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Articles Tagged with: SC

Fog

This past weekend, my family traveled up to the border of SC and NC to do some work on the in-law’s home and to celebrate her birthday. Since her home was going to be a work zone, we opted not to sleep at my mother-in-law’s house and rented a home in Landrum, SC for the duration.

On Sunday morning, after a long weekend of peeling wallpaper, spackling, laying tile, grouting, masking, priming, and painting, I woke up to a wonderfully thick fog. I decided to throw on my sweatshirt and shoes and take a walk down the road with my camera.

Fog makes for some fantastic landscape opportunities. It’s almost too good, because it eliminates so much and allows you to focus on your subjects clearly, which is ironic because nothing is optically clear in the fog.

I guess the best word to explain what I mean is isolation. You can focus your mind’s eye on an object when everything else is out of focus and easily isolate it.

It’s kind of like nature’s bokeh. I also found it very stimulating. I hadn’t even had my morning coffee yet, but I was full of life by the time I walked to the end of the dirt road leading up to the main road. At that point, the creative juices were flowing and the most ordinary things became extraordinary.

The processing on the photos above were all done in Snapseed on the Mac. It’s a great program for making gritty photos, which adds to the mood of my early morning adventure.

After breakfast, the kids & I did some exploring on the property of the rental home. My daughter found a little guest house that was very much geared for youngsters. It had a loft with a bunch of mattresses that were screaming for kids to play on.

My son found a tree swing, which he made quick use of…

And in the garage that was converted into a workshop, I found this:

A fully equipped darkroom! It was truly awesome – the owner of this house has everything you need to develop film. He also has studio space, which was more like storage space while I was there. Regardless, I took the opportunity to shoot some of the elements, including this:

The next time I complain about the cost of a lens, I’ll look at the pictures of this setup and realize just how expensive photography used to be monetarily as well as time-wise. It makes you think about how different the developing process is now for photos. Before, you would lock yourself away in a room for hours just dodging and burning away, completely in the creative zone – much like my walk in the fog, but with chemicals! I have a lot of respect for the dedication and work that went into this craft before this industrial age of digital.

In other news, I received my new lens and I can’t wait to try it out in a few professional scenarios – so far, it’s only been used to shoot my pets, which is never a bad thing really 😉

G. Love & Special Sauce

Last night I was faced with a terrible decision. It was the end of a long day spent working on a project and I was wiped out – I needed to relax for another long day working on the same project. I also knew that G. Love & Special Sauce were playing at the Music Farm in Charleston, SC just at the time I was finishing for the day. Well, you’re reading this now because I made the rock n’ roll choice to go down in flames. You only live once here on earth, best make the most of it.

Opening the show was the Alabama native Kristy Lee.

She dresses like 90’s era Ice Cube, talks like an old southern maid, and sings like it’s her last day on earth and she wants the world to remember exactly who she is. She was amazing – I couldn’t believe just how talented she was live. She got the place going better than most full bands could. She’s like a gospel singer who sings about whiskey instead of God. I loved it.

G. Love & Special Sauce hit the stage like freight train. Timo Shanko was on bass and the Houseman Jeffrey Clemens was on drums as the stripped down trio rocked the Holy City.

It quickly became apparent that God has returned to the earth and has taken the form of G. Love’s bass player. Timo was on fire. The guy is unbelievable.

On Stage right was the Houseman slapping the skins like it’s New Orleans in February and he’s got all the beads. The old school voodoo rhythm keeper kept the funkiness turned to 11.

If Timo’s the God, and Houseman’s the Devil, then G. Love’s the prophet telling us all how it is in the D-Cell slinging streets of Philadelphia. He’s not going back to Jersey ’cause he knows he’s fixin’ to die. He’s taking I76 and his baby’s got sauce, so you better holla.

The last time I saw G. Love, it was about 15 years ago at Tramps in NYC. I always remembered how this guy brought the ladies in – It was about a 10 to 1 ratio of girls to guys then, and they were all smokin’. 15 years later, and the man still has it. The crowd was a great example of Charleston’s reputation of being home to some of the world’s prettiest ladies.

Kristy Lee came back out to sing with the boys:

The band did not waver, and the crowd was bumpin’ and grinding all night long…

I took a lot of shots of the show, so make sure to browse through this set on Flickr. I had a fantastic time, but all things must come to an end, so I leave you with a crowd shot I took before I headed back home to my lady:

Help-Portrait Charleston 2011

I had the pleasure of not only organizing a Help-Portrait event at MUSC Children’s Hospital again this year, but also of volunteering as a shooter for the Charleston Help-Portrait group at the Convoy of Hope event on James Island. I want to share some of my favorite shots from the day.

This was a lot different from the event I organized. I was one of three shooters, we had 2 editors, registration volunteers, and a makeup artist all in one tent!

Here are a couple of shots from my phone of the other two shooters at the event:

Doug DeLong

Hansje Gold-Krueck

I also got to shoot some other event volunteers, such as these mimes who were performing:

As well as the local fire department:

Help-Portrait CHS James Island Fire Department

I shot a lot of families. It can be challenging to get a group to fit within the borders of a portable collapsible background. There was a lot of convincing on my part to get people as close as possible to each other. Luckily, that also usually got people laughing right away.

When shooting kids, I tried to get them to also pose without their parents so they could let their personalities show. Something about taking a picture with adults makes kids squirm, but when they’re with other kids they really seem to open up.

I also shot a little differently than I did with the MUSC event. I shot in JPEG normal to make the file sizes smaller and also let the camera handle the JPEG conversions to speed up the processing. I shot over 54 different subjects – and I was one of 3 photogs! Needless to say the editors were very busy.

The other change I made was to slightly bump up my ISO to 250 to make my flashes work a little less. I worked 7 hours and never had to change the batteries!

I have to say, it’s nice to let someone else worry about leading every once and a while. Being a professional means a lot more than just taking pictures! For this event though, I just had to worry about setting up and making people smile. I still love leading, but it was nice to have a break from the “business” end of things for a change.

All in all it was a really successful event. I had a blast, and the subjects I interacted with were all unique and interesting people from all walks of life. I didn’t get a chance to check out the rest of the event, although we had a stage right next to our tent so we were jamming to lots of gospel music, which I was enjoying to the point of ridiculousness (although that could have been the exhaustion kicking in). Everybody was in such high spirits though that it was hard not to have a sore face from smiling all day long. You can view the rest of my portraits from the event here.

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.

CupcakeCamp Charleston 2011

After a year of patiently waiting, Heaven on Earth has returned to Charleston, SC. Bakers from around the low country freely give away their sugary treats to local cupcake lovers in hopes of winning the title of best tasting, most original, or best Thanksgiving themed cupcake at CupcakeCamp Charleston.

After learning our lesson from last year, we arrived early to the event and jumped on the line outside of Spirit Moves Dance Studio.

Once inside the studio, tables filled with cupcakes lined the walls. Throughout the event cupcakes came and went – what you tasted was based on what was available when it was your turn to go inside. A big improvement was the inclusion of sponsored beverages from Fiery Ron’s Home team BBQ and Coastal Coffee Roasters (who were also sponsors at BarCampCHS).

As I moved down the line, I began to notice a trend in pumpkin flavored cupcakes. At the time, I didn’t realize that there was a Thanksgiving category, so I was perplexed by the amount of pumpkiny variations. The good news is that I love pumpkin flavored stuff.

Just like last year, there was no shortage of happiness. I swear that you could end all wars with free cupcakes. Look at those campers. The bakers and volunteers were also as friendly as can be – nothing but good feelings around the studio.

I had a plate full of cupcakes to taste, and a big cup of milk to wash it down. Here’s a pic of what I got:

While I was snapping away to capture this holy day, I had the pleasure of meeting CupcakeCamp Charleston’s organizer Heather MacKey. It was cool that she recognized me from my post about last year’s event. Of course, I asked her to pose for this picture with sponsor Hazel Rider:

Hey, it’s been a while since I showed a picture of cupcakes. Here’s some more cupcakes!

Local photog and technophile Eugene Mah was on hand wearing an interesting T-Shirt. I snapped this shot of him with the proprietor of Spirit Moves who was sporting some steam punk goggles:

I do not know who won the contests yet, but once again the people in attendance were the real winners because… FREE CUPCAKES!!! My personal favorite was the cupcake that had everyone talking. A banana nut, peanut butter, & bacon cupcake. Yes, I said bacon. It sounds disgusting, but it was a down-home wall-of-sound musical party in my mouth. I’m serious, it was amazing. Look at it. Want it. Love it.

Check out my full set of photos on Flickr. Want some great news? Summerville is hosting their own CupcakeCamp event early next year, so now we don’t have to wait a whole year for this to happen again!

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!

WHAIES Masquerade Ball Photo Booth

This evening I had the pleasure of sponsoring & running a photo booth for an event at Windsor Hill Arts infused Elementary School for their Masquerade Ball. I tried to do something different this time by bringing a portable photo printer with me to print out photos on the sport for the kids. Boy was that a challenge! I wasn’t prepared for the backlog of photos that needed to be printed as I concentrated on shooting. By the time my wife Amy realized we weren’t going to be able to print everything by the end of the party, we were scrambling for ways to service everyone in a fair and timely manner.

Most of the kids and parents were really cool about the delay, and I’m deeply sorry to those who had to wait. For those who opted to get their photo delivered, your child will get them this week at school. In the mean time, please feel free to browse the gallery here. You can purchase different sized prints or share the photos on Facebook with your friends! Amy & I are proud to be able to raise some extra money for the PTA while providing our community with this service at a minimal cost. We’ll keep trying to find the best way to make it work while keeping the costs for the families low!

Coastal Carolina Fair 2011

Much like last year, the year before that, and for 50 something years before that, the Coastal Carolina Fair has come to Exchange Park in Ladson, SC. Actually, they’re celebrating the 55th year of the fair in the Charleston area this year – that’s over a half-century of fried Kool-Aid (or Oreos, Twinkies, sticks of butter). This year I went with the family, but I still managed to get a bunch of shots of the fun. I also wrote up a similar post last year, so feel free to check that out.

This photo of the taxi cab tourist in NYC won an honorable mention in the Division 1 photography contest! Just thought I’d share that with you in case you aren’t able to check out the art exhibits. If you do go there, please notice (and laugh at) my giant self-portrait that is keeping a half-bearded eye on the exhibit hall. Thanks.

We arrived just before sunset, and I have to say that I was disappointed by the sky this evening. The clouds were perfect for a spectacular southern light show, but just after I took this shot, they vanished and we got one of those shapeless sunsets. Oh well, there’s always next year 😉

I did try to compensate for the lack of definition with a graduated pink Cokin filter that I held in front of my lens. I also tried to get creative with this shot:

Something about this guy in front of the balloons caught my attention. I wonder how many times Old Man Jenkins here had his plans foiled at the old amusement park by some meddling kids before he took a road gig?

The big star of the show for me is always the big Ferris Wheel. I just love the patterns of light and the plethora of angles to capture them. This year I decided to go head on.

Kegan found out that he does not like heights on the skylift.

Here he is, holding on like a trooper:

The kids made good use of their “all you can ride” hand stamps.

I’m pretty sure I’ve taken this same shot of these same ducks every year I go to the fair. As fun as the fair is, it really is very consistent. And by consistent I mean it’s the same dang thing every dang year!

