June 9-14, 2024
Tap….tap
Tap, tap, tap….
Clears throat
Is this thing on? Let me know if you are out there.
Takes a sip of water and clears throat again.
Welcome back to the blog. I feel like it has been forever and a day since I’ve sat down to write a blog entry. The last time we spoke, I had just finished up with a mentoring session at Doughton Park. You might recall that I wasn’t feeling particularly creative on that day. So much had been going on and was looming on the horizon which made it very hard to feel like a photographer. Not much has changed since then, but Toni and I had a trip that has been scheduled for a while going into Charleston, SC. Since I haven’t been to Charleston since 2015, as a cyclist and have never been while wearing the shoes of a photographer, it only made sense to take the camera with us. It has been over 20 years since Toni has been there which made this more about the experience than anything else. It wasn’t like a trip to the coast where I kind of know how things flow and what types of photos I want to get. I was going to have to get to know the area before I could effectively capture it with the camera. There was also going to be a lot of time dedicated to doing things with Toni while we were there.
There were several mistakes that were made leading up to this trip and while we were on the trip. The first was that I had gotten out of the flow of landscape photography in general. I haven’t been getting out as much as I would have liked which kind of stifled my creativity a good bit. In addition to not shooting landscapes, I had been doing a lot of portraiture photography ranging from branding photos, headshots, and two different styled fine art portrait sessions. I really enjoyed all of these, but they served to change my mindset a good bit and altered my muscle memory in a way. The next mistake that I made was not really researching the area we were going to be staying. For some reason, I just had a hard time getting interested and excited about the photographic possibilities that would be present. I knew that Charleston was a beautiful place and I had seen lots of photos from there, but I just couldn’t muster the interest needed to really start to plan out the photography. I just trusted in being able to find it and shoot it as I would normally be able to do around home.
Once we got to town, I made another series of mistakes which started with not having a clear idea of what I wanted to look for. I was just waiting to see what presented itself to me as we did our activities for the days. You would think that I would take the camera every time that we went out, but you would be mistaken. It sat in the room because I wanted to get to know the area before I committed to photographing it. That would have been fine if I was actively looking for photographic possibilities, but I wasn’t. This was another mistake that I made. I spent entirely too much time in heavy traffic attempting to navigate around to the different things that Toni and I wanted to see. Now, there was really no good way around this unless I took off and went down the back roads and started to hunt things with a purpose. I didn’t think that would be necessary because we were going to be in the areas that screamed Charleston anyway.
The more that we were out, the more my creative energy faltered because of the traffic and the amount of people that seemed to be everywhere that we wanted to be. This is not to say that we didn’t have a good time. We really enjoyed the activities and shopping that we did, but I was realizing that the photography probably wasn’t going to work out as I had hoped it would. I could have made the decision to redirect my energy and make this completely about photography, but that wasn’t what I really wanted to do with this trip. I mainly wanted to spend the time with Toni while we were there with the photos being a secondary concern when the lighting was good.
As you can see from the beginning of this blog, we were there from Sunday to Friday (the day I am writing this blog). Things were very slow photographically Sunday and Monday. I had absolutely no connection with the place. I wasn’t seeing the beauty there that I was expecting to. I was listening to the landscape, but I was hearing nothing at all. The bits downtown that I had hoped to capture weren’t speaking to me, and even if they had been, there were just too many people around. There was a cruise ship that had docked, and all of the passengers were in the same areas that Toni and I were in. It was hot and humid which neither of us care for which all made it very difficult to become inspired by the setting.
This is where being familiar with yourself comes into play. I could tell that I wasn’t connecting with Charleston as I had thought I would. I could have forced it and just started making photographs wherever we happened to be which I could do, but I’ve never looked back on those photos fondly. I was well aware that I had to develop a connection to some aspect of the area before I could start to make any photos. The places downtown were not doing it for me in the slightest. The only thing that I found that I really cared for was the Spanish Moss hanging from the trees. This seemed to be an iconic look for Charleston, and I started to get inspired by that one aspect. On Tuesday night after an eventful day, I started to do some research to find an area where I could shoot some Spanish Moss without a lot of people around. My hope was to make this a more relaxed time with the camera allowing myself to become one with my surroundings.
