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Articles Tagged with: portrait

Summerville Relay For Life 2012

Last night I volunteered to shoot a “Summerville Superheroes” photo booth at the Summerville Relay for Life event at Summerville High School. For a $1 donation, you got one of these superhero trading cards to post on Facebook! If you were one of the subjects, please head over to this Facebook album to get your photo – Don’t forget to tag your friends as well as yourself in the photos and share our page. If you’re not the Facebooking type, you can also download your photo from here.

My family and I had a blast – A big shout-out to the Sweetgrass Pediatrics team for including us in this special event!

Cracking The Shell

Dr. Colleen Boylston’s husband tasked me with the job of creating a portrait of his wife for a new brochure for their medical practice, Sweetgrass Pediatrics. She was not happy about it at all! She’s not the type of person who likes attention (in fact, she’ll hate that I’m including her in this post). She doesn’t like having her picture taken, especially when I set up an on-location studio in one of their offices and all of her peers and employees are peeking in on the shoot. Can you imagine looking like that and not wanting to show it off?

Regardless, this is one of my favorite things about photographing real people. Sometimes it takes time, and it can take a lot of effort on the part of the subject and the photographer alike. When you can finally get them to open up in front of the camera, it’s such a rewarding feeling. I actually shot two little sessions with Dr. Boylston that morning. The first session was OK, but she was really not being herself – she wasn’t comfortable and I knew it. Thanks to one of her employees, Lakeia, who has done modeling before, she was able to get inspired:

I told her she couldn’t let her employees show her up! She was uncomfortable with posing techniques at first because she thought it was going to look too “Glamour Shot-like”. Once she saw Lakeia’s shots she got it! I was able to get her back in front of the camera with a new attitude and we got the shot up top. Now, if only I could have Lakeia hanging around at every photo shoot! Check out the set of photos from that shoot here.

OPK Are Much Easier

If you read Sunday’s post about my kids’ gift to their mother for our wedding anniversary, you heard me gripe about how difficult shooting your own kids can be. While we were shooting, some of the neighborhood kids came over to play with my son (our house is the place where the neighborhood kids like to congregate – I blame the cute dogs). Bryce & Olivia took an interest in the photo gear that I was breaking down and asked what we were doing, so I showed them the finished photos of my kids. They thought it was really cool, so I asked them when their mother’s birthday was, to which they replied next week. I asked them if they wanted to make a photo collage for their mom for her birthday, and they were ecstatic over the idea! I told them to dress up nice and come back the next day and I’d take their pictures.

They were so easy and cooperative! Every direction I gave was taken without complaint. OPK (Other People’s Kids) are a joy to shoot. They even convinced my son to get into a shot with them, although he was wearing a T-Shirt and his hair was a mess – it’s still a cute shot of some awesome friends.

Now hopefully their mom doesn’t read this blog, or else her birthday surprise is ruined! Although I’m sure she got a clue when here kids asked to get all dressed up to go over to the photographer’s house down the block…

Lucky 13

Yesterday was not only a day for dying the river green in Savannah, it was also my 13th wedding anniversary. My wife Amy had to work during the afternoon (the weekends are prime time for real estate agents), so I took advantage of the time to put together this collage for her with our kids. I initially wanted to do a triptych featuring two portraits of my children and this shot that I thought up of:

The problem was that I couldn’t find a picture frame that was oriented correctly, so I went for a four photo shoot and added another shot of the kids together, which was the most difficult to shoot. Your own kids are the most challenging subjects for portraiture and I think I figured out the reason – they lose patience quicker than a kid that doesn’t know you! They know what the limits are already, and aren’t timid to straddle that line. You really get a couple of frames to get it right and then they bolt. And the chances of getting them both looking decent at the same time are like winning a triple crown – it doesn’t happen often. I begged, pleaded, and came very close to losing my cool to get them to get it right. Don’t let them forget that you already bribed them with milkshakes to do this in the first place! Note to self: Milkshakes should come after the shoot, not before.