In the petting zoo, I thought I would get all artsy with this close-up of a cow’s head:

But then she did this, and I couldn’t resist:

The fair wouldn’t be the fair without some of that newfangled country music I didn’t grow up listening to. From where I stand, the new country folks basically took all of their cues from 80’s hair metal but got rid of the distortion pedals and added a fiddle. But, there was a huge crowd of people there to see Colt Ford, and I snuck up to the stage to grab a couple of shots and see what all the commotion was about. By the way, the security are always really cool at the fair if you ask to take some shots first!

Good old Colt must be a big deal around here, because even the people not watching the concert were singing along as they walked around the food court in earshot of the show. We started to head to the car when I got taken by surprise by the fireworks show. I really shouldn’t have been surprised, because they do it every night at the fair. It was a pretty good excuse to pull the camera back out.

And with that we hurried to the car so we could wait in traffic. Another successful family trip to the fair. I can’t wait until next year!

BarCampCHS Session Wrap-Up

Group Photo of the BarCampCHS attendees

Yesterday was the 3rd annual BarCampCHS event, and like last year it was held over at the College of Charleston campus in downtown Charleston, SC. As mentioned in an earlier post, I held a session on Off-Camera Flash. Before I talk about the highlights of my presentation, I wanted to share a bit of the BarCamp experience.

30 Seconds To Pitch

After you register and get your bag o’ swag, the attendees gather in an auditorium and the people who plan on holding sessions get 30 seconds each to pitch their idea. As you tell everyone what you plan to do, a counter is counting down behind you (a few people did have to get the mic taken away from them mid-thought). In reality, you only got about 25 seconds to pitch since people started counting down the final 5 seconds. I found it quite entertaining, especially when some mouthy participant trying to hawk a couponing network-marketing scheme went over his 30 seconds and tried to continue without the mic. He was followed by @CaananTully who pitched a session on saving money at the supermarket without using coupons. The crowd applauded loudly. Afterward, the attendees lined up to vote on which sessions they’d like to attend.

With that, sessions began about a myriad of topics, although it was highly concentrated on computer programming. Some of the more popular sessions focused on geek culture, including a session about modifying old Nintendo Entertainment System games such as Super Mario Brothers.

Eugene Mah Flaunts His Bathrobe Style

Eugene Mah took a lot of great photos of the days events, and they can be seen here. There is a BarCampCHS Flickr Group to check out, as well as my full set of photos. Twitterer @Pataford has a Ustream channel with some video he took. If you have some content I missed, please let me know in the comments! Now, on to my creative session:

Off-Camera Flash 101 Session

Slides from my BarCampCHS presentation

I started off the presentation by a short introduction and recap of my session from last year on photo editing. I showed some of the photos we made and edited and started talking about the creative use of lighting in the shots. This led to a brief discussion on why you would want to use off-camera flash. I also touched a little on why you would ever use your on-camera flash, and showed an example of fill flash outdoors during a bright and sunny day.

Next, we talked about shooting in manual mode – both on the camera and on the flash. We talked about the benefits of TTL as well as its shortcomings and why it’s important to know how to use manual flash, especially when working with light modifiers. I explained how when dealing with off-camera flash, you can control your ambient light with your shutter speed and your flash power with your aperture settings. Someone asked about ISO settings, and I explained that you want to shoot in your camera’s native ISO when dealing with lighting to produce consistent and clean images.

The next part of the session dealt with the different methods of getting your flash off of your camera. The first method was using bounce flash. I explained that even though the flash is still technically on the camera, the light source is now whatever you are bouncing the flash off of, which is indeed off of the camera. @TheKingOfGames volunteered to be our model as we took some sample shots. We started with a shot with the flash on the camera to reference the difference.

Straight Flash on the Camera

As you can see, the shot is not all that flattering. Someone in the class said “It looks like something you might see on Facebook”. I then showed the differences when bouncing the flash off of the ceiling or wall. In the following shot, I used the projector screen to bounce off of, which was really bright and reflective:

Bounce Flash Off A Wall

You can immediately see the difference in the quality of light. I talked about the softness and direction of the light, which made for a more defined image whereas the straight flash shot was very flat.

Next we talked about using a wire to move the flash off of the camera. The benefit being reliability while being able to cheaply transmit TTL information, with the downside being limitations of the cable’s length. We briefly talked about the different standards in cables, including PC Cables, 1/8″ Audio-Style Cables, and TTL Cables. I had a TTL cable that I use with my bracket, so we took a test shot using the bare flash:

Bare Flash Using a TTL Wire

Since I only had a short cable, I was able to demonstrate the limitation of the distance I could place the flash away from the camera (about arm’s length).

We then talked about wireless flash. I covered the three main methods of shooting wireless: Optical, Infrared, & Radio. We discussed the benefits and issues with each method. Optical is cheap but unreliable. Infrared can transmit TTL information, can be cheap depending on the hardware you already own (it also can be quite expensive if your camera doesn’t support it), and how you can control the flash settings from the camera. It’s also limited to line of sight and is very unreliable outdoors. I took a test shot using the pop-up flash on my D90 in commander mode to fire an SB-600 on a mini tripod to camera right:

IR Wireless Flash Test Shot Using an OmniBounce Diffuser

I spent the most time on radio triggers. I talked about the Pocket Wizards and Chinese knock-offs. I explained that you can buy about six Cactus v5 triggers for the price of one Pocket Wizard Plus II and according to many reviews and tests, the Cactus v5 is more reliable! I also touched on the newer Pocket Wizards and Radio Poppers that are able to transmit TTL information. I explained that for the cost of that convenience, you could be investing in some great lights! Sure it would be nice to justify having the top of the line triggers, but there’s no shame in buying a set of reliable knock-offs when you can achieve the same end-result for a fraction of the cost.

Photo by Daniel Vice @sharpstick on Twitter

I started doing some shots using an umbrella. I demonstrated how to control the flash power by changing the aperture, and then mixing ambient light with flash by adjusting the shutter speed. I showed how to match the ambient florescent lighting and flash lighting by gelling the flash with a green gel and setting the white balance in the camera to florescent.

Umbrella Look

I also talked about sync speed. I demonstrated what happens when you shoot faster than your sync speed:

Shooting Faster Than Your Sync Speed

I then changed the umbrella and set it up as a shoot-through umbrella and showed how it created a different look.

Photo by Daniel Vice @sharpstick on Twitter

I took a few shots as I moved the light around to get a softer look.

Shoot-Through Umbrella Look

I also altered the model’s position a bit and added another flash onto my camera at its lowest power setting to try and achieve a small catchlight in his eyes. This was our final result, which will hopefully make for a nicer Facebook profile pic than what we started with 😉

Final Shot

We did some Q&A, and I shared some resources for learning about camera lighting. Here’s my list:

joemcnally.com – Joe McNally
strobist.com – David Hobby
zackarias.com – Zack Arias
kelbytraining.com -Scott Kelby

I also wanted to add a pair of new eBooks by Piet Van den Eynde on Craft & Vision. You can pick up each of the two eBooks for $5 each, or buy them both at the same time for only $8. He’s done an excellent and thorough job in the first book of introducing the reader to off-camera flash, and takes you much further in the second one. I think it’s definitely worth more than $8!

Tech Specs For My Presentation

Gear:
Camera: Nikon D90
Lens: Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 VC
Flash: Nikon SB-600
Light Stand: Manfrotto 5001B
Umbrella: Photek Softliter II
Wireless Triggers: Cactus v5
Gels: Cokin Photogels
Mini Tripod: Jobi GorillaPod

I ran the presentation on an iPad hooked up through a projector using Keynote for the slides and Photosnitch for the live demo. I used an EyeFi wireless SD card to transmit the photos to the iPad sans cables.

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