SC Watermelon Queen

Summers Slaton is the reigning SC Watermelon Queen. Summers and her family are old friends and it was a real pleasure to make these photos for her in preparation for the national Watermelon Pageant. These were done with a glamour style of lighting which really works well for this sort of thing. The main light is on axis with the subject and slightly above. Various reflectors and fill lights were used to minimise shadows rendering a flat yet flattering light quality.

With such good material to work with, minimal retouching is required ;O) This one was a lot of fun.

Steve

Here are a few more...

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More from Banff

I have posted a few more photos from Banff on the Smugmug site. Click on the image above for more.

SC State Fair

Well, it's late October in South Carolina which means that the State Fair has come and gone. This year we entered 2 photos in the professional fine arts division. Both photos were processed with Photomatix High Dynamic Range (HDR) software. This process involves taking multiple images captured at different exposure values, then using the HDR software to process the images using tone mapping. The results can be very interesting.

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Olympia Grocery.

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Funky Little Shack

We didn't receive any awards, but still, this is a great way to have your work viewed by lots of people.

Lake Minnewanka

I spent 4 days in the Canadian rockies this week attending a conference. It was a busy week, but I managed to get out on my own for a few hours on the last day and photograph some of the scenery. It was, in a word, breathtaking.

The photo above is a composite panorama of nine images taken at Lake Minnewanka just outside of Banff. A little snow on the peaks would have made this perfect. Maybe I'll get have better luck next time.

I will have more from the trip on smugmug soon, so check back often.

-- Steve

SCANA Insights

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Three of our photos were published in the latest issue of SCANA's Insights magazine. The photos are part of an article about Carolina Gas Transmission on page 25. A PDF version is available on line here. The photos were made several months ago at the request of the CGT Customer Services group. They were originally to be used for the company's web site, however, they were not well suited for that. A few others were eventually used in the company's customer brochure. Today's publication came as a bit of a suprise. A welcome suprise to be sure.

In the Garden

I photographed these two young ladies this past Saturday in their back yard. Simple setup, just one SB-800 strobe with the shoot through umbrella camera left. There was plenty of ambient light for fill, so one key light was all that was needed.

I am evaluating Adobe Lightroom 2 and used it for these shots. I am quickly becoming a true believer!

Grid Posters

We set up a make shift photo booth at the beach house this summer and did head shots for the yearly art project. Once the shots were complete my Mom, Mimi as she is known to the grandkids, projected them and traced them on canvas board. The kids then each used pastels to create a unique portrait of themselves.

This was all pretty cool, but the original photographs ended up being really good as well. I took 9 of my favorites of Jessica and Taylor and made these photo grid posters. These are being printed up on 16’x20’ and will be framed for display.

This was a neat project. Now that I have gotten the set up in Photoshop, duplicating this will be a snap. This could be great idea for a senior portrait project, or for a Christmas present.

Here's Taylor

The art projects can be veiwed here.

Just another day at the office

I have the good fortune to work for a company that occasionally does some really interesting things. They also ask me to photograph them from time to time. Yesterday I spent a good part of the day shooting welders plying their trade on some 16 inch pipe for a natural gas transmission facility. I don't care where you're from, that's some pretty big pipe.

This was a difficult environment to work in, but I managed to get a few keepers, including this one.

Steve

Beaching it...

Enjoying some time off with family for a couple of weeks. Last week with the big family group, this week, just the wife and kids with one extra guest.

We were inspired by our cousin Kevin to shoot this photo of John hitting a golf ball into the ocean. This was shot as the sun was about to set on the last night of our family week. We set up a couple of strobes on light stands and under exposed the ambient by a stop or two. Has a real cool look to it I think.

Strobist Boot Camp II: Assignment #2

OK, so I think it is down to these two for my SBC2ASSIGN2 submission. This was a lot of fun, and was more challenging than I originally thought it would be. I decided on Sushi because, well, I like sushi. It is also readily available at our local Publix stores so I didn't have to go for restautant take out on a Friday afternoon.

This project also had the added benefit of supplying an early evening munchies after the shoot was done.





Here are a couple of others that I shot, but probably will not use.

Strobist Boot Camp II: Assignment #2

David Hobby has announced the second strobist boot camp assignment. This one is all about food. Make a photograph of a gastronomic delight. Not sure I'm going to have time to participate, maybe I'll recreate the martini shot that I am using for my business card, we'll see.



