Twilight Beach Football

Just got done with my shoot for the evening and thought I'd shoot a little more for me.

 50mm f1.8 on my old 20D. I still like that camera.

It's perfect for goofin'.

See you later....

John Mellencamp or William DaFoe Jr ?

About a week ago, I was out on a  family shoot with a good size group. I was stressing a bit..lots of little ones there to get photos of..here's the breakdown...

1- 3 year old

2- 2 year olds

2- 1 year olds.

 For those of you that have never taken group shots of 5 kids - all 3 years and under, that can lead to it's own style of stress and comedy too. That's another story for another time.

 Here's one of the 1 year olds. I take all kinds of shots with kids and this one is one of the lens in your face shots.

 So here's the reason for the post..heh.

 This kid in the middle...could pass for a little John Mellencamp or  a little (actor) William Dafoe?

I'm leaning towards the Mellencamp side. What do you think? heh..


till next time....

My Favorites From Last Evening 8-26-2012

 I had a beach wedding shoot yesterday evening. The weather was good and families were cool.

A little wide angle shot of the ceremony.

And there is almost always something humorous to see. It's what I wait for!

Um..wait a minute, girls..heh

My gosh, leash or saddle! heh That's the biggest damned dog I've ever seen! 

See ya later...

Old Schooling The Schools

..of fish that is.

  Till next time...

Approaches The Surreal

enjoy.

My Favorite Photo From Yesterday

 I had two evening shoots yesterday with both families being from SW Virginia made it even better for me as a Virginia native from the foothills. It's just nice to hang out with some home folks.

I think this photo tells the story about a typical two year old. heh.  

Tiny Dancer

 Yesterday evening, while dad was chasing down his very uninterested 2 year old son to have pictures made, I noticed that big sister was in her own little world. Just singing to herself and dancing with absolutely no care in the world. I turned off the speedlight and started shooting. She noticed me and kinda snapped out of it..with a smile though. heh

Aerial Dragonfly

I came out to my car to run an errand and there, on the aerial, was a Dragonfly.

I'm not one to shoot pictures of bugs or flowers all that often, but I figured why not?

I went back to the house to get the camera and slowly worked my way close and I got closer than I thought I would.

Then I tried to move around behind him. I saw him move his head up and down and then poof!...he flew away.

I went back to lock the front door of the house and when I had gotten back to the car, he had flown back to the car as well.

click on the photo for a larger view.

As I watched him, I couldn't help but to think that he had some sort of attraction to the ball end of the antenna.

It was as if he was having some sort of meeting of the minds or something.

Who knows, maybe it was love. They say it's blind, you know.



'Til next time.

Easy Like Sunday Morning...

..with some nice folks.

They were fun too.

okie dokie

Getting Some Sunrise Air.

Yeah, I still do that silhouette stuff. heh

Nice young couple and he just popped the question a few says earlier and she said yes!

Til' next time...

What I've Been Up To..

 ...more of the same actually, but that's ok. Nice folks getting their family portraits done on the beach.

 It's my primary job during the tourist season here and I know how important these photographs will be to these families.

 When you really think about, it's pretty cool that you're preserving a moment in time for the future and future generations for these families.

 Until next time...

Unintentional Self Portrait ...

... it can happen anytime to a photographer. This was more about the equipment than being a self portrait. It just happened that i kinda liked it.

heh.

Nice Light...

 ..and two nice young ladies for me to take photos of. They're sisters and mom wanted to get some beach photos of them. Except for the almost constant fiddling with hair, like most young girls do, this was an easy and pretty quick shoot as they were pretty relaxed and natural with the camera. If only all were like that. I really think God created 3 year olds just to make me crazy.
heh.

okie dokie...

Double Your Rainbow...

Yeah, how about that?  Two rainbows at one time. Same drive by clouds that caused the drops on my lens in the previous photo.

...

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Lens...

...well, actually, we've had all these drive by rain clouds around for the past week or so that will sprinkle a bit and keep on flying. I was paying attention to what I was shooting instead of what I was shooting with! I caught it and cleaned my Lens /Tiffen UV - haze filter and had to redo the shot. I don't think the second was as good as this one but, that's the way it is sometimes.