Here’s a shot of the finished product:

The shot at the top of this article was used in my Facebook post to my wife celebrating the best part of our marriage, which is our beautiful kids. Ahh, the power of still photography – if it was a video you would have seen what goes on between the shutter clicks, like “Look it’s a bee – AHHHHHH – RUN!!!” or “He’s touching me” or “Hurry up dad, I wanna play Zelda”. Photos are so much more romantic 😉

Shooting The Boss

No, not The Boss, although I’d be gushing about that non-stop for weeks if I could ;). I’m talking about the broker in charge of Carolina One Real Estate’s Main Street office, Christina Ellis. I call her the boss, because she’s my wife’s broker.

There’s just a little bit of stress when you get tasked to shoot a head shot for your wife’s boss. Not just the usual responsibility of making someone happy with the way they look (trust me, most people cringe at the thought of having their picture taken, so us photogs have to damn near have a psychology degree to convince people that you’ll make sure they look their best), but the responsibility of making your wife not look like a jerk for referring you if you botch the job!

Luckily, it would take a complete failure of epic proportions to botch a job like this – Christina needs no help from me to look good. She’s naturally photogenic, so the only thing I need to worry about is getting the light right. Here’s the diagram of the white background, which was a reversible collapsible background from Adorama. Note my method of lighting the background with bounce umbrellas and feathering the light from them to give me some rim lighting for the subject.

I had the softbox right up close to her. In fact, it was so close that I had my assistant, aka my wife Amy, hold the bottom lip of the box up so it wouldn’t get in the shot. For the black side, I had to ditch the umbrellas and use snoots to focus the light so it wouldn’t influence the blackness of the background. The snoots are actually just beer cozies with the bottoms cut off. It’s an ingenius idea I learned from wedding photographer David Ziser in one of his Kelby Training videos.

One of the problems that arose is something that I’ve been dealing with for quite a while now. My go-to medium zoom lens is a Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8. About 6 months or so ago it started to get stuck at 24mm when twisting the zoom ring. It’s very annoying, but I can just pull the lens from the front cap and it will move. I was ineligible for warranty coverage because I bought a display model, so it’s considered used. Another problem is that it’s not sealed well at all, so there is a ridiculous amount of dust inside the lens. It’s not noticeable at large apertures, but if I venture past f/11, it’s unusable. The worst problem of all though is the random focusing issues, which is what plagued me during this shoot. I can fire off a series of shots and some will be blurry for no good reason, other’s will back focus a few inches so that the ears are the only thing that’s sharp, and if I’m lucky, one will be just right. This is not just annoying, it’s a hazard! My favorite shot expression-wise from this job had to be ditched because the eyes were muddy, but the hair on the back of her head was tack sharp. I broke down and ordered a new lens as soon as I got home because of this. If I’m charging people their hard-earned money for a product, then it’s my responsibility to give them the best product I can make. I’ve been able to squeeze by with the shortcomings of the Tamron for a long time now, but this showed me once again that I can lose the best moment because of it, not because of my lack of ability. I’ll also steer clear of Tamron lenses from now on since their quality control is notoriously uneven and their warranty policy is proof of that. If I tried to sell this lens, I’d get next to nothing for it – it holds no resale value (especially since it’s technically broken). I have gotten by with it for a long time despite of it’s shortcomings, but I’ve known to shoot a lot of photos in case one is blurry or back-focused.

The last photo I shot of Christina was shot with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens. I wanted a natural light, shallow DoF photo more for myself more than for the job, but to be honest, I bet she likes this one the best also. I just popped on the prime lens, opened it up as large as it will go and got in really close to her. Simple, quick, and an example of what a good lens is capable of – I only took two shots like this and that’s because the first one still had the white balance set to flash on the camera.

I’ll write up a post about my new lens when I finally get to do some work with it. I’m super excited because it’s a Nikkor lens, so I know it will rock!

