These four photographs I made in Venice Beach, CA are ones I keep going back to. I don’t think they need much context, they’re just images that speak to me personally and artistically and I thought I’d share them here with you.
I drove up to Charlotte, NC on Monday night and found myself in a Howard Johnson’s just outside of town. Sometime after 3:00 AM after watching 3 consecutive episodes of Breaking Bad on my iPad, I finally got to bed. I haven’t suffered from insomnia since I was a teenager, and boy was I unable to sleep. I knew I shouldn’t have taken a B12 supplement after dinner, but I didn’t want to get noddy during my drive after a long day of work. I can’t imagine having to suffer like that on a regular basis – its an absolute nightmare to me. Even more frightening was my alarm that went off seemingly instantly after I finally closed my eyes.
If you have ever seen the opening scene to Office Space, that was how my 20 minute drive that lasted almost an hour was as I headed to Charlotte’s convention center from my hotel. Regardless, I made it to the seminar in good time and got a great seat right up front behind the projector. The day long class, which was created by Scott Kelby, was being taught by none other than RC Conception.
RC did a fantastic job, teaching not only the material that Scott had put together, but also elaborating on it with his own insights and tricks. He’s an extremely approachable guy and it’s no wonder he is beloved by the photography community. He’s got a great sense of humor that never makes him look smarmy – he comes off as a guy you’d like to hang out with, which makes a day-long class on a piece of software much more manageable.
The photo at the top of the post is one I snapped of the classroom seconds before the start – RC is in the back of the class standing and waiting to be formally introduced by the Kelby Training tour manager. The shot directly above is of yours truly with RC. I handed my camera to one of the attendees (wasn’t hard finding a willing photographer there).
After the seminar, I walked around the downtown area looking for a bite to eat and enjoying the architecture.
There was this one mirrored sculture on a corner that this exchange student was getting her photo taken of in front of by her host family. A couple of us photogs were patiently waiting for them to be done, when I realized they were never going to be done! I walked away and came back 15 minutes later and they were still there! Well, now she became my subject!
I asked her permission first, and then explained to her hosts that the shot I envision involving this interesting art piece is of the reflections themselves. I snapped a couple of shots like this:
It was a nice little release of creativity after absorbing so much photographic knowledge all day! If you’re able to make it to one of the Kelby Training Live events, please do so. They’re not expensive at all and are a great experience.
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:
Last weekend I was in New York to catch the Archers of Loaf reunion shows, and on that Saturday, I had a few hours to kill before meeting up with my friends to go to the show. I had just received a new camera, the Nikon P7000, and really wanted to familiarize myself with the camera during this trip. Instead of doing a typical review of how the camera works (you can read those here and here), I figured I would just show you what I made with them and let you decide if you like the camera by what it’s possible of. If you’ve been reading my blog here, you know the kind of photography I make and you can see how well these photos stand up to my other work.
I started out in Astoria (which is a neighborhood in Queens for those of you who aren’t familiar) and walked a couple of blocks over to the train station.
I love public transportation in New York. During the day you don’t need to wait long for a train – who needs schedules?
After about 10 minutes, I arrived at the Fifth Ave./ 59th St. station.
I emerged from the subway to the sights and sounds I lived in for so many years in a past life.
My first stop was the cube Apple Store, which was completely covered with boards because it is under renovations – Not a problem, it makes for a more interesting atypical photo! Because it’s such a busy scene, the lines in the crosswalk come in handy as an element to draw your attention to the construction site in the center of this shot:
Just outside of the Apple cube was a brass band which was drawing quite a crowd. I snuck in from the street side and got in close – you can see my bald-headed reflection in the horn!
I was getting hungry and thirsty and I knew exactly what I wanted: A dirty-water dog. I didn’t have to walk far into Central Park to find a cart and a bench to sit on.
As I sat and enjoyed my mystery meat on a bun, I started to compose the scenes around me. Right across the way was a guitarist and girl eating her lunch. While the guitarist was interesting, I couldn’t get a good shot of the girl that was flattering because she was munching on her food the whole time. I figured I’d drag the shutter a little to get a pedestrian walking by and capture the motion. This was the result:
To the right was a pretty lady getting her portrait made:
I ventured further into the park, past the zoo, and through this tunnel to see what moments I could capture.
Isolating a person in a scene is a lot harder than you can imagine on a perfect Saturday afternoon in the park. I found this girl hanging out on the rocks – she wasn’t alone though. There were 8 other people on the same rock, but I found this angle to single her out:
As I walked further into the park, I started to hear live amplified music. I followed my ears until I came upon the Summer Stage. I walked in just in time to catch a set from Fitz & The Tantrums!
Boy, did that put me in a good mood! By the end of their set, there was nothing but smiles in the crowd. I had food in my belly, a song in my head, and a new camera to break in. You couldn’t ask for a better place in the world to be at that moment. I ventured back out into the park and stumbled upon some people doing the Tango in the middle of the path. I knew it was the Tango, because someone was kind enough to spell it out for me on the ground.
I decided to climb some rocks and came across this fantastic view – I fell to my stomach and quickly shot this as there was a clear people-less view!
I looked around and there were so many couples – it was quite romantic. I like this scene because there is a couple on the left, as well as a single guy looking over at a single woman. When coupled with the photo that follows it, there is a story of longing going on.
I really started to focus on couples for a while. This couple seems pretty focused on something off camera:
Here’s another couple checking out some photos on the girl’s camera:
It was sunny out for most of the day, and I was very happy to have an optical viewfinder on this compact camera – it’s a lot easier to see in bright conditions than the LCD screen. Speaking of the screen – It’s the same size as my D90’s screen! It’s bright and defined, and Nikon was kind enough to let you clear all of the visible data so you can shoot and view your photos without any clutter.
