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Articles Tagged with: Orlando

Summer Time

It’s been a very busy year so far – July 4th seems to sneak up and remind me just how fast time slips by. I’ve been busy growing my other business while still working this one. In fact, I surprised my crew yesterday by dragging in a light and a backdrop to the office for some surprise headshots:

Rashaud

Ben

Speaking of headshots, I’ve been doing a lot lately for various professionals in the area. A few years ago, you could only thrive from doing headshots in a major market, but because of social media every professional needs one, not just actors and comedians.

Here’s a couple I did this past week:

Dr. Kelsey Harris

Dr. Molly Slade

I’ve also discovered that my Fuji X-T1 is quite the capable headshot camera. The two headshots of the guys in my crew were taken with the Fuji, while the two doctors were taken using my Nikon D800. While the flexibility gained by the controls, full frame sensor, and lens selection of the Nikon are paramount to shooting professionally, the Fuji’s results are almost indistinguishable when the output is simply an internet profile picture. The only drawback I found with my current lighting rig is that I need to close down the aperture on the Fuji a couple of stops because it shoots natively at ISO 200 and it’s a cropped sensor. That leads to more depth of field when shooting with strobe lights. For headshots like these, it’s not a problem though. For creative portraiture using these strobes it might be limiting, but I think a ND filter or two would help in that case. The look of a lens at it’s proper focal length that you get from a full frame sensor when compared to a cropped one can’t be beat, but like the US Soccer team’s performance in the World Cup game against Belgium, it comes really close by giving it its all – And that’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Sorry, I fell into a technical wormhole. Back to the photos…

Shepard Fairey Installation At The Sottile Theater

If you haven’t stopped by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art to see the exhibit of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns, you’ve got ’til July 12th to do so. The work is amazing and inspiring. Shepard Fairey has a few installations in the Charleston area, including the one above at the storefront of the Sottile Theater on King Street. There’s also a few murals that he’s put up, such as this one on one of the College of Charleston’s dormitories:

Selective Color Still Lives!

I do love some street art. In the right places, like the back alleys of the city where people store their trash, they bring color and joy. I find the story told by the street artists to be just as compelling as the story told by the architects on the main streets.

The Other Part Of King Street

On another note, every once in a while I get reminded of just how amazing the camera in my pocket (the iPhone) is. I snapped this little dragonfly while walking into a client’s office the other day:

Dragonfly Instagram

I also got to go to a wedding that I wasn’t working at for the first time in a looooong time. I still managed to take a few photos, but only because I wanted to, not because I had to!

Samantha & Jerry

I’ve been seeing as much music as possible and spending some great time with my daughter in the process. We had front row center seats to see the Head and the Heart and Valerie June recently:

The Head and the Heart

Valerie June

At the start of the summer I surprised my daughter during our “school’s out weekend trip to Disney World” with a visit to Universal Studios to see Huey Lewis & The News!

Huey Lewis & the News

Speaking of Disney World, I captured this family photo with a Rokinon fish-eye lens on my Fuji X-T1 while we rode Primeval Whirl in the Animal Kingdom:

The Nienstedt Family

And while we were walking through Epcot’s World Showcase, we ran into some old friends. It’s Paulie Latex and Jenny Jelly of Latex Generation fame! Paul used to sing and play guitar in my band and Jen was our merch girl. I wrote a song about them when we were teenagers about how they would never last. I then wrote a song a few years later about being astonished that they were still together. Now they’ve got 3 girls and have been together for somewhere near 20 years. Holy crap was I wrong!

Latex Generation Family Photo Disney World 2014

Photo by Mrs. Edel

Local artist Patch Whisky asked me to shoot some of his artwork to be reproduced as prints that he’s now selling on his website. It was a different animal to shoot his monsters, but they sat well for the shoot…

Patch Whisky

On the topic of artists, I sadly had to say goodbye to one of my favorite artists who gathered his family up and moved to the West Coast. Here I am getting one last tattoo from Rob Junod at Holy City Tattooing Collective:

Getting the Junod one last time (In Charleston) #holycitytattooingcollective #tattoo #IWantYourSkull #nipslip #organicsweater

Rob Junod & a Shirtless Me

Rob’s wife, Amanda Rose, is a talented hair & make-up artist. I worked with with her recently for Shelly Waters, who hired me to shoot the cover of her upcoming CD. I’m bummed that the Junods had to leave, but I’m happy to see where their journey takes them as they are both immensely talented.

Shelly Waters and Amanda Rose

And finally, since we’re on the topic of tattoos and art, my wife Amy paid a visit to Margo at Holy CIty Tattooing Collective just yesterday to start work on a new piece on her bicep. It’s just an outline in this picture and it already looks amazing!