Natural Light Portrait

Here’s one of my clients who today became an unknowing portrait subject of mine. I received a really cool book for Christmas by Chris Orwig called “People Pictures: 30 Exercises for Creating Authentic Photographs“. The title of the book really spoke to me, and the cover of it screamed “BUY ME!” so I had to add it to the wish list 😉

I just started reading it this morning, and I was happy to see that the forward was written by one of my favorite photo authors David duChemin, who’s latest book, “Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images” I’ve also received for Christmas and have been reading.

So the first exercise is to take a very quick portrait with minimal equipment. I was working with Bobby at his office replacing some computer equipment when I saw that the clouds had covered the sun at one point enough to get an environmental portrait outside in front of his doorway. This was the initial shot I made:

I framed him just outside of the entranceway to his office with his sign hanging overhead so that it looks almost like it was put there in post. He’s in the light and the background is in the shadow. The short-lived cloud acted as my light diffuser and I chose the slight angle to keep all of those elements together while avoiding as much of the reflections in the windows as possible. I positioned Bobby dead center to balance the sign in the shot. The shadows of the entranceway formed a natural vignette, although I did add a little more vignetting in post even it out on the bottom half of the frame. I shot this with a 35mm prime lens at f/1.8 & ISO 200. I was in Aperture Priority with a +1/3 EV and it chose 1/1250 of a second for the shutter speed. I shot a few frames to nail the composition and a few more to adjust the exposure, and got my shot within a minute. It was that easy, and that was the point – don’t worry about lenses, lights, or filters. Just grab the camera and take a simple portrait of a person without forcing it.

The problem is that once I get the bug, it’s hard to squish it. Inside, I shot a few more shots, including the one at the top of this post which I really ended up liking. He’s sitting between two windows, which made for really cool rim lights. I shot it in manual mode at f/1.8, 1/40th of a second, and ISO 200. I got in close to throw everything past his eyes into a slight blur. I also removed a few blemishes and smoothed the skin slightly in Photoshop (a backlit natural light portrait can be a little unforgiving on anyone over the age of 25) and that’s it. The book is really not about flattery though, it’s about connecting with people, which I believe was a successful attempt here.

There’s also a Flickr group based around the exorcises in the book, and so far there are some really talented photographers participating.

Help-Portrait MUSC Kids 2011

Every once in a while you take a photo that reminds you of why you love photography. Help-Portrait is an event where every time you press the shutter you make that picture.

On Friday, our small group of volunteers headed back to the atrium at the MUSC Children’s hospital in downtown Charleston, SC to give portraits to families of children who are being cared for there.

This year, the organizers of Help-Portrait have reversed their stance on sharing the photos of the subjects and have in fact encouraged us to do so. I’d like to share the photos I took of our 13 subjects during the event.

It’s amazing to be able to give the families of these kids something in a situation where so much has been taken from them. There is something about a kid smiling with you despite the struggle they’re fighting that makes you value the life we have.

Amy was in charge of gathering hats for our wardrobe since hair & make-up really wouldn’t work in this situation. For all the hats that we brought, the girls mostly liked the feather boa!

As I’ve mentioned before, the inspiration for us to bring Help-Portrait to MUSC Children’s Hospital came from leukemia survivor Jesse Dasinger. Last year, he was unable to participate due to his health. This year, he’s doing amazingly well and was able to drop in with his family to get his picture made:

I did have on technical problem that arose from a bad cable, and I had to retake Christopher’s photo here because the first attempt failed. He was a trooper, and was able to re-create the magic:

One of the brightest moments for me was when this girl, Amouri, came to get her photo made. She was also the last subject I shot. I grilled her a bit at first and found out she was a cheerleader. I knew she would be a great subject. She said something that made me feel tremendously enlightened about what goes on at MUSC. I asked her how she was feeling, and she said “I feel amazing”.

