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Articles Tagged with: SC

Fran & Coz

Coz contacted me a while back to schedule a “top secret” mission. I was to shoot his proposal to his girlfriend Fran.

As I waited in White Point Garden, which is the park along the battery in downtown Charleston, I was surrounded by bus loads of children. A bald guy with a goat tee in his mid 30’s hanging around a park alone with a camera. I was sure the cops were going to be called. Luckily, the kids left before my couple arrived (I wonder if they were just creeped out and it was more of an escape).

The glow and energy of what transpired was infectious. They really lifted my day up with their happiness. We walked around the battery afterwards and took some engagement portraits as well.

In the short time I spent with them, I could tell they were going to be a happy couple for many years to come. Congratulations Fran & Coz, I hope you two look back on these photos in 50 years and remember the day you got engaged. Don’t forget that bald guy with a ridiculously long goat tee who scared off some school children to capture these memories 😉

Brewvival 2013 – A Tale of Suds & Mud

A couple of years ago, my buddies Chrys & Robert asked me to cover Charleston Brewvial. Last year I couldn’t make it, but this year I was determined to go as a participant so I could fully enjoy one of the greatest events in the greater Charleston area.

I originally planned on taking my P&S P7000 with me, but when I woke up on Saturday morning I realized that the rain was not going to be forgiving and I would be happier using my free hand to hold an umbrella instead. The rain was such a presence, in fact, that it became one of the stars of the event.

Not one sit idly by without letting the photographic itch consume me, I did make proper use of my iPhone to capture my experiences. This shot just above was of the first of many who decided to not give any fucks and start playing in the mud. Put thousands of people on a muddy field and someone’s gonna get dirty. Add beer, and a whole lot of people will join in happily.

Photo by Chrys Rynearson of me taking the shot above

Lets not forget the true star of the event. Beer.

This year, sour was all the rage. Most of the brewers had a signature sour beer and they were almost all fantastic. I only dumped one glass the whole day because I just didn’t like the taste at all. While that might sound sacrilegious to some, when you have a tasting event like this, if you don’t pace yourself you will most likely end up like the guys in the photos above. That means choosing wisely. The best part is when I found a beer I truly enjoyed, I couldn’t wait to share it with my friends (and even some strangers).

There are countless articles written about the benefits of having a camera-phone like the iPhone because the best camera is indeed the one that you have with you. My piece of advice with iPhonography is the age old photographic wisdom of “If you think you’re too close, get in closer”. Be concise with your storytelling and know the limitations of the camera. For events like this, it’s all I need because the lighting was perfect (cloudy and outdoors), it fits in my pocket, and I can focus on the experience with friends because I’m “just another guy with a camera-phone”. Besides, it’s nice to let your photog friends do the heavy lifting while you tip a few back and act stupid:

I could have sworn Robert took this photo, but I guess Chrys was standing next to him! I’ll give the credit to Robert Donovan anyway since I was exposing myself to him 😉

Check out the rest of my photos in this Flickr set, also be sure to check out Chrys’ set, CHSBeer.org, and the official Brewvival Facebook Page.

Help-Portrait MUSC Kids 2012

Photo by William Long

On Friday morning, I was joined by 5 great volunteers to gift portraits to the families of children at MUSC Children’s Hospital in Charleston, SC. This was the 3rd Help-Portrait event I’ve led at the children’s hospital and every year it gets better.

Top Row: William Long, John Lindroth, Joseph Nienstedt
Bottom Row: Katee Cornette, Jen Pfeffer, Kathy Hare

Due to the nature of the event we hold and HIPA, I don’t ask the subjects too much about the nature of their conditions. Instead, my philosophy is a little different than most other Help-Portrait events. My goal for the team is to make these kids and their families feel normal. We treat them as if they were coming into a studio and walk them through the whole process. We also provide them with craft photo frames that they design for their portraits, which is always fun for the kids.

Photo by William Long

One of the children asked to see my camera, so I showed him how it works. Then he wanted to take pictures of our next subject, so we let him – and the portraits turned out perfect! In fact, we printed those out and gave them to the subject, and they loved them. This is exactly what we wanted to provide for these families – a fun event that made them forget why they were in a hospital.

