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Photo Walking In Historic Charleston

Worldwide Photowalk 2014 - Charleston SC

Welcome to the 300th post on my blog! I’ve had some posts here that have been pretty popular, a lot that have been virtually ignored, and hopefully some that have struck a chord with my readers.

But this isn’t about that, this is about Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk 2014. Just take a look at this crew of local photographers who ventured out on the historic streets of the lower Charleston peninsula:

Weather-wise, it may have been the most perfect day ever conceived. It was like San Francisco perfect. I brought my daughter again this year, and she invited 4 of her art-school friends who all took to the streets in true teenage fashion.

I was sporting my trusty Fuji X-T1 camera, and my approach this year was a little different than the past. Possibly because I was herding 5 teenage girls around, or maybe because I was carrying a smaller camera, but I just let the pictures come to me instead of seeking them out. Plus, I was able to get the girls involved to make a memorable and creative experience with them.

Using the environment to influence a photo, I was able to setup a shot with the girls, but then this woman walked into the frame walking this massive dog, making for a cool street photo:

It’s pretty common this time of year to see another photographer earning their living by shooting a beautiful couple. When I stumbled upon this scene, I thought to myself, “What better street photo in the French Quarter than one of a wedding photographer at work?”

Cooler still, the entourage had a limousine complete with a silver-haired driver in a tuxedo. I asked the driver if I could make a portrait of him, and asked him to stand naturally just like he was before I approached him:

My favorite shot of the walk came by the harbor in the reeds. I saw this cool lone purple flower in the reeds and decided to get low and shoot it. One of the girls came walking into frame and this photo came together – I asked her to turn around and look back in my direction to capture this:

Strange thing about this photo – It became one of the most viewed photos of all of the photos in my Flickr stream overnight. Sometimes the less you try to create something special, the more likely something special will present itself to you. You just need to have the eyes to see it when it happens and enough skill to capture it in a concise fashion that lets the photo do the talking. As Seneca once said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

Dirty

I woke up one Saturday morning with this image in my head. Inspired by my friend Katie’s new venture called “Black Swamp” in which she re-purposes the wood shavings from her & her husband’s woodworking business into jewelry, I saw that the pieces she’s producing look much like the curls of her own hair. The idea was almost too easy! I drove out to Eutawville, SC that afternoon to make it happen.

Of course, nothing worth doing comes without a price, and Katie did not come out of this squeaky clean.

I like to “warm up” for something like this to get a feel for the location, loosen up the subject, and get my brain on the correct frequency. I shot a few environmental portraits in Katie and her husband Joe’s new shop space. Here’s my favorite of those shots:

You can check out the rest of the photos on this Flickr Set.

Stephanie’s Comp Card Shoot

Stephanie contacted me recently to assemble a comp card for some upcoming competitions she’s participating in. The task at hand: Keep it real and keep it sexy. Um, easiest gig ever?

Up top is the front of the finished product, and above is the backside of the card. Below are some outtakes from the session.

I have no disillusion that anybody cares to read anything I write in this post, because, well… there’s these pictures to look at. So, in between each photo, I’ll just paste some lyrics from Paul Westerberg. Enjoy. Let’s start off with this gem: “I’ll give you my jacket if you give me your glamour/Gimme that racket, gimme that clamor.”

“Meet me any place or anywhere at any time now I don’t care/Meet me tonight/If you will dare, I will dare.” I Will Dare

“The ones who love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest/And visit their graves on holidays at best/The ones who love us least are the ones we’ll die to please/If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them” Bastards of Young

“When we were young/We never played/Out in the street/We’d only run/where we felt safe” Meet Me Down The Alley

OK, I’ll stop posting lyrics here. I did want you to know that when you see the amount of effort and skill it takes for someone like Stephanie to look like this, it definitely changes your perspective. There’s natural beauty, but there’s also presentation. She’s an amazing stylist and make-up artist, she is on top of the fashion trends, and believe it or not, she’s a new mom. That’s right, these shots of her are after she recently had a baby. She’s been busting her ass at the gym and dieting to get into competition shape and I was very happy to be the photographer that she chose to capture her amazing work. Be sure to check out her progress and antics on her Instagram. You can see more of her work on her business website SwashbuckleAndRow.com.

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.

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.

Haley (Part II)

Welcome to my second post of photos of Haley from her photo shoot. This time, it’s all about composites. This first one uses this picture of a road on a foggy morning in Landrum, SC.

The rest of these are a combination of multiple images found on Flickr as free backgrounds and textures, such as these from Flickr user Moosebite. There are a plethora of different types of images that are offered completely free for this purpose.

As for the art of making a composite, I used Photoshop and experimented with different blending modes, opacities, and manipulation of the images through Free Transform. I also used a combination of Snapseed and Color Efex Pro from Nik Software to finish these off.

