Folly Beach – JWNPhoto.com

Articles Tagged with: Folly Beach

Mira & Brian Are Having A Baby

Pinterest is a great thing. You can find inspiring photography in just about any practice of the craft. Much like YouTube is for video, you can chase an idea and end up in unexpected places along the way, sometimes going off in a completely different direction.

It’s also a problem. You start to see patterns in a derivative way. A search for maternity photography will garner a plethora of similar results. Some expertly executed mixed in with a bunch of terribly imitated images. After a few minutes, everything seems so similar. Photography really is an insestuous form of art – But I guess every form of art suffers from this. It just seems that photography is more readily copied than any other.

So when Brian & Mira announced they were having a baby (and by announced, I mean I accidentally figured it out, but that’s a story for another time), I was excited to try a different approach to maternity photography.

I wanted to put the couple in an environment that captures who they are and what they represent at this time in their lives. They are both very outdoorsy people, and Mira works a lot with Charleston Area Therapeutic Riding, a horse farm that specializes in improving the lives of children and adults with disabilities. What a perfect environment for these two!

They also recently celebrated a non-traditional baby shower under a tree in Hampton Park. No silly “Guess what’s in the diaper” games going on, just a nice picnic in the park for family and friends to come together and show the new parents-to-be some support.

Earlier in the summer, I snapped this shot of Mira at Folly Beach during the 4th of July celebration. It captures her just as she started to become a little more obvious with her pregnant state:

We’re super excited to welcome “Baby X” into the world with them, I just hope they hurry up and pick a name so we don’t have to keep calling it “it” 🙂

Surreal Color Beach Portrait

I’ve been chasing down my muse lately in one way or another, from getting tattooed to collecting art prints and books, and basically scouring the web for inspiring images and creations (check out some of my findings on my pinterest feed). I don’t think we ever settle down as artists. Sure, we may hit peaks, and sure we hit rough spots where nobody connects with what we’re doing, but we always strive to keep growing either way. One of the worst things that can happen is that you get so bogged down with work that you forget to play. That can drain your soul quite quickly.

Don’t get me wrong, shooting anything is better than doing just about any other kind of work for me, but if I go too long capturing other people’s visions, dreams, and desires, I can start to feel the burn out demon creeping up on me. Every once in a while I need to reset my brain to fine tune that creative spark that got me into this mess in the first place. And with every step I climb up of this ladder, I get a better view of what I want to be doing with my photography and where I could take it.

That brings me to Ashley, who I met via an annual photography event here in Charleston put together by Modstudios. I was hesitant to participate for working reasons (and I did end up passing up a paying gig to do this on Saturday night), but I knew that it would be a no-pressure situation to try something a little different. And, by no pressure, I mean total timing pressure as I lost track of time with my wife at Holy City Tattooing Collective as she got this kick-ass Mehndi-style peacock tattoo by the awesome Margo. Time has a way of disappearing when watching a great artist work. As I rushed to Folly Beach afterwards, I ended up missing a shoot with another cool girl with tattoos (hopefully she understands, I’ll make it up to you Kelsie).

So, back to Ashley. This girl might have the brightest & bluest eyes in the world. Check this out, here’s Ashley with her natural hair color:

And then I pulled out the blue wig and flowers to match that awesome colorful dress:

She looked like she stepped out of a painting by Camilla d’Errico. Once the sun started to do it’s thing, we just made some magical images. A beautiful location, a beautiful model, and an onslaught of color to tie it all together. This is the direction my head is going right about now:

Senior Portrait in Charleston

I recently started my senior portraits campaign, and Haley, who is my 2012 model and ambassador, had her senior portrait sessions recently. To showcase a range of what I’m doing this year, I shot three different locations. Above is a shot at Folly Beach, and directly below is a shot in downtown Charleston, SC. I also did a few studio shots as well.

On location shoots, I like to capture an edgier and dramatic look. In the studio though, I tend to favor a high-key look like this:

A new product that I’m going to start including in my senior portrait packages is a Facebook banner. I used one of Haley’s shots to demonstrate this on the JWNPhoto Facebook Page.

Part of the fun of these shoots is in the experience. One moment that I’m sure will stand out for Haley and her father during this shoot was when we hijacked a Porsche!