Photo by Kathy Hare

Here’s one of the portraits that Tyreq made:

Photo by Tyreq

There are a lot of meaningful things that the families and hospital staff say, but one that sticks out was a parent who’s child was too sick to leave the room but really wanted to participate. Because it was the parent requesting it, we were able to send a photographer into the room and take their family’s portraits – something they haven’t been able to do because of their situation. The photograph meant so much to the parent that she figured out a way to make it happen. This was such an example of the power of a photograph and what it means to someone in need.

Photo by William Long

Please take a moment and watch this slideshow of images from the event. I hope the images move you even slightly as much as they moved us:

Last Day of Movember 2012

I just wanted to share my final self-portrait for Movember of 2012. I try to do at least one of these a week during the event. Last week’s was a little more special since I made it on top of a rocky cliff 😉

So far, my team has raised over $2,000 during the month, and I think that’s awesome! So thank you for those of you who supported. If you are feeling generous, there’s still some time to donate some money at my MoSpace page.

BarCampCHS 4

This past weekend marked the 4th BarCamp in Charleston, SC. What is BarCamp? It can be described simply as an attendee-driven conference. The attendees pitch, vote on, and present the content of the day. It’s a lot of fun and this was my 3rd year doing it.

Once again, I presented a class that was photography related. This time I tackled my portrait workflow in Photoshop. I had two examples prepared to demonstrate the techniques I currently use when editing photos. The first one was a headshot of one of the pediatricians at Sweetgrass Pediatrics. I showed a basic RAW conversion in Camera RAW, and then opened the photo in Photoshop to demonstrate techniques like blemish removal, teeth whitening, how to optimize the eyes, skin softening, and dodging & burning. I finished with my selective sharpening technique. This is the final retouched image:

Due to the nature of BarCamp, my class got scheduled in the very first time slot of the day, which is cool by me (who doesn’t want to get their session over right away so they can enjoy the rest of the day??). Unfortunately, the day started quite late due to the fact that almost twice as many people showed up this year compared to last year. I only made it halfway through my session before we had to move outside to get the group photo made. I promised the class that I would post the second half of my session as a screencast here on my website, so you’re all in for something a little different.

Before I get to that, I wanted to talk about the group photo. As I was packing up my gear in the classroom, my daughter came rushing in and said “Come on, Dad, everyone’s waiting to get the photo taken!” I grabbed my camera and ran to the balcony to see everyone all grouped together on the ground level. I looked down at the crowd and thought “Oh, crap”. Mid-day, cloudless skies. Sharp shadows from the building, and worse, the trees. Bright yellow warm light dappling big swatches of faces, and cool blue shadowy light on the rest. All inconsistent, and no time to get hundreds of attendees to relocate! Besides, where could I possibly relocate them to anyway? Well, I switched my camera’s bracketing feature on and organized the crowd to fit in the frame and fired away.

This photo is the end result of a lot of finessing in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Color Effex Pro. I’ll save you from all of the gory details, but the dynamic range of my camera truly helped me save this photograph. I was able to use a highly underexposed photo (that still had blown highlights anyway) and create a useable image. HDR didn’t fly because there were too many moving parts. Doesn’t matter – people seem to like the shot regardless of the pixel gymnastics it took to get everyone somewhat evenly exposed.

OK, so here’s the screencast I ~~warned~~ told you about – Hope you enjoy it:

And here’s the final image that I retouched in this video:

Coastal Carolina Fair Photo Contest 2012

I was super excited to walk into the photography/art building at the Ladson Fair Grounds this week to find that my photo above, taken for Eco Fitness in Mount Pleasant, won 1st prize in the division 1 photo contest at this year’s Coastal Carolina Fair! Two of my other photos received honorable mentions as well.

This is one of my favorite shots I made this year, which was at the Change For Change benefit art show:

This third entry was from the photo shoot I did last month for Stella Nova Salon & Spa. I’ll share more about that shoot in a future post.

While I was extremely flattered to receive these awards, the big win for my family was to see my daughter take 3rd place in the division 3 contest with this photo that she made during the recent Worldwide Photowalk:

Photo by Mackenzie Nienstedt

And she also received an honorable mention for this photo:

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Photo by Mackenzie Nienstedt

We had prepared my daughter as best we could for a loss since this was her first time entering an art competition like this. We did the same with my son Kegan, who had entered a 3-D art sculpture through his art class at school. So when she won, it was truly a fantastic moment as a parent to see her surprise. Not only that, but Kegan received a 1st place ribbon for his piece as well!

