children who battle this disease in the hopes that they will someday find a cure. Read the full story on the Angel Walk website. Here’s a clip of her story from Lowcountry Live:

Let’s talk about the event, which was an uplifting and fun-filled family day in the park. There were a lot of activities for the kids, great food, and performances throughout the morning. Face painting, hair spraying, caricatures, the King of Pops, and jumping cows!

The Djole Dance & Drum Company livened up the event with African beats and dancing:

The Charleston Police Pipes & Drums band stormed the event with a fantastic set of traditional bagpipe music…

Melinda Gay & Dawn Sechevich pose for a shot with the band:

One of the highlights of the event for me was the singing of the gospel choir that closed out the day. There really is nothing quite like a southern gospel group to make you feel like you can believe in anything.

There were a lot of other people involved in making this event happen, especially the doctors and staff from MUSC Children’s Hospital as well as all of the sponsors who donated money and vendors who donated their services and products. Make sure to browse through the Angel Walk website and throw some support to all of the sponsors on there.

While I do have a big old set of photos on Flickr, I have an even bigger, more thorough set of pictures in my gallery with the ability to download for all of those who participated!

Don’t forget, you can always donate some money at any time through this charity, so please help them out, and tell all of your friends to “Like” them on Facebook as well!

First Flush Festival 2011

Normally, I despise day-long outdoor festivals. Big crowds of sweaty people, oppressive heat, lousy sound, bad light, & $5 bottles of water. This year’s First Flush Festival broke most of the rules. You couldn’t ask for better weather, giant fluffy clouds peppered the sky providing not only moments of natural shade, but great light diffusion. The sound was great for an outdoor venue and since it was on the Charleston Tea Plantation, there was free sweet tea for all! There were still big crowds of sweaty people, but there was plenty of space to move and still enjoy the music.

Vermont’s Grace Potter & The Nocturnals headlined the event with their brand of straight-up rock n’ roll. My daughter was especially excited to see Grace Potter because of her cover of White Rabbit on Tim Burton’s Almost Alice soundtrack. She couldn’t believe that someone “famous” (by her standards) was in Charleston!

Outdoor stages like the one at First Flush Fest are not designed to tailor to photographers, they are meant to make a comfortable environment for the musicians. Since event photography is a lot about troubleshooting the situation to make the best image you can, I decided that most of the band shots should be close-up and tight. Even in this photo, which I tried to pull back enough to get multiple band members, shows the back of a pick-up truck in the background among the rest of the distracting stands and such.

Another tip is to move around. Unfortunately for me (not for the band), it was packed up in front of the stage. I did not have access to the photo area, so I was limited by the fact that I didn’t want to push my way around spectators while they were enjoying the show. I did manage to move to the side of the stage and get some less distracting shots of the band members:

I realized I wasn’t going to get the perfect clean shot organically of any of the bands, so I did take one shot of the bassist and blow out the background enough to make it look like she’s in front of a white background:

The band was great and Grace Potter has an amazing voice (and range – she can hit notes higher than I thought humanly possible).

Music wasn’t the only attraction. The food trucks were there making me wish we arrived a bit earlier – there was a hole in the pit of my soul when I walked up to Roti Rolls only to find out they’re out of rolls! My wife had a similar experience when they were out of her favorite tacos at Taco Boy’s truck. Oh, what a world, what a world. We did manage to score some hand-made ice pops from the King of Pops:

The was also shopping and jump castles and hula hoops for the kids to entertain themselves with.

Not to mention the old fashioned fun of climbing a tree. I mean, why else would they let their branches hang so low but as to invite kids to jump up and climb?

I’ve been hearing about the band Leslie for years now, and I finally got a chance to see them at the FFF.

If AC/DC had a bastard child while touring in the south, the tucked away little gem would sound a lot like Leslie. Loud, guitar driven southern rock. They truly impressed the crowd with their energy.

They have had their band photos made in the past by the likes of Zack Arias, so I think they’ve got to have good taste 😉

They also won over my daughter by giving out free posters and stickers, and making themselves available after their set for pictures and autographs. Here’s a tip to every band out there – young kids will be loyal if you give them a solid reason to be – Treat your fans like fans!! Leslie didn’t disappoint. Check out this photo of Mac with the band:

Unfortunately there’s a random dude growing out of my kid’s head. Sometimes you just have to deal with it 🙂 Before I forget, you can check out all of my photos from FFF on my Flickr set (as well as last years pics if you have time). And to wrap this up, I bring you a picture of “Broadband”. This guy stopped me in the crowd and assured me that I needed to take his picture and publish it on my blog. Who am I to disagree with a guy named Broadband?

I Love NY

I spent this past weekend catching up with my best friends and former schoolmates in New York. While Times Square and Grand Central Station are not my favorite places in NYC, they are the places I spent a lot of time in while working at MTV and going to school in the MetLife building before that.

My buddy has this amazing idea for a reality show based around a very unique guy’s life and the people around him. The backdrop is Manhattan and while I was visiting he had to capture some b-roll of some of NY’s more well known sights. I decided to tag along and shoot some stills in these locations.

It’s hard to find a different or new way to shoot a place that literally tens of millions of people have photographed before. My attitude is to just be myself. I looked at the scene and thought of how I would like to arrange the elements from the vantage points I could reach. I also looked for moments such as this cab driver grabbing a snapshot:

Taxi cabs are to NYC as gnats are to Charleston, and I shot this scene of a taxi stand next to Grand Central Station to capture the movement of them.