This couple eventually asked me to take a photo of them with their camera as well:
As I said earlier, I try to isolate my subjects, but in this photo you can see just how close people really are to each other:
It was time to head downtown to meet up with my friends. I put on my tourist hat and started taking shots of the buildings.
I absolutely love this action of this shot of a couple exiting F.A.O. Schwartz:
All of the shots I took in this series were made using the camera’s finest jpeg setting. I could shoot in RAW, but for purpose of this camera, which for me is primarily street and casual photography, the jpegs look downright amazing right out of the camera. I like to know that if I find myself in a situation where I know I will decide to do some extreme photo editing when I get back to my computer, I can switch to RAW. I did do some light editing in Lightroom on these, such as black & white conversions, cropping, & straightening, and tweaking of brightness & contrast.
I want to briefly touch on the features of the camera that stick out for me so far. If you’re a Nikon shooter, you should be pretty comfortable with the menu structure. However, I do find it strange how you can conveniently get to important settings using the camera’s quick menu dial, but you can’t get to all of those same settings using the menu button! The separation is a bit confusing. I also wish I could change the direction of the physical dials to mimic the way I have my D90 set up. I haven’t taken advantage of the User mode presets yet, but I think they’re a great idea. I really wish the exposure compensation dial was a dedicated ISO setting dial like the Canon G12 sports – it is a setting I find I’m constantly getting into. In fact, I had my quick menu set to the ISO function 90% of the time. I know it sounds silly, but I love that it has standard strap connectors so that I can use my favorite camera strap, the Domke Gripper. A good strap is something you shouldn’t overlook for your camera – if you you’re not comfortable carrying it, you’re less likely to do so!
This shot of a man on his phone is one of my favorite shots of the day – I walked up and was immediately drawn to the geometry of it all. I love the lines of the steps leading to the man and the pots and the trees at the top that balance it all.
I also love this simple street corner by the world famous Carnegie Deli. It’s not too busy and the tone made for a great black & white photo.
In conclusion, I friggin’ love this camera. It’s capable of taking very high quality shots in a small package. During this trip, I didn’t miss lugging around my DSLR and a bag full of glass. I was able to get great shots and look inconspicuous while doing it, which for street photography is a huge plus.
I took a lot of photos that day – you can see the full set on Flickr.
I spent this past weekend catching up with my best friends and former schoolmates in New York. While Times Square and Grand Central Station are not my favorite places in NYC, they are the places I spent a lot of time in while working at MTV and going to school in the MetLife building before that.
My buddy has this amazing idea for a reality show based around a very unique guy’s life and the people around him. The backdrop is Manhattan and while I was visiting he had to capture some b-roll of some of NY’s more well known sights. I decided to tag along and shoot some stills in these locations.
It’s hard to find a different or new way to shoot a place that literally tens of millions of people have photographed before. My attitude is to just be myself. I looked at the scene and thought of how I would like to arrange the elements from the vantage points I could reach. I also looked for moments such as this cab driver grabbing a snapshot:
Taxi cabs are to NYC as gnats are to Charleston, and I shot this scene of a taxi stand next to Grand Central Station to capture the movement of them.
I moved behind the stand a few feet after I noticed the homeless man in the shot to the left of the stand. I wanted to get a shot of him while people walked past him. The idea was inspired this shot by David duChemin. I like the idea of the forgotten soul who’s like a fixed installment of a given NY scene.
I had to catch a train back to meet up with another friend and I know that the transit authority is not keen on people taking photos in the subways, but I managed to grab this shot with my iPhone while waiting for the train back to Astoria:
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!
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.
One of my favorite forms of photography to create is street photography. I remember showing the shot of the girl doing yoga that is featured at the top of this website (or by clicking here) to someone and they thought that it was weird that I was at the beach just taking shots of random people I didn’t know. I explained that that is the beauty of it – you are capturing real life, not posed life. Once people are aware you are photographing them out in public, they change. Sometimes that change ruins the shot.
I bring this up today because I was turned on yesterday by a post on Chase Jarvis’ blog to a very well known street photographer named Scott Schuman who runs the popular blog “The Sartorialist“. If you have a few minutes, watch the video that Chase shared (just under this paragraph) – it’s very inspirational – it will hopefully make you get why he does what he does.
It also reminded me of the legendary photographer Jay Maisel, who after retiring from doing commercial assignments in the 90’s, focused on street photography as well as teaching and selling fine art prints of his work. If you have a Kelby Training account, there is a fantastic series featuring Scott Kelby and Jay doing a photowalk through New York City. Guys like Jay Maisel and Scott Schuman both stress the importance of exorcising your creative mind, and they do it while approaching strangers so confidently that it’s tough not to be inspired by their skill.
One of the things I’ve been known for here in Charleston, SC is my photographs of local scenes and events. I’ve been inspired to add a new “Street Photography” category to my blog to start sharing some of those posts in one organized place. It’s a way for me to have a place to talk about my life experiences when I choose to bring the camera along with me (which is most of the time). I’ve also added an “Insight” category, which is similar to the “Inspiration” category but focuses more on my soapbox type posts about technique, gear, or business, where the inspiration category is about things, people, or events that inspire me. Finally, I added a sub-menu at the top menu of the blog to quickly access these categories so you can browse the blog posts by whatever topic you’re in the mood to read about.
Have a great 1.11.11 – I’ll be more excited for 11.11.11 though 😉