 Nice folks...it was a good shoot and late in the morning. The light was bright, but the same clouds that were causing problems helped with the sun.

Go figure.

 see ya..

New Softbox.

 So, I got my new 24" x 24" handy dandy softbox in the mail the other day and did some test shots with it. I like it. I can fold it up to almost nothing to carry it around for location stuff.

 Shot with a Canon 40D and a 50mm 1.8 lens.

This is Rick, I made him volunteer for a few shots today..heh. Does he look thrilled or what?

 You an achieve some dramatic photos with a single light and no reflector.

 I did this one in B&W, mainly because of the ripples in his shirt and his expression.

Here's a couple of more in color and a little bit of a different angle.

 I used a small reflector on this one to put a little fill on his left side.

Here's one of my next door neighbor..another "volunteer" heh. His wife didn't want anything to do with it..typical. I would have had to wait for hair..makeup..the right mood. Most guys don't give a crap.

Till next time..

Another (Storm) Cloud photo.

Clouds have certainly been, by sheer chance, an ongoing subject with my posts in the past few days and today was no exception. I was waiting for the folks for my first shoot of the evening to arrive while keeping an eye on  this big storm that was moving in and thankfully it stalled and eventually disbursed. I took a couple of test shots.

 I got some great portrait shots with that dramatic sky!

Face In The Cloud

 It seems that I've had my head in the clouds during the past couple of days, but hey, I see what I see.

 Right before I saw that dragon flying around in the twilight sky in the previous post, this chubby face caught my eye.

 I can't help think about the giant Sta-Puft marshmallow man from Ghost Busters when I see it. heh.

I promise you that I did no creative photo editing... even where his "face" looks 

brighter than the rest of the cloud..that's the way it was in the sky.

More Stuff From Today.

Well, the evening brought my evening photo session at Cherry Grove Beach / pier A big family beach shoot..nice folks from Ohio, and more surfers! These folks were fun.

Um...girls..

The family that goofs together...

Another girly surfer!

After the shoot was done, twilight had settled in. I walked 

around the pier and down to the spooky part of the beach. heh.

Cloud Bomb

I was at 43rd Ave.N this morning doing another morning shoot and while walking back towards the dunes this large cloud that had been blocking the sun for most of the morning decided it was carrying enough water and started to rain. It looked like a bomb went off and about to turn into a mushroom cloud...which it never did of course. heh.  To get an idea of sheer monster size of that cloud look at the buildings up the coast in North Myrtle Beach at the left of the photo.

Have fun...

Wayward Surfer Girls

You gotta be dedicated - borderline hardcore surfer girls to get up early and drive all the way from Charlotte, NC to Myrtle Beach, SC to surf at 7:30AM. Except for when tropical storms and hurricane activity is close by, Myrtle Beach is not known for particularly large waves. You earn your surfboard ride here most all of the time! Just having fun has it's merits as well.

Been busy...

..this week. Here's a couple favorite of mine for the week.I have a few more to add when I get to them.

 Have fun.

Holga

 With the great majority of the cameras out there these days, they can, for the most part, faithfully reproduce what our eyes see. Then there's the Holga. The Holga, as I like to describe it, is a piece crap disguised as a camera. It is a glowing example of imperfection, but therein lies is beauty. It's the idiot savant of the photography world. What is so bad in the regular photography world makes the Holga shine. Light leaks..over the top lens vignetting..guesstimation focusing and the list goes on. Above all that, sometimes it's just plain magical.

   

Goofs...

...having fun.

Last one...

...shooting towards the sun for a while. There's grand dad, son, mom and dad. I like this one.


...enjoy. 

Another Day...

...at the beach. These girls were amazing with their athleticism and gymnastic talent. 

Contre-jour...

..or "Against the daylight".


Out on the beach again waiting for my morning session to arrive,  so I got my spare camera out and shot some sunrise photos. A Late sunrise that is, as this was about 45 minutes after the sun first peeked over the horizon. This is also a pretty late start for an AM beach session, but it's what the client wanted to do it. I used my old 40D and a 50mm 1.8 "nifty fifty". I always find shooting highly back lit stuff interesting and challenging. It usually falls under the artsy end of photography because of the silhouetting and so on.


enjoy...