I moved behind the stand a few feet after I noticed the homeless man in the shot to the left of the stand. I wanted to get a shot of him while people walked past him. The idea was inspired this shot by David duChemin. I like the idea of the forgotten soul who’s like a fixed installment of a given NY scene.

I had to catch a train back to meet up with another friend and I know that the transit authority is not keen on people taking photos in the subways, but I managed to grab this shot with my iPhone while waiting for the train back to Astoria:

Change For Change Art Show Recap

Last night was the Change for Change Benefit Art Show at the Music Farm. It was the first show of this kind organized by Young & Free SC. The rock club was transformed into a DIY art gallery and was showing some of the Charleston area’s coolest underground art.

The art show focused on attracting the college-aged youth of Charleston and introducing them to what the local art scene is producing and offering a lot of it at affordable prices.

And the art wasn’t just on paper, it was in your ears and mouth as well. The Music farm exploded with the sounds of Heyrocco…

Next up, Meet The Sky took the stage:

I also had a blast hanging out with photographer buddies Robert Donovan and Jonathan Stout, who have proven to me that the best photographers have great senses of humor. Here’s a shot of BadJon Stout getting ready to devour some meat perfection from Hello My Name Is BBQ:

And Robert Donovan shows off his “Hey Ladies” pose for the camera here:

I’ll update this post with more info on how much $$$ was raised for Water Missions last night – It was for a really good cause and the organizers did a bang-up job on their first swing at this.

As usual, I took a bunch of photos which you can view in a set on my Flickr Stream.

Change For Change

*UPDATE* Photo Essay recap of the event is right here – we had a blast!

So what are you doing on Thursday night between 7:30PM & Midnight? Why not come see some local art and photography in a cool atmosphere? What about live music by Meet the Sky and Heyrocco – maybe you’d like to hear JeffET spin some music for you as well? What was that? You don’t have a lot of cash this week? It’s free admission!! You have no excuses – bring the kids too.

So, what is Change for Change you ask? From their press release:

For the months of March and April, Young & Free SC is working hard to raise $25,000 for Water Missions Intl – a locally based, international organization. We’re raising the money to put in a water purification system in a community in Africa.

To wrap up our fundraiser, we’re hosting an art show at the Music Farm on Thursday, May 5th. Artists from all over, of all different genres, will be there. Artists will donate artwork to be sold at an affordable price. All proceeds from the donated art sale will go straight to Water Missions Intl.

Here’s a video about Water Missions:

Water Missions Promo Video – Haiti 2010 from Water Missions on Vimeo.

I will be there showing and selling my work – if you like the stuff I do, this is your chance to purchase some of it at the cheapest prices ever!

Here’s the list of confirmed artists:

Jason Smith
Patch Whisky
Matthew Foreman
Robert Donovan
BadJon
Niamh Ellen
Proton
Kristy Bishop
Meta
Joseph Nienstedt
Tim Showers
Leigh Wells
Thomas Bosse
Christina Rodino
Justin Cammer
Jason Alan Layne
SHT!
Sarah Frierson
Christopher Murphy
Phillip Hyman
Joshua DelMas
Stephanie Stein
Vik Hart
Adolfo Hernandez
Trever Webster
Jashun Fairstudios
Jennifer Callicott

So, I’ll see y’all there on Cinco de Mayo! I’ll be the guy with the Tequila shot in hand 😉

Old Architecture

One of the subjects that I’ve been leaning on since I started my Abstract Photo Project a little over a week ago is architecture. There’s no shortage of interesting elements in a classic building or home – something that makes me sad about the majority of today’s cheap pre-fab buildings that we see all over the place. Most strip malls and steel buildings are just offensive to the senses, so when you take the time to admire the quality in design of a great piece of architecture it’s all the more meaningful today.

On the flip side, I do enjoy the urban decay of old buildings. The texture of the peeling paint and the off kilter shape of a dilapidated building structure makes for an interesting photograph.

Looking up close at the features of a great building and changing your point of view can give you endless compositions to play with the lines and shapes of the building. Old banks and government buildings have great columns that are begging for a wide angle view of them.

I also like to manipulate the angle of the camera when shooting wide to distort the geometry of the building. You can create a funhouse-like effect with just the tilt of your lens.

Playing with color, contrast, and exposure leads to some very interesting photos when dealing with architecture. The iPhone is a great tool for experimenting with extreme abstract shots of buildings. I often find myself looking for a different angle with just my phone’s camera, only to start editing away and creating something completely new out of it right there on my phone.

Relay For Life 2011 – Sweetgrass Pediatrics Team

Last night was the 2011 Relay For Life of Summerville, SC which was held at Summerville High School. I was participating with one of me oldest & dearest clients, Sweetgrass Pediatrics, as part of their team.

The kids had fun as most booths had an activity that you could donate a little cash for the cause to participate in. Wow – two events in the same week with hula hooping – who knew it was making such a come back?

Team captain Dawn Norris is the person I’d like to thank for pulling it all together for the Sweetgrass Pediatrics team. She’s busted her behind making getting everyone on board and she’s also personally raised an astonishing $685.00 so far! Not to mention David & Dr. Colleen Boylston for their backing of the event. The event has managed to raise a staggering $91,763.01, and it’s not too late to donate!

Check out all of the photos on my Flickr set.

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