Amy

I think that about wraps it up for this post. We’re planning a road trip later in the summer, so hopefully I’ll capture some fun photos of that adventure. It’s gonna be filled with plains, trains, and automobiles for sure!

Sleeping With The Enemy

I’m not one to get into the whole brand war when it comes to “stuff”. I really do make educated guesses about the equipment I use for the specific jobs they perform. That said, every DSLR I’ve owned has been a Nikon. The reason has nothing to do with the quality of the system or anything like that. They just feel best in my hand. It’s the one “stuff” decision that has nothing to do with specs or functionality. It’s based purely on ergonomics and the way I use the camera.

I have been on the hunt for a “Family Camera” that suits my nerdier photography needs. I love my Nikon P7000, but when it comes to low-light conditions, its small sensor leaves a gaping whole in its functionality. The newer Nikon 1 system uses pretty much the same sensor. I’ve been lusting over the micro 4/3’s systems, but I’m weary that their small sensors will leave me wanting just a little more than they can deliver also. When Fuji came out with the x100 and put a APS-C sensor into it, I thought “That’s it”, but it’s just too expensive to justify as a family camera. Sony has a fantastic system with the NEX line as well, but unfortunately the interface on those is way too nutty for my liking. Being quite happy with my iPhone, I gave up on paying much attention to what’s been going on in the world of small mirror-less cameras. I didn’t even know that Canon tried and failed miserably with the EOS M earlier this year. Their failure = My gain!

So, why would I buy into a failed camera system? Short Answer: I got one with a lens for well under $300. This camera has the same sensor as the Canon 650D, and it costs a fraction of the price of anything even near it in it’s class. Why is it so cheap? Because reviewers panned the camera into submission. The camera sucks at autofocusing in comparison to other cameras in its class, but Canon recently upgraded the firmware to greatly improve the M’s performance. Now I can even focus on a honey bee’s ass!

I learned about the camera at this year’s BarCamp when fellow photog Phillip Guyton let me play around with his EOS M. As annoying as on-screen controls can be, the touch screen combined with some really smart layout of the controls make for a great compromise for those of us who’ve been using iPhones for many years. I was immediately obsessed. It’s almost everything I want from a walk-around family camera. Sure, the auto-focus issue can sometimes be a challenge, but I was able to hand the camera over to other people and got great results:

Also, it has a hot shoe! Yay for off-camera lighting. One of the first things I did was grab a remote trigger and use on of my Nikon flashes in manual mode to see how it works (It gets a 1/200 sync speed btw). Here’s one of the images I made while I tested it:

What other stuff can this camera do that my iPhone can’t? How about slow shutter speeds! I took this shot of a fountain inside the Polynesian resort in Disney World this past weekend:

The M also has much better dynamic range than other compact cameras. While not nearly as good as a full-frame Nikon, this little guy is pretty damn good in a tough lighting situation (that’s not noise in the 2nd shot – it’s foam flying around as simulated snow at the Osborne Family Christmas Lights in Epcot Center):

After spending the holiday weekend with the M, I’m happy to say that for the price of the camera, I definitely have found my “Walk-Around” system (and then some), and would happily recommend it to any photography enthusiast!

Vacation Wrap-Up

iPhone 4S

I took the family to Orlando, FL for spring break, and I was armed only with my iPhone and my point & shoot Nikon P7000. We were traveling with our neighbors and we had a blast! We spent most of our time at Disney World, with a one day trip to Universal Studios for my son and I to get our inner Harry Potter out.

Nikon P7000

Nikon P7000

Nikon P7000

In the past when we went to the amusement parks for vacations, I’d lug around my DSLR and try to get cool shots. What I wasn’t doing was spending time having fun with my family! The shots we always looked at afterwards weren’t the artsy shots of some ride or topiary or whatever – The shots we went back to were of our loved ones having fun. So, I made lots of use of my iPhone’s crappy front-facing camera and got lots of shots like these:

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

Since I had my point and shoot P7000 with me, I didn’t hesitate to hand it over to strangers and loved ones to take shots with, such as these:

Nikon P7000 – Photographer – My Wife Amy

Nikon P7000 – Photographer: Our Waiter

Nikon P7000 – Photographer: Some Dude With A Monopod

We also were treated to a marathon version of “The Twist” by the one and only Chubby Checker!

Nikon P7000

The moral of today’s post? Have fun and the good shots will follow! That and I’ve caught some awful bug while I was there. I swear, the contagion that will wipe out the world will start at Disney World. Oh yeah, and my MacBook Pro officially died while I was there. I’m awaiting it’s return from Apple land.

iPhone 4S Front Facing Camera

If you’re brave, you can sift through all of the gory photos here.

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.