The challenge for me is not to overdo it, as I did in this photo. It looks like the 80’s threw up on the 90’s and had a bastard child of a background, and poor Haley is stuck looking pretty in the midst of it all. But, it’s about experimenting for me, and I think the photos above work for their intended purposes.

In other news, I’ve got an exciting week ahead of me as I will be shooting some stuff at Charleston Fashion Week. It will be my first time shooting a runway show, so I’m pretty stoked! TTYL.

Visualizing Rebecca

Rebecca is the latest friend to come to the home studio for a portrait session, and man is she amazing to photograph. It’s becoming quickly apparent that it’s impossible to get bored with portraiture when you have amazing people to work with who are creative and are game for anything. This time around, I had several shots pre-visualized before we began. The first one is this natural light portrait using windows as the light source. We took advantage of the fading afternoon light and went for a bedroom scene (in my dining room).

I put a bed sheet on an ottoman to act as a bed. The problem was that I forgot how tall Rebecca is, and any shot that showed her whole body on the ottoman looked quite strange. It made her look like she was in a toddler’s bed, which is less than sexy when you think about it. No problem, I just shot tighter on her and got an implied photo. Sexy’s back!

Next, I wanted to showcase her amazing long auburn hair. We broke out the industrial fan and had her whipping her head from front to back to get her hair to catch the wind like a sail.

My goal was to have her flip her head enough times until she passed out. Not really, but I’m sure it felt like that to her. This kind of shot is all about timing. Hit the shutter at the perfect time while the hair is spread out and her face doesn’t look like someone who’s moving up and down vigorously. That’s not an easy shot to get without a lot of attempts. Saying that she’s a trooper is an understatement.

This is my final pre-visualized shot. I wanted to get this angle showing the piano and guitar on one side of the wall and Rebecca on the other side. This is one shot – not a diptych. I was inspired to use some of my old records in it after a friend of mine from back in my punk rock musician days posted vintage photos of girls with records on his Facebook page. Thanks for the inspiration Frank!

Katie, who works with Rebecca and is also just plain awesome, was helping out with the shoot and got drafted into a similar shot. I’m blessed to know such beautiful people! This shot rocks almost as hard as Katie at an Avett Brothers show at the North Charleston Coliseum (I’m still indebted because she invited me into the box seats with her friends at that show).

The above shot was a suggestion of Rebecca’s, which was to shoot her on a magenta background to compliment a green dress she wanted to wear. With such big bright blue eyes and the rich colors of her dress, her hair, and the background (I used a speedlight with a magenta gel on it to get that), I wanted to get a big smiling portrait. Rebecca’s such a fun girl that it’s more than easy to get a natural reaction out of her.

This was the final frame of the shoot. I love to do a head shot like this at the end of a shoot because at that point the person has been coached so much that they just easily connect with the camera. They’re all warmed up and comfortable, and it’s also quite a slow-down from the rest of the shoot. I just use the modeling lights and a 50mm lens, and really tone it down. I can fire off multiple shots while talking and complimenting the subject on the work we just did, and it really makes for a beautiful expression.

As I do this more, I’m really seeing the importance of vision over technical ability. You need the technical ability for sure, but without the vision, making a good photo becomes a game of luck. Why take only chances? The photo at the top of this post is an example of free-styling it. It might be one of my favorite shots that I’ve made in a long time, but it really was a lucky shot that I got while we were working out some fashion poses. Her expression is amazing and it was a decisive moment that was lost in the very next frame of the same setup. The blowing hair shot though, which was heavily planned and worked on, was destined to succeed because I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like before I took the shot. Sure, luck is a great thing, but it’s not predictable. Hard work and visualization can be.

Diptychs, Dragons, & Doggies

Sometimes it takes more than one photo to illustrate your idea. Sure, a great photo will tell a whole story or be composed like an opus, but sometimes you can convey a more powerful message by showing showing two separate images together. The trick to making a successful story-telling diptych is to make sure that each photo stands alone as a strong photo. When combined, they should serve to enhance each other to either tell a more complete story, exude a more compelling emotion, or just drive a point home.

Above, in the photo no the right, I liked the play of the dog and the toy – it looks as if the toy is whispering sweet nothings into the dog’s ear. Unfortunately, you can’t tell just what the toy is even though in what little you see of it it takes on life-like characteristics. With the addition of the photo on the left, you see more of the toy as it lies lifeless on the couch like a toy the kids left behind. The toy, by the way, is a Dronky from the Shrek movies, which is a half-donkey and half-dragon. The message of the shot is about relationships. While the photo on the right could convey a similar message, when it’s combined with the lonely toy shot it uses the thematic contrast of the two to drive home the idea of happiness in companionship.

Below is another diptych I made. The theme of this shot is loneliness. The two shots are different but the same – an empty stool in an ice cream shop and my daughter sitting alone at the counter of the same shop waiting for someone (in reality she was waiting for the waitress to refill her drink).