Sojourns

Late summer

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Trilogy

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"Snakeberries!"

One of our son’s young friends pointed to this plant and sang out, “Snakeberries!”  This is not the snakeberry flower that I’m familiar with.  But I don’t know what it is, so I’ll let it stand for now.  It made a nice composition against the shorter yellow flowers at its feet.  I shot this with the “Nifty-Fifty” at 1/250, f2.0 and just a hint of flash from a 1/4 CTO gelled 430EX.  The bit of light helped the red flower pop against the blue-ish shade of late afternoon.

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Wishers

We took a family walk tonight and ran across this field of dandelions ready to seed.  My son ran into the field and started blowing the seeds into the wind.  After a moment he yelled back “C’mon guys!  Wishers!”  So of course we had to join him.  When asked what he wished for, Ben replied “Big Trucks!”, as if duh, we should have known that!  Priceless.

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Bloom

The spring blooms have arrived in Charleston.  Plants are flowering everywhere, including these right in my own backyard.  The warm weather is a welcome old friend!

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Rainbow Row

Charleston’s Rainbow Row homes get a lot of tourist press.  These homes along East Bay street create a melange of bright Carribean pastel color along an otherwise stately section of historic homes.  The corridor draws tourists and photographers in droves on all but the most inclement days.  Painters have captured the row in its glory a thousand ways.  Most photographers look for a spot to pull as many of the homes into the frame together as possible.  Of course most days parked cars mar the images.  Regardless, the paintings and photos are all attempts to take a bit of charming Charleston back home.

I have known I will include the Row in my 365 project, but I also knew I didn’t want to just go try to take a standard shot of the place.  A while back I did a series of photographs of the details of some historic homes in downtown.  Today I thought “how about a series of detail images of these homes along Rainbow Row.  I don’t have to show the entire home.  Just capture the color and something distinctive.  I will frame these as 8x10s, and hang 3-5 of them on a wall together.  An altogether more thoughtful approach to capturing the essence of this particular place, I think.

So today I did a quick bit of scouting along the row and took a few sample images in order to better plan the project.  The light was flat, overcast, and uninteresting, at least for the mood I’m hoping to capture.  While it made for saturated colors, the houses just didn’t come alive in the frames.  I also played around with depth of field a bit.  After getting these home and playing with them I have decided the photographs need to have all elements sharp rather than here in this photo where the far window and flowers are out of focus.  The story is about the colors, but at this angle so little of the image is in focus it may strike some viewers as a mistake.

I look forward to finishing this project-within-a-project and sharing some of the images here.

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Seasoning

Tradd Street in old Charleston is one of the oldest and most historic streets in the Americas.  I love the old houses with their weathered patina and traditional Charleston details.  Oh the stories these houses could tell!

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Sakura

Spring must be close with trees coming into bloom!  These early spring cherry trees are blossoming along Longpoint Road in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.  I saw them while I was headed out for a cold and windy bike ride today and wished for the warm weather that usually accompanies a spring bloom.  The Weather Channel says that warmer days are still more than a week away!  I don’t know who is more confused, me or the trees.

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