As we were walking down Chisolm Street, I was making small talk with Haley and I said “Wouldn’t it be awesome if that lady let us take a shot using her car as a prop?” and then I proceeded to do just that. I love this shot because the car’s owner is in the background trying to get out of the way, but she really adds to the whole thing 😉

We also did some more traditional portraits just to have a little diversity.

Here’s a slideshow of all of her photos:

You can also view them on Facebook here and here, or on Flickr.

Now is the time to get your senior portraits made, so let’s book a session now. Time is running out on my current promotion, so contact me here.

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.

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:

Emily & Joe

Last month I shot a really cool wedding on Folly Beach in South Carolina. The couple was amazing as they were willing to do just about anything – they truly had fun at their wedding and it shows in their pictures. Lets be honest, how many people have a wedding party photo like this?

I did do a lot of more formal portraits such as this (which is probably one of my favorite shots of the day because of that amazing southern sunset):

But I’m sure a shot like this will make them smile pretty wide when they’re old and gray:

Joe & Emily really weren’t your traditional couple, which is a perfect fit for me since I’m not a traditional photographer! I did make sure to cover the basics of wedding photography though, such as capturing the elements of an American wedding.

Here’s the bride getting prepared:

And the first look:

The respective wedding party portraits:

The ceremony:

And the first kiss:

The signing:

And then of course, everybody’s favorite part of the wedding, the reception. Here are some elements of their tables:

The first dance:

I did grab the newlyweds to do some sunset portraits during the reception. Joe didn’t know that he was going to be my movable sandbag for a few shots:

After the sun went down, they partied:

And Joe found the garter and Emily fed him some cake:

I can honestly say that with couples as fun to shoot as this, wedding photography can be a blast. I consider myself lucky to have been their photographer for their special day.

Labor Day at Folly Beach

What better place to spend a national holiday than at the beach? Luckily we’ve got some of America’s best beaches right here in the Charleston, SC area. Unfortunately, the Folly Beach State Park was closed due to erosion from Hurricane Irene (yeah we did have some damage, regardless of my own personal experience – I’m feeling quite sad for my northern friends and family that got it much worse than us). The beach was still a blast anyway.

We headed to “The Burnout”, which is what I call the side of the beach to the right of Folly Road opposite to the ever-so-popular surf spot, “The Washout”. There were quite a lot of surfers out on this side of the Folly Pier. Not to mention body boarders, including my two kids.

I brought my trusty old Nikon D40, and stood in the water getting sloshed around. Even though it got splashed quite a bit, it kept shooting without fail. That little camera has been through a lot with me, and it’s nice to bring it out every once in a while.

I have nothing clever, witty, or necessarily insightful to say about the day. It was just plain awesome to have a day to relax, hang out in the waves, and snap some shots of the kids having fun. I hope your day was at least half as enjoyable as ours was.

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.

Super Full Moon 2011

Last night at sunset, the Perigee Moon rose in the east. This is the largest full moon since March of 1993 I gathered up family, friends, and neighbors to head over to the Morris Island side of Folly Beach to watch the sunset and moonrise.

Taking moon photos at the beach is not an easy task, as I quickly learned. I usually weigh down my tripod with my camera bag, but the wind at the beach made it less stable with the weight than without! Paired with the rapidly decreasing light, long exposures, and quickly moving orb in the sky, it was quite a challenge to get a decent photo of the moon. The other major challenge was the haze – it was quite difficult to focus clearly through it when the moon first appeared. By the time it cleared the haze, it looked no bigger or brighter than any other full moon. No big deal though, as I had the image on the top of this post envisioned when I set out. I wanted a simple graphic image of the scene and I got just what I wanted! I also wanted a moonlight reflection on a soft long-exposed ocean, which I got in the second shot – so I’m quite happy with what I accomplished. I would have liked to have made a shot from behind the trees, but most of the other photogs were getting that shot and I’m sure some of them got some really good results from there.

I was able to grab a couple of shots of the sunset when I arrived, and I think these fulfilled my “through the trees” shot aspirations anyway:

Robert Donovan was on hand as well and we got a chance to talk about photography while waiting for the big show. In fact, there were a lot of photogs there – I thought it looked like a photo studio when we crossed over the dunes onto the beach!

Here’s a shot of my daughter Mac at twilight. I think this was the only split second she wasn’t running around with the other dozen or so kids on hand.

There were plenty of kids running around and having fun, and this girl playing in the sand was the subject of my favorite photo of the evening: