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Articles Tagged with: SC

The Fall Is Awesome!

Day 251 - Sullivan's Island Lighthouse Sunset

This is the best time of year to capture sunsets here in the Charleston area. The weather is beautiful and the sky seems to catch on fire for a brief moment. There’s also no shortage of fun stuff coming up, such as corn mazes, haunted house attractions, hayrides, and pumpkin picking. Halloween just might be my favorite holiday ever – it brings people together. What other holiday makes you go out and ring on your neighbor’s doorbell so they can give you treats?

I have a busy month ahead of me as well. One of the highlights include a wedding shoot this weekend on Folly Beach. I’m pretty stoked about getting some sunset portraits of the happy couple. October 22nd is BarCamp! If you remember, I did a session last year on photo editing (you can check out the post about that here). This year I’ve proposed a session called “Off-Camera Flash 101”

If you’ve never been to or heard of BarCamp, it unfortunately has nothing to do with alcohol. It’s a conference where the attendees are the attraction. Basically anybody who attends can pitch a session to teach. It’s really fun and you get a kick-ass T-Shirt. It costs a mere $10 to participate – get a ticket now!

Next up, I’m doing a photo booth for the Summerville Ghost Walk/ Harvest Fest/ Harvest Moon Hayride sponsored by DREAM and Summerville JSL. That’s on Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011 from 6:00PM-9:00PM. I’ll be on the side of the Prudential Southern Coast office at 112 W Doty Ave in Summerville, SC. I hear that Mistress Mira will be doing some fortune telling as well 😉

October 27th-November 5th is the return of the Coastal Carolina Fair. Check out my recap rom last year. I just ordered my prints for the Photography Contest. This year they have changed the rules slightly from last year as you can only submit 3 photos now. I guess the contest has grown a bit! You can see the official rules here.

Of course, I’ve saved the best for last. Just read my rundown of last year’s CupcakeCamp event. It was the single most amazing event ever conceived. All you can eat free cupcakes, no questions asked. If you don’t want to go to this, you’re not human. CupcakeCamp will be on November 5, 2011 3:00PM-5:00PM at Spirit Moves. Check out the Facebook event page here. Look at the sweetness:

4th Annual Worldwide Photo Walk

Scott Kelby has organized the 4th global photowalk this weekend, and this year Charleston had two groups of walkers. After sweating my way in the daytime during last year’s photowalk, I opted for the evening walk led by Eugene Mah.

The group met at the fountain by Charleston’s waterfront park. I swear, I never made it out of the park! While we were setting up to take our group photo, I noticed some dancers practicing in the grass. As soon as the walk started, I walked up to the dancers and asked them if I could take some pictures of them. They were no strangers to the lens, so they were more than helpful models! Taz started out by doing leaps over me as I laid down in the grass:

Natalya was up next. I decided to mount my SB-600 on my tripod to try and illuminate her face as she was jumping. It was not easy trying to time the leaps – I’ve got about a dozen shots of her just before or just after the precipice of her jump. I did get this one though, which is all I needed 😉

While I was rolling around in the grass with a camera to my eye, a familiar face popped up – It was my local photog buddy Marty! He got some great shots of the girls as well.

As Natalya was resting, I made a casual portrait:

The sun was setting, so we moved over to the barrier wall to take advantage of the beautiful sky. Unfortunately there were no clouds, but I think the clear sky definitely influenced my compositions.

The light was quickly fading, I focused on shooting Natalya, while Marty was shooting Taz. We were both using off-camera flashes to light out subjects. I shot most of my shots with a Tokina 11-16mm ultra wide angle lens wide open at f/2.8. Natalya was doing splits (pictured at the top of this post) and stretches on top of the wall that would make a parent squeamish. She was awesome at this!

At this point, Marty and I realized that we spent almost the whole walk in one spot! More like a photo shoot than a walk – so we headed over to the fountain to get some long exposure night-shots of the water.

After that we went to the rendezvous point, a cool bar/grill called The Griffon. While waiting, we decided to shoot the old Chevy parked in front of the gelato place next to the bar.

I do love to take long exposures of people walking. This group of sailors made this shot:

We met up with some other walkers and went inside the Griffon to tell our war stories and watch the last half of Clemson’s trouncing of Virginia Tech. I shot the table next to us just because I had the shooting bug in me and found it hard to stop.

