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Articles Tagged with: portrait

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.

Fitness Portraits Tonight!

Sorry for the last minute notice on this, but I’ll be over at Eco Fitness in Mount Pleasant, SC tonight shooting portraits of club members, trainers, and staff at their club tonight, July 23rd, 2012. The event starts at 5:30PM, and there is also a Sushi tasting party courtesy of Charleston’s O-ku.

If you’re in the area, please come on by and say hi, have some free sushi, and get your photo made for their website!

Maybe Amy Hill (pictured above) will jump for you live in person if you ask nicely enough 😉

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.

4th of July Fireworks

I was on my way to Folly Beach to catch their fireworks display for the third year in a row when I remembered that I forgot the batteries to my camera in the charger at home! We had a long day – our neighborhood hosted a July 4th picnic and parade which my wife had a huge hand in organizing with the Indigo Women’s Group. It was ridiculously hot today, and there may have been some rum in my sodas.

I was also tasked with shooting the event and taking some portraits. Here’s a shot of my daughter Mackenzie wearing some crazy patriotic hat:

So after the parade, I put the battery in the charger and downloaded all of the pics to my computer (I still haven’t even gone through all of those yet except for the two in this post). I then took a nap before heading to the neighbors house for an Independence Day cookout. I timed my trip to the beach without much room for error as to enjoy maximum grilled bacon-wrapped jalapeno goodness. When the time came, I hopped in my car and got about 10 minutes into my journey when it dawned on me that my battery was still in its charger at home. Damn you sun and rum! I did the math and realized that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the beach in time. I had to come up with a plan B.

I know from history that any family event in Mount Pleasant is always over-populated. If I was going to catch the fireworks over the U.S.S. Yorktown, Waterfront Park in Mount Pleasant has the best view, but also the most people. I was going to take a chance anyway since it was also the closest. I got very lucky in so many ways. 1st, the bridge was still open (they close it during the show). 2nd, I found a place to park within a 5 minute walk to the park. 3rd, I found a relatively people-free spot right on the marshy banks of the Cooper river. The stars had aligned and I was able to capture these:

You can check out all of my shots here on Flickr, and also on my Facebook page.

I was thinking earlier today about one of my favorite things about living in a free country. For all of the bitching and moaning we do about what’s wrong with our government, the fact that we can bitch and moan about our government is something I think we all take for granted. Freedom of speech is something our founders were willing to die for, and it’s something our military, which is a volunteer military, is still willing to die for. It truly is my favorite freedom.

I hope you all had as sunny and bright a day as I did! Happy 4th of July!

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:

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.

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 😉

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 🙂

The Phillips Team

The term “re-shoot” can be a scary word when you’re dealing with real estate agents. There are so many different scenarios that play out in your mind as to why someone would want to do one. Also, when you are creating something for someone else, the fear of rejection is immense. Luckily, when Deborah called me from the Shirley Phillips Team to re-shoot their head shots, it was because they had expanded, and wanted a new team shot.

Shirley also had her head shot redone, mainly because she liked her new hairdo 😉 I really think she looks like Hollywood royalty here. What a beautiful woman!

And here’s the newest member of Shirley’s team, Edmund Greenberg. I told him to give me his best Brad Pitt face, and I think he did pretty good. Very cool, Ed, very cool.

I really enjoy shooting faces. People have countless expressions to capture and the challenge of making them look comfortable and convey a look, whether it’s confidence, sexiness, professionalism, happiness, etc, is really a tough yet fun nut to crack with the right client. Getting the right look takes time, and I’m learning that I have to educate my clients beforehand that a good head shot is not done with one quick click.

Of all of the technical stuff I’ve learned about photography, none of it compares to the actual art of connecting with a person on the human level. As much as we lust after the latest light modifier or craziest low-light defying DSLR or ridiculously fast and expensive glass, our gear is nothing without being out in front of our subjects and communicating with them. Making them happy is the ultimate goal here, not some technical feat with the camera. A technically perfect photo of nothing special is so much less valuable than a less-than-perfect shot of an amazing moment or expression. Besides, you need to ask yourself, “Why am I doing this in the first place?”

For me, It has become simply about making people happy. Making people see how I see them, and how I believe the world sees them. Some days it’s very difficult, but I truly try to find the best in someone and exploit that. We all have things about ourselves that we dislike, and often those little bugs in our appearance are what we focus on. Trying to make people look past those things and helping them see themselves the way the rest of the world sees them is important to me. It can be life changing for some, and each time that happens I feel the karma train pulling up to my station.

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