Highlights from the first half of May

This is such a busy time of the year I can’t really post about each wedding on my blog, I just don’t have time.  But I wanted to highlight a few pictures from the last couple of weeks.  One was a wedding in Andrews, SC of the same bride featured in my previous blog post.  I’ve also included a few family and engagement portraits from the Myrtle Beach State Park.  I discovered a new spot for pictures I really like at the park, at least the way the light is right now.  It’s the drainage ditch for land runoff into the ocean.  You don’t want to get in that water, but it makes a really great background at sunset.

Another thing I’ve done at my last couple of weddings is display pictures from the ceremony on my iPad.  When I get a chance at the reception, I will load in a few pictures from earlier in the day and put them up in a slideshow.  This seems to go over really well, there was almost always a small group around the iPad looking at the pictures.  I’m going to try and start doing this from now on.

Another fun thing I’ve been doing, which I will have more pictures of later on, is working with the latest Pocket Wizard wireless flash triggers.  I’ve been good for a long time at seeing great light and making use of it.  But now I’m trying to get better at making good light myself, even under bad conditions, using multiple flashes.  The http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ website is a great resource for really learning advanced flash techniques if you want to learn more.  I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below.

Groom leaning bride back for a kiss - Kingston Plantation

Groom leaning bride back for a kiss - Kingston Plantation

Kiss on the beach walkway faded color effect - Kingston Plantation

Kiss on the beach walkway faded color effect - Kingston Plantation

 

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What I’m up to around Myrtle Beach this winter

It seems like trying to keep up with this blog, I’m either too busy to have time to post, or I don’t have anything all that interesting to write about. At least the slow winter time doesn’t last too long in Myrtle Beach. Things usually start to really pick up sometime in March. I have had a few families that because of the cold wanted to do some pictures inside, and I think they turned out really nice. I have even had some couples do engagement pictures even though it was cold. I will post some pictures from these photo shoots below.

I’ve also been working with a new slideshow service called Animoto. It allows me to create really interesting slideshows unlike anything I could do with traditional software, and do it easily as well. They also give the rights to use a lot of music, so the slideshow can have music without breaking copyright like you see some websites doing. If you click on most of my photo galleries where it says “music video slideshow” you can see some of these videos. I personally don’t like when photography websites immediately start playing music, so I think this is a good compromise. My galleries can be viewed without music, and if you deliberately click for the video slideshows, you know to expect music as well.

Finally I’ve also been experimenting with doing time lapse photography. The Nikon D700 has a built in Intervalometer (See Wikipedia link for more information) so you can set it up to take pictures every second, or whatever interval you would like. My first try doing this was down at the Myrtle Beach State Park pier at sunset, it turned out acceptable but not great. I made a number of mistakes and I need some moving clouds in the sky to make it more interesting. I’ll post this first try below as well. Thanks for reading, next week I should have a post about some bridal portraits at the Brookgreen Gardens Holiday Cottage that should be really cool.

Example of Animoto photo slideshow.
My first attempt at time lapse photography, sunset from the pier at the Myrtle Beach State Park.

Couple leaning against park store wall

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Third year with family – Myrtle Beach State Park

I just wanted to make a quick blog post about this recent family session. This is my third time working with this family. They were one of the groups I photographed back when I was really just getting started, I’ve learned quite a bit since then, but they always seem happy. It’s nice to see the same faces over and over again. Every year I seem to get the cutest shots with the kids. They both have really big eyes that just seem to reflect the light perfectly. The family wanted something a bit different this year, so I took them around the oak trees in the Myrtle Beach State Park, and that seemed to work out really well. I love some of the shots of the girls looking through the trees. I could have put up a bunch of pictures, but I tried to pick just a few of my favorite below.

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