Sojourns

Renewal

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Today is a bonus photograph day!  I had a lot of fun shooting these.  The kids were being way too cute!

The Chase!

The Fountain

Not Going Home!

War Face!

Milo

The Conference

Running the Fountains

Hmmmm.....

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Solitude

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Supporting Cast

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Beresford Creek Lights

Some days there just aren’t enough hours to fit everything in.  I ran out of day and hadn’t taken a photograph yet.  So I walked down my road to the landing on Beresford Creek and got a couple of frames.  I would have stopped at one, but the lights from this house across the creek on Daniel Island were so bright that I had to go all the way to -2EV to bring them anywhere near exposed.  The purple/blue highlights in the bottom windows were clearly more than one TV.  I can’t imagine the electricity bill for that place!

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Nouvel Angle

A week ago I discovered a new vantage point for the Ravenel Bridge here in Charleston.  Tonight’s image is from that point and with the 80-200mm f/2.8 L at 80mm and f/8.0.   I like this angle, but I’m not sure there is room at the spot to do anything more interesting like a portrait.  I might try it, though, in the near future.

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Eject

There are a number of these trees at the park near my office in North Charleston.  Together they look like a unit of paratroopers landing at D-Day.  So today I tried to isolate one of them against the sky.  I added a 580EX fill at 1/2 power and with 3/4 CTO to warm up the light a bit to give the feeling of a bright sunset.  (For the non-photo geeks out there, that means I used Canon’s best flash with a piece of translucent orange filter over the flash bulb)  My intent was to light the underneath of the “parachute”, which this certainly accomplished.  You can see the strong warm light on the trunk and under the canopy of the bush.  It also adds some directionality to the otherwise flat, shady lighting.  I’m still not sure I like the image as posted.  I’m trying some other interesting things with processing…you can check them out at my Flikr photostream….

Of course I missed the opportunity of the day, however.  There was a young military mother at the park with her young son trying to take a self-timer photo of them in a bench-swing.  I helped her take the photos and hopefully provided some keepers to send to daddy who is off on deployment.  It wasn’t until I was halfway back to my truck that I realized I should have taken out my own camera again and captured some truly wonderful photographs of a mother and her very cute son.  People are so much better subjects than trees!

Lesson for the day:  ALWAYS be prepared for AND LOOK FOR photographic opportunities.  Much like the idea to turn around when you’ve seen all there is to see in a scene, never dismiss an opportunity at the expense of the “planned” image!

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Reflectivity

Although Tuesday nights are subdued, Shem Creek in Mt. Pleasant, SC becomes a hub of nightlife after dark.  The calm, reflective waters of the deep water creek provide seaside ambiance to dinner or a night on the town.  I consider it one of the more picturesque spots in the area at night.

I used the HDR technique for this photo in order to capture detail not only in the brightly lit bars, but also in the boats toward the rear, center of the image.  Those boats would have been in blackness in a single, straight shot metered for proper exposure on the buildings with the lights.  I gave the saturation a pretty good bump to play up the colors in the lights and on the water and because I knew color would be one of the strongest stories of the image.

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Lines and Bitts

Here is a happy outcome.  I decided I needed a nautical theme for today’s photo since the weather in Charleston has finally turned warm enough to start thinking of water, beach and boating.  I didn’t have much time after  a quick recovery run downtown so I grabbed my Canon 40D with the trusty “nifty-fifty” EF 50mm f1.8 mounted.  I knew the light would be hard and most images would just be trash with washed out contrast and poor color.  I wanted to simplify the image and bring out a key detail that would be unmistakably nautical in nature, but take a moment for the viewer to bet their bearings and see what was going on in the photograph.

The happy accident was leaving the lens opened up to f2.0 and creating a super shallow depth of field.  An image at f8.0 would have been blah and just a simple recording of the moment including every detail of the boat.  Here I think the blur and lines in the photo caused by the large aperture imply motion and yet there is a strong point of focus to hold your eye.  I’m happy with the color in this one too.  The blues, blacks and whites make a simple color theme.

All-in-all not too bad for what is really a grab shot.

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Emptiness

I shot this image in the rain at the waterfront park on the old Naval Base in North Charleston.  I knew that the straight image would be flat and lifeless so I had in mind already to do something else with it.   On the other hand, I was drawn to the composition of the two empty loungers against a bleak view out over the Cooper river.  I tried various treatments in post processing, including black and white, duotones, quadtones, etc.  Nothing quite made the image come alive until I tried the cross-processing setting in a curves adjustment layer in Photoshop.  Suddenly I saw the loneliness of the chairs come full circle with the promise of brighter days ahead.

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