Another change introduced in this year’s Help-Portrait was the involvement of the participants. We came up with the idea to bring plain wooden picture frames to let the kids decorate them with – they loved it! John Lindroth took this shot of Megan:

Here’s the team photo shot by one of the staffers at the hospital:

Help-Portrait Charleston SC MUSC Kids Team

Drew, John, & Eugene also have some photos of the event that I’ll share soon. All of the photos will be available here. I also participated in the Charleston Help-Portrait group at the James Island Convoy of Hope event yesterday. I’ll be sure to write up another recap of that event soon! Stay tuned…

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.

Help Portrait MUSC Kids 2011

It’s been almost a year since we held our Help-Portrait MUSC Kids events (last year we did 2 – you can read about those here and here). This year, I’ll be leading our team on Friday, December 9th at the MUSC Children’s Hospital. We can’t do weekends at the hospital, so this was the closest we could get to the actual event. The Charleston, SC Group is also planning to host 4 events simultaneously on the official day in North Charleston, Charleston, James Island, & Johns Island. So if you can’t help us out on Friday, I’m sure they could use it on Saturday.

This year the Help-Portrait organizers want everybody to be a bit more interactive with their subjects. To best understand what they mean, Jeremy Cowart tells us in this video:

I think we can do some exciting stuff with these children since we don’t have a large amount of kids that we shoot. We can really spend some time getting to know their stories and spreading the word about Help-Portrait. Some ideas I have are to do some video, which would mean that a videographer could help us out this year. Since we can’t really do hair and makeup, maybe we could incorporate some really awesome hats as props – if anyone can pull together a unique hat collection, that would be cool (maybe we could ask a local thrift store to lend some to us). How about some frames that the kids can paint? I’ll be bringing a 5×7 photo printer, so the kids can make their photos into an art project (the atrium has painting supplies). If you have any ideas, I’d really appreciate them (either here in the comments, on the Help-Portrait Community site, or on Facebook).

I also wanted to share with you some great news from the boy who was our inspiration to do this at MUSC Children’s Hospital. Jessie Dasinger has passed the 280+ day mark after his bone marrow transplant and he’s doing great. He’s back in school and back to being a normal kid again. His story is an inspiration considering that just a year ago at this time he wasn’t well enough to participate in the event.

Make sure to check our community page for all planning info regarding the event. It’s less than a month away, so please don’t be shy – lets get the conversation started!

Ghost Walk 2011 Photo Booth

This post is going to look strikingly similar to yesterday’s, that’s because I used the same setup with some slight modifications. For the WHAIES Masquerade Ball, I had a little problem with my backdrop for the booth. I didn’t have a backdrop! UPS was very tardy with their delivery (next day does not mean next night!!) and I had to head out to the party with a makeshift backup plan. Nothing a little black gaffers tape can’t fix, MacGyver style. I used the school’s stage curtain and some black fabric to make it work. Unfortunately that meant time spent in post production correcting the color shifts between the different black elements. Booooo. This time was different!

Armed with a proper backdrop, I headed out to Summerville, SC for the Ghost Walk/ Harvest Fest/ Harvest Moon Hayride. The new challenge that arose for this booth was being outdoors and contending with very windy conditions. I was positioned up against a brick wall, but the backrop was still about a foot or so away from it. I had to bring down the height of it a bit so that it wouldn’t sail away and I used a combination of tent spikes, stones, and clamps to secure the backdrop. I also left out my umbrellas and used cardboard to flag a pair of bare flashes as the rim lights on either side. Umbrellas are pretty kite-like in the wind, but I actually like the way the non-diffused flashes look for this application. I used a softbox on a heavy-duty c-stand as my main light.

Because this photo booth was sponsored by Prudential Southern Coast Real Estate, I didn’t have to worry about collecting money, which meant the tethered laptop stayed at home and I was able to shoot away without administrative concerns (who paid for how many, associating file numbers with names, etc). I shot over 100 portraits in 3 hours! You can check out all of the photos here.

Mistress Mira Battles Harry (Kegan) Potter!

With that, I’m done with Halloween photo booths for now. Time to carve some pumpkins in preparation for my absolute favorite holiday of the year!

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