Second Sunday – JWNPhoto.com

Articles Tagged with: Second Sunday

Mutts, Music, & More

Today was the 1st 2nd Sunday on King Street for 2012 in Charleston, SC. The weather was perfect for Charleston’s monthly block party. Last time I shot one of these, I decided that I needed to focus on shooting more dogs the next time I go, so today was that next time. Let’s start off with the most interesting dog I saw today, a Toy Australian Shepherd:

Here are some other stand-outs that we saw:

There was also plenty of music courtesy of Shrimp City Slim, Sollie “Puddin” Jenkins, Michael Lindsey, and accordionist Matt Lohan (pictured at the top of this post). Here’s some shots of the musicians on King Street:

Some stores brought their wares out onto the streets…

And restaurants their food…

There were plenty of interesting people from all walks of life enjoying the unseasonably mild weather. It felt more like early fall than early winter.

We had a great Mediterranean lunch at Taziki’s Restaurant, but had to cut our trip a little short with the news that Amy’s cousin gave birth to her daughter over at MUSC. Crystal was the subject of my very first wedding shoot a couple of years ago! Here’s a shot of her with Kegan in the hospital:

Congrats to the proud parents! After we left the hospital, we stopped by my brother-in-law’s house over in James Island to check out his girlfriend’s new chicken coup. While we were there, there was one of those phenomenal Charleston sunsets, and I used my iPhone to capture this shot of the colorful sky through the trees:

Second Sunday On King St.

Late last year, the city of Charleston decided after the success of the “Do the Charleston” festival to regularly close King Street to traffic on the second Sunday of each month so that the pedestrians could take over (you can read more about the origins here). Today I was finally able to bring the family for an afternoon downtown and also to do some street photography.

The diptych above was a group of people watchers in Ye Ole Fashioned Ice Cream and Sandwich Cafe. They were having a blast commenting on what everyone was wearing, and I told them I was turning the camera on them next!

1/100th of a sec | f/4.5 | 62mm | ISO 200

It didn’t take long for me to start looking for some decent light and interesting people to shoot. It was mid-day, so the light was harsh and three quarters of the street was in shadow. I found that the slivers of light between buildings was a great side-light opportunity and looked for opportunities to use it.

I also looked for people who were doing just ordinary things, like eating some lunch…

…or drinking some coffee…

…or talking on the phone…

…or walking their dog…

…or flipping me the bird while double-fisting some beverages…

…or looking as happy as can be…

…or just as pretty as can be.

I was hoping to get a lot of shots of people dressed up as characters from the “Where’s Waldo” series as there was an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people dressed like Waldo in one place (more info on that here). Unfortunately, they fell quite short of the record. I did grab a shot of these two festive Wandas:

As with any outdoor Low Country event, the dogs were out en masse. I think the next time I attend one of these Second Sundays I’m gonna focus on capturing the dogs – there were so many awesome dogs out.

Getting down to the dog’s perspective makes for an interesting composition:

These dogs looked really excited to be out and about:

I also made some black & white shots – I knew when I shot this one that it would be perfect as a monotone image – the contrast and negative space are just shouting to be devoid of any distracting colors.

All in all, I had a blast and cant wait to do it again. I have a hefty set of photos on my Flickr stream if you want to see some of the other shots I made today. Street photography is a fun and exciting way to exercise your creative mind, and you end up meeting interesting people in the process.