There are already some pretty cool entries that you can see with this search.

I think lighting for this assignment should be fairly straight forward, the key in my mind will be the styling and presentation.

Full details from the Strobist at the link below.

::Update::

Here is a concept I'm working on...



The finished image will be something other than eggs. I'm thinking of something that goes with hot wine. mmm.

Strobist Boot Camp II: Rahsaan

Rahsaan and I hung out for a while this afternoon. We talked camera, and I shot some photos of him for the Strobist Boot Camp II assignment. Rahsaan is a great guy and he has a passion for photography. Hopefully we will continue these meet ups and find interesting subjects to shoot. This was taken at the Columbia River Walk in an out of the way corner.

More information on the Strobist Boot Camp II assignment is available at the link below.

Other submissions can be viewed here.

Other blogs that are following this assignment can be found here.

Boot Camp II: First Assignment

Do you know someone who is out of work? In this troubled economy, many folks are looking for gainful employment. The first assignment in the Strobist Boot Camp II is to help someone who is unemployed and looking for a new job by making a head shot portrait that they can use on their resume, blog, or social networking sight.

If you know someone who would be interested in having this done, please let me know or put them in contact with me. All I am getting out of this is the experience, and the opportunity to submit my photos for consideration. The prizes awarded to the winning photograph small, and my chances of actually winning are probably slim. But I'm game if somebody out there is willing to sit for a head shot.

More information on this assignment is available at the link below.

Thanks,
Steve

Panorama

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I really enjoy panorama photography. The wide aspect ratio gives the viewer a sense of 'being there'. With digital photography it is a fairly simple thing to 'stitch' multiple captures together to create a single image. The trick is to make sure the images are lined up correctly when captured.

The preferred method for this is to use a tripod and a leveling device, however, these were done freehand. I have all that stuff, but I was out for a bike ride when I made most of these, and a tripod was a luxury that I was not willing to afford myself. Anyway, I hope you like them.

Click on an image for a larger view

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Thanks for looking,
Steve

Strobist Boot Camp II

Strobist Boot Camp II starts tomorrow. I have been following David Hobby's Strobist blog for about 2 years now. If you have not heard about the Strobist, it is an internet blog site which focuses on off camera lighting using the small strobes which are typically mounted on the hot shoe of an SLR camera.



Strobist boot camp is a series of contests, each based on a particular assignment. People participate from all over the world and even if you don't submit a photo, there is still ample opportunity to learn from other photographer’s interpretation of each assignment.

Much of what I know about lighting was learned by reading this blog, and it is a regular stop on my daily web surf. If you are a photographer and are new to the concept of off-camera strobe lighting, then the Stobist is the place to be.

I hope to participate in boot camp as time allows. I am trying to keep making photographs, even when I'm not being paid for it. I will be following the boot camp here as well.

Steve

Water Drops

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I was inspired by the a post on the Strobist blog to try my hand at high speed water drop photography. This is lots of fun and easier than I thought it would be. Heck even I was able to do it with just a few minutes set up.

Here's another.

On the River

The Confluence

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Starting a new project for myself. I recently began riding my bike on the trails along the three rivers here in Columba. I am taking my camera with me and photographing the environment. I plan to continue this for the next several weeks and see what turns up. I also plan to explore downtown Columbia as well as the West Bank neighborhoods of Cayce and West Columbia.

Stay tuned.

Steve

Blythewood Golf Team

Bryce Howell

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We shot individual and team photos for the Blythewood High School Varsity and JV Boys Golf Teams yesterday at Columbia Country Club. This is a great group of young men, and it was a pleasure to make their team photos.

Proofing gallery is available here

More experimenting with the big light

Using the same lighting set up as the 'Martini anyone' shots. A shoe mount Nikon SB800 flash on a stand with a shoot though umbrella adds interest to the lens element.



Same setup. Here the shoot though provides a little highlight to the front of the subject. These were really quite easy to pull off, I made 3 or 4 of each one and processed in Photoshop CS2.

For photo geeks, here's a set up shot on Flickr. The brolly is not in the shot, but you get the idea.

Thanks for looking,
Steve

Martini Anyone?

Okay, maybe I have a little too much time on my hands today. This was a fun little project. The light is from behind with a piece of black foam paper between the subject and the light source. I think it's pretty cool looking.

Steve