Marty, Eugene, & I went up on the roof of the parking garage where we were parked and tried to get some last minute shots. I had nothin’. It was late, surprisingly cold, and I was tired. My tiny little travel tripod was not having the wind up on the roof, and the shots I took up there are proof! Instead of making excuses, I made my way home 🙂

You can check out the full set of shots I made on my Flickr set. Also check out Marty’s set while you’re over there! Chuck Boyd was also on hand as were many members of his 21st Century Photography Group.

Which One: King Of Pops Umbrella

Chase Jarvis has a bit that he does on his blog where he asks his readers to pick from two alternate versions of shots he’s made and explain why you like one over the other. Here’s an example of his latest one. I thought I’d try it out here with two shots taken within seconds of each other. They are also shown in the order they were made in. I shot these with my Nikon Coolpix P7000 at the 2011 Carolina Green Fair this past Sunday in Marion Square. The subject is the iconic King of Pops rainbow umbrella.

Shot #1

Shot #2

So which one do you like, shot #1 or shot #2? Why? Sound off here in the comments, or on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Labor Day at Folly Beach

What better place to spend a national holiday than at the beach? Luckily we’ve got some of America’s best beaches right here in the Charleston, SC area. Unfortunately, the Folly Beach State Park was closed due to erosion from Hurricane Irene (yeah we did have some damage, regardless of my own personal experience – I’m feeling quite sad for my northern friends and family that got it much worse than us). The beach was still a blast anyway.

We headed to “The Burnout”, which is what I call the side of the beach to the right of Folly Road opposite to the ever-so-popular surf spot, “The Washout”. There were quite a lot of surfers out on this side of the Folly Pier. Not to mention body boarders, including my two kids.

I brought my trusty old Nikon D40, and stood in the water getting sloshed around. Even though it got splashed quite a bit, it kept shooting without fail. That little camera has been through a lot with me, and it’s nice to bring it out every once in a while.

I have nothing clever, witty, or necessarily insightful to say about the day. It was just plain awesome to have a day to relax, hang out in the waves, and snap some shots of the kids having fun. I hope your day was at least half as enjoyable as ours was.

Keep Shooting

I made the shot above after pouring a bowl of Cap’n Crunch for my son the other day. I liked the natural light coming through the windows and the vibrance of the colors of the cereal and bowl. After I shot it, I was working on my computer and I looked over as he was eating and saw a whole different shot of the same scene. I remembered being a kid and reading the entire cereal box while I would eat my sugary breakfast. Kegan was doing just that and when I picked up my camera again to capture this:

Same scene, but two completely different shots. I couldn’t say which one is better or more effective, but instead of one shot, I now have two that I love! I also recently parked near a church in downtown Charleston and decided to break out my camera. I started with the straight “real estate” shot:

First Scots Presbyterian Church - Charleston, SC

I walked around the church looking for interesting shots, and the view of one of the doors through the iron gates just screamed Charleston to me. Iron gates are one of the signature elements in the Holy City, as are the many churches.

I then recomposed for a vertical shot which turned out to be a very different photo:

As you shoot, it’s so important to move around and look for different approaches to the subject you are shooting. Joseph Stalin once said, “Quantity has a quality all of its own”, and as nutty as he was it makes a lot of sense. The more you do something the better you will get at it, and the more you produce, the better your chance of capturing the perfect moment or composing the perfect scene. In short, keep shooting.

2011 Fireworks At Folly Beach

We had such a good time catching the professional fireworks display at Folly Beach last year that we decided to revisit the beach again this year. It did not disappoint! This year was a bit different as they did not launch the fireworks from the county park, opting for a more central location near the pier. This made for a cool backdrop of the hotel and pier. Prior to the show, I made this long exposure of the Folly Beach pier:

I was also photographing the direction of the state park and using a long exposure got a cool ghosting effect of the beach-goers and some fireworks set off by locals:

Like last year, I set up my tripod in the shore to get the reflections of the fireworks in the water. Unfortunately, just like last year, the wind & waves made my tripod vibrate and the fireworks trails are all squiggly! Next time I shoot fireworks at the beach, I’m bringing a bigger/heavier tripod.

Here’s the entire set of photos on Flickr.

Angel Walk 2011

On Saturday, May 21st the 2nd Annual Angel Walk took place over in Hampton Park in Charleston, SC. Questioning the predicted rapture for that day, I felt the best way to find out firsthand was to walk with Angels… OK, bad jokes aside, the Angel Walk is actually a fundraising and awareness event to fight medulloblastoma, which is the most common malignant central nervous system tumor in children.

I found out about Dawn Sechevich (pictured above on the left) and her son’s story through my neighbors who are close friends with her. Her boy, Luke James Sechevich, was diagnosed with high risk medulloblastoma on January 30, 2006 at the age of 1-½. After a long battle, Luke passed away in January of 2008. Dawn organized the Angel walk for Luke and all children who battle this disease in the hopes that they will someday find a cure. Read the full story on the Angel Walk website. Here’s a clip of her story from Lowcountry Live:

Let’s talk about the event, which was an uplifting and fun-filled family day in the park. There were a lot of activities for the kids, great food, and performances throughout the morning. Face painting, hair spraying, caricatures, the King of Pops, and jumping cows!

The Djole Dance & Drum Company livened up the event with African beats and dancing:

The Charleston Police Pipes & Drums band stormed the event with a fantastic set of traditional bagpipe music…

Melinda Gay & Dawn Sechevich pose for a shot with the band:

One of the highlights of the event for me was the singing of the gospel choir that closed out the day. There really is nothing quite like a southern gospel group to make you feel like you can believe in anything.

There were a lot of other people involved in making this event happen, especially the doctors and staff from MUSC Children’s Hospital as well as all of the sponsors who donated money and vendors who donated their services and products. Make sure to browse through the Angel Walk website and throw some support to all of the sponsors on there.

While I do have a big old set of photos on Flickr, I have an even bigger, more thorough set of pictures in my gallery with the ability to download for all of those who participated!

Don’t forget, you can always donate some money at any time through this charity, so please help them out, and tell all of your friends to “Like” them on Facebook as well!

First Flush Festival 2011

Normally, I despise day-long outdoor festivals. Big crowds of sweaty people, oppressive heat, lousy sound, bad light, & $5 bottles of water. This year’s First Flush Festival broke most of the rules. You couldn’t ask for better weather, giant fluffy clouds peppered the sky providing not only moments of natural shade, but great light diffusion. The sound was great for an outdoor venue and since it was on the Charleston Tea Plantation, there was free sweet tea for all! There were still big crowds of sweaty people, but there was plenty of space to move and still enjoy the music.

Vermont’s Grace Potter & The Nocturnals headlined the event with their brand of straight-up rock n’ roll. My daughter was especially excited to see Grace Potter because of her cover of White Rabbit on Tim Burton’s Almost Alice soundtrack. She couldn’t believe that someone “famous” (by her standards) was in Charleston!

Outdoor stages like the one at First Flush Fest are not designed to tailor to photographers, they are meant to make a comfortable environment for the musicians. Since event photography is a lot about troubleshooting the situation to make the best image you can, I decided that most of the band shots should be close-up and tight. Even in this photo, which I tried to pull back enough to get multiple band members, shows the back of a pick-up truck in the background among the rest of the distracting stands and such.

Another tip is to move around. Unfortunately for me (not for the band), it was packed up in front of the stage. I did not have access to the photo area, so I was limited by the fact that I didn’t want to push my way around spectators while they were enjoying the show. I did manage to move to the side of the stage and get some less distracting shots of the band members:

I realized I wasn’t going to get the perfect clean shot organically of any of the bands, so I did take one shot of the bassist and blow out the background enough to make it look like she’s in front of a white background:

The band was great and Grace Potter has an amazing voice (and range – she can hit notes higher than I thought humanly possible).

Music wasn’t the only attraction. The food trucks were there making me wish we arrived a bit earlier – there was a hole in the pit of my soul when I walked up to Roti Rolls only to find out they’re out of rolls! My wife had a similar experience when they were out of her favorite tacos at Taco Boy’s truck. Oh, what a world, what a world. We did manage to score some hand-made ice pops from the King of Pops:

The was also shopping and jump castles and hula hoops for the kids to entertain themselves with.