Photo by Amy Nienstedt

What a fantastic day for our family! We are so proud of our kids, and it made the rest of the night a blast as we were so happy about the contests. I left my DSLR at home for this trip, opting to hang with the family instead of hanging behind the lens. I did have my iPhone and couldn’t resist snapping some shots like this sunset using iOS 6’s new panoramic photo feature (be sure to click on it to open up a larger version):

My wife, who had been having one of “Those” days, turned it around completely at the fair. I love how happy she looks here:

Finally, I have never had a caricature done of myself before. I was walking by the caricature booth, and this pretty young artist was looking at me with puppy dog eyes. She enticed me! Well, not really, I walked over and asked her how much. I’m sure she was thrilled to have such an easy ~~target~~ subject. So without further ado, here I am as a cartoon:

Caricature from the Coastal Carolina Fair

I think everyone needs a little bit of kitsch in their life, it makes me smile. I’ve got a lot more to share with you all, so check back soon!

2012 Worldwide Photowalk Decisions

Kayaks at Shem Creek

Paddleboardering Under The Bridge

This past weekend was the 5th annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk all around the globe. We had a couple of groups participating here in Charleston, and I opted to walk with the evening group in Mount Pleasant.

Above are my two favorite shots that I made from the walk. I got a bunch of stuff I thought turned out well for a photowalk, as these walks are more about hanging out with other photographers and helping each other out than making a world-class photograph. I had the pleasure of hanging out with my daughter Mackenzie who was shooting with my Nikon P7000:

Mackenzie scopes out the graffiti under the Shem Creek bridge

She also volunteered to take the group shot, but I wanted her to be in it, so I grabbed my tripod and set the timer on my D800 to take this shot of the walkers:

Backlit sunlight, shade, and incandescent lights? The D800 fared pretty well at dealing with this mixed bag of lighting in the shot!

So anyway, the worst part of these photowalks is deciding which photo to submit as your favorite shot that you took on the walk. I’m torn between the two shots at the top of the post. The kayak shot is definitely more striking and grabs you first, and it has some excellent lighting as it was taken just as the sun was setting. The paddleboat shot is a bit more dynamic in my opinion. The subject is just plain awesome, I love the kid looking up at her dad while he’s paddling. I love the sidelight of the bridge trestle and the pattern that it creates. I love that the subject is framed within it. Ugggh!

While the sunset itself wasn’t spectacular at all (no clouds = boring sunset), I did get a descent photo of it here:

But, I’m not gonna submit that one because it doesn’t speak to me the way the other two do. So which one do you prefer? The Kayaks or the Paddlboarder?

Cusses/Royal Teeth/Heyrocco

3 bands. 3 shots. 3 exercises in ridiculously low light photography at The Sparrow in North Charleston…

Cusses

Royal Teeth

Heyrocco

You can see more pics here on my Facebook page.

Harley

I’ve got another great senior to show you tonight – Harley is a guy who loves the guitar, drawing, and cars. He hates my Prius because he says that if he drove one, his friends would kill him! I guess his friends don’t pay for their own gas just yet 😉

Here’s a shot of Harley with his brother and sister. This is one of those rare moments with 3 teenage siblings where they all did an amazing job at the same time!

And here’s a close-up headshot. Check out those baby blue eyes. I love the blue and red contrasts in this shot.

I also wore him out with lots of jumping (that’s what you get for hating on my hybrid!!!)

Harley’s a great guy who’s got a lot to offer the world, I know he’ll graduate to doing great things!

Art & Food Trucks

Charleston artist Patch Whiskey dominates the front of The Pour House

Today was another Food Truck Rodeo here in Charleston. This one took place at The Pour House on James Island.

Local food truck fans chow down on some good eats

I took my family to the event for lunch to enjoy some Roti Rolls (our favorite truck of the bunch), and my wife got an amazing sandwich from The Foodie Truck. We finished off with some peach beignets from The Creole Food Truck.

Maria Carlucci paints a flying frog mural on the backside of The Pour House

Prior to our trip to the rodeo, I had been shooting photos of some real estate for my wife, so I had my camera with me. It didn’t take long for me to break it out (I had barely given my food order for my “Abe Froman” sausage Roti Roll before I headed back to the car to get it). There were a bunch of local artists painting murals all over the pour house, including Patch Whiskey (featured at the top of this post and below), which of course piqued my interest.

Capturing artists making art while chowing down on local food truck cuisine – sounds like a good time to me 😉 See you all at the next rodeo!

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