On a Roll...

Finally finished the editing on this portrait shoot. I'm very please with how the images turned out.

It reminded me that I've been shooting images but not posting here on the blog... So here are some more of who and what I've been aiming my lens at.

These are a few recent portraits from my last photo blast at Lotus Studios. The studio had to restructure so now I'm looking for new studio space where I can host dance shoots... I've got a few ideas...

Night Shoot in Uptown Charlotte... October Edition

I took my Intro to Photography class out for their night shoot field trip last night. Always fun!

The weather was perfect. No rain anywhere to be found.

I think I'm going to be sticking to the uptown area from now on... I don't seem to have as much drama when I stay close to the buildings and the cool ambient light. The only "problems" I had last night were a) getting to know the new camera body I had just picked up (had to reset all the custom functions that the previous owner had set) and b) not heeding my own advice and having fresh and/or extra batteries on hand (bad teacher, bad teacher).

It was funny... We had many more people stopping and asking what we were doing than normal. And 2 of my students ran into people they knew.

Of course it wasn't as exciting as last session

when we went out onto the bridge on Central Avenue for the skyline shot. Five minutes after we made it onto the bridge, a wreck happened right underneath us.

The driver was alright (I think NASCAR needs to recruit her because she kept her car from rolling over) and then we ended up with all the emergency vehicles stopped right where we were....

Shooting by the Light of the Moon

It's that time again... One of my favorite classes during each session of my Intro to Photography class that I teach at the Light Factory: The Night Shoot Field Trip!

No real lecture. Just the students and their cameras and tripods... and some crazy available light provided by uptown Charlotte.

Everyone seems to have a genuinely good time and are pretty amazed at the images they have captured by the end of the evening.

I'll try to remember to post images from tonight's shoot as soon as I get them processed.

Goal Searching

Forgive me... It's been 199 days since my last entry... I've been busy. In the past six and a half months I have:

• tried writing for someone else


• become disillusioned


• received sad news about my family


• dislocated my knee


• and lost faith in my visual voice

So I took stock and I think I am beginning to see the light beyond the water's surface. I'm still a few feet below the surface... There are some scary things floating around. And I'm still not 100% certain if the things I'm clinging to for support are going to help me break through or if they will drag me further down.

But I have to start over somewhere and I think that might be here.

I took my Saturday students out in bitterly cold weather on the last day of January to shoot car trails. The high temperature during the day was 52° but it was supposed to get down to 24° that night. The sky was totally clear so I knew that we would be chilly at best. I was worried that the weather might turn them off and everyone would leave within an hour. Oh me of little faith!

We met at the Light Factory at 5:15 in the parking lot and carpooled to the location. It only took a few minutes to get there so we had to wait for the sun to start to set. Traffic whizzed by behind AND below us as we stood on the bridge with our tripods and cameras. People honked. CATS buses shook the bridge (always a stomach churning feeling… one of the students stayed close to solid ground which ended up not only feeling more safe, but provided a great vantage point for his shots).

As the sun finally started to set, the shutter speeds got longer. One student was experimenting with his exposures and got the first hints of the car trails with a 2-½ second exposure. Then it was on! Everyone was experimenting and asking questions and getting shots that they were happy to call theirs. We were even briefly joined by on the bridge by another photographer who saw the group and wanted to benefit from “safety in the numbers.”
They all had a blast and were still shooting three hours later! My fingers and toes were numb, but it was thrilling to have these guys bring their cameras over to me to show off their images in their LCD monitors.

I get to do it again on Wednesday night with my other class…

Pictures of Farm Animals...

... in places other than farms.... Just photographic musings from uptown Charlotte (!) and the Carolina Renaissance Festival petting zoo...



This bull was actually very people friendly, which was a good thing because he was in a temporary pen outside the Levine Museum of the New South as part of one of their openings. He seemed to enjoy having his head scratched and being petted.

Of course I like this picture because it seems to go quite nicely with "Future Vegetarian" which I posted some time earlier...




These guys were at the petting pens at the Carolina Renaissance Festival. I had taken my camera equipped with only my Lensbaby to see what I could accomplish.

It is difficult enough to focus a Lensbaby correctly, but when your "models" are only interested in food... well...

CarnEvil

I spent this weekend shooting at CarnEvil...


I was not entirely happy with the images I got on Friday night. I was trying a different way of shooting (read: I used my flash... and I was wearing fairy wings AND traipsing about with my tripod... I did feel like a bull in a china shop). Anyway, I did manage to get some decent shots.

I felt MUCH better about the images I shot on Saturday. More of the way I'm used to shooting --- and that gave me the confidence to look back at the Friday images with less self-criticism. It was cold and smoky and loud, but the guy checking ID's at the front door seemed genuinely shocked at my age (I thank you!) and I ended up stretching my photo muscles.

If you'd like to take at look at what I got, go to http://www.jawileyphotography.smugmug.com/ and take a look...