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.