Not to mention the old fashioned fun of climbing a tree. I mean, why else would they let their branches hang so low but as to invite kids to jump up and climb?

I’ve been hearing about the band Leslie for years now, and I finally got a chance to see them at the FFF.

If AC/DC had a bastard child while touring in the south, the tucked away little gem would sound a lot like Leslie. Loud, guitar driven southern rock. They truly impressed the crowd with their energy.

They have had their band photos made in the past by the likes of Zack Arias, so I think they’ve got to have good taste 😉

They also won over my daughter by giving out free posters and stickers, and making themselves available after their set for pictures and autographs. Here’s a tip to every band out there – young kids will be loyal if you give them a solid reason to be – Treat your fans like fans!! Leslie didn’t disappoint. Check out this photo of Mac with the band:

Unfortunately there’s a random dude growing out of my kid’s head. Sometimes you just have to deal with it 🙂 Before I forget, you can check out all of my photos from FFF on my Flickr set (as well as last years pics if you have time). And to wrap this up, I bring you a picture of “Broadband”. This guy stopped me in the crowd and assured me that I needed to take his picture and publish it on my blog. Who am I to disagree with a guy named Broadband?

Change For Change Art Show Recap

Last night was the Change for Change Benefit Art Show at the Music Farm. It was the first show of this kind organized by Young & Free SC. The rock club was transformed into a DIY art gallery and was showing some of the Charleston area’s coolest underground art.

The art show focused on attracting the college-aged youth of Charleston and introducing them to what the local art scene is producing and offering a lot of it at affordable prices.

And the art wasn’t just on paper, it was in your ears and mouth as well. The Music farm exploded with the sounds of Heyrocco…

Next up, Meet The Sky took the stage:

I also had a blast hanging out with photographer buddies Robert Donovan and Jonathan Stout, who have proven to me that the best photographers have great senses of humor. Here’s a shot of BadJon Stout getting ready to devour some meat perfection from Hello My Name Is BBQ:

And Robert Donovan shows off his “Hey Ladies” pose for the camera here:

I’ll update this post with more info on how much $$$ was raised for Water Missions last night – It was for a really good cause and the organizers did a bang-up job on their first swing at this.

As usual, I took a bunch of photos which you can view in a set on my Flickr Stream.

Change For Change

*UPDATE* Photo Essay recap of the event is right here – we had a blast!

So what are you doing on Thursday night between 7:30PM & Midnight? Why not come see some local art and photography in a cool atmosphere? What about live music by Meet the Sky and Heyrocco – maybe you’d like to hear JeffET spin some music for you as well? What was that? You don’t have a lot of cash this week? It’s free admission!! You have no excuses – bring the kids too.

So, what is Change for Change you ask? From their press release:

For the months of March and April, Young & Free SC is working hard to raise $25,000 for Water Missions Intl – a locally based, international organization. We’re raising the money to put in a water purification system in a community in Africa.

To wrap up our fundraiser, we’re hosting an art show at the Music Farm on Thursday, May 5th. Artists from all over, of all different genres, will be there. Artists will donate artwork to be sold at an affordable price. All proceeds from the donated art sale will go straight to Water Missions Intl.

Here’s a video about Water Missions:

Water Missions Promo Video – Haiti 2010 from Water Missions on Vimeo.

I will be there showing and selling my work – if you like the stuff I do, this is your chance to purchase some of it at the cheapest prices ever!

Here’s the list of confirmed artists:

Jason Smith
Patch Whisky
Matthew Foreman
Robert Donovan
BadJon
Niamh Ellen
Proton
Kristy Bishop
Meta
Joseph Nienstedt
Tim Showers
Leigh Wells
Thomas Bosse
Christina Rodino
Justin Cammer
Jason Alan Layne
SHT!
Sarah Frierson
Christopher Murphy
Phillip Hyman
Joshua DelMas
Stephanie Stein
Vik Hart
Adolfo Hernandez
Trever Webster
Jashun Fairstudios
Jennifer Callicott

So, I’ll see y’all there on Cinco de Mayo! I’ll be the guy with the Tequila shot in hand 😉

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