The weather for Wednesday was looking like high clouds with some breaks in them. I figured that would be a good setup for some backlit moss and some interesting light. I found a listing of different plantations which should make for a more relaxed atmosphere. One of the listings was for the Charles Pickney Plantation (of Indigo fame) which was a free admission and had some photos that made it look like I might find my moss there. It wasn’t too far away and was close to the downtown Market where we were planning on returning.
The hope was that I would be able to get my feet wet with Charleston photography in a slow-paced setting where I could get that first image in the bag. Historically, once I am able to get a successful image captured, the rest of them seem to come in much quicker. I could photograph a tree easy enough, I have been doing that for nearly 20 years. The location opened at 9am which gave us time to get up and have some breakfast before setting out to see the plantation.
Toni opted to stay in the car while I went and looked for photos. She had some things to do to keep her occupied and I had no intention of being out there for more than an hour. I mean, how hard could getting a few tree photographs be? Well, when we got there after about a 30-minute drive, I learned how hard this was going to be. I got out of the car and grabbed my gear. I found a section of a tree that was getting some great light from the low sun and pulled out the camera with the telephoto lens attached. The minute I removed the lens cap, I remembered how humid it was outside. The lens was immediately covered with fog. From doing coastal photography in the Summer, I know that this can last around 30 minutes which was going to put me well behind and would also eat into the good light. It was another mistake in my growing list. I should have opened up the bag in the trunk to start letting the air in the bag equalize with the ambient outside air as opposed to the air-conditioned air it had been in for a few days.
Well, there was nothing to do but wait and try to expedite the process with a lens wipe. I found a good composition, but everything was too foggy to capture it. By the time the lens cleared, the light was gone, and I had to give up the shot. This was not the way I had hoped that the morning would go. I grabbed my camera that was now about 90% ready to go and started to look for another photograph. Finding a good composition was proving much more difficult than I would have thought, but I was sure that it was due to the fact that I was well out of practice. Had I been looking to set up studio lights and get a three-point lighting situation worked out, I could have done that in a matter of minutes. Finding a way to organize the trees out here was proving to be very difficult indeed.
Everything that I was finding felt very forced and was too much photography by the numbers. After about the 10th frame, I decided that this wasn’t working at all. I had to make a choice…either I was done here and needed to pack it all in, or I needed to change what I was looking for. After working around for about 30 minutes and having nothing at all to be excited about, I decided to change up my expectations. I stopped looking for the compositions and started looking for the light. It was the idea of the backlight on the moss that had really interested me, and that was something that was moving around the scene quite a bit. I just looked to see where the light was working out and I would point the camera in that direction to get a shot squared up. Then I waited for the clouds to move and bring the sun back to the same position on the trees that it had been.
I had replaced the methodical setting up with a more reactive form of photography. This quickened the pace for me and brought about a bit of excitement to the process. I wasn’t sure if I was getting anything worthwhile or not, but I was starting to get excited about the possibilities for the first time. I knew that the exposures were going to be difficult because I was shooting a tree backlit, but still wanted to get detail in the shaded portions of the tree. I also desperately wanted to avoid having a blown-out sky which made every exposure a balancing act on the fence. I exposed to the right, and then pushed it 1/3 of a stop knowing that I could recover that if needed. This gave me just enough shadow detail where I could work it in post. The images coming up in the review were looking horrendous with the high contrast lighting, but I felt pretty confident that I could make it work in Lightroom. Even knowing that, it was very easy to get discouraged looking at the back of the camera. I could very well be wasting my time, and Toni’s by doing this.
With every press of the shutter button, I was feeling more and more like my old self. I was thinking quickly and coming up with solutions on the fly to the different problems that I was facing. Not only was I having a hard time with the exposures, but there was also the matter of the compositions. When I am doing this type of photography, I really want to keep things like kiosks out of the photo. I also had to worry about benches which really didn’t fit the vibe I was going for and fences to protect parts of the park. I had to play the focal length game with almost every shot to get the right elements in the frame with the right scaling. All of this had to be worked out quickly as the sun would only stay in a position for a limited amount of time before moving. Essentially, I was chasing the sunlight across the property.
A couple of times, I went down the trails to see what else could be seen, but I was greeted by nothing special at all. I kept returning to the main part of the property where the trees were a bit more spaced out and seemed to have a lot more of the moss hanging from the branches. This was what I wanted to capture, and it seemed that I was limited to a small area to get those photos. I found ways of incorporating the walking path in a few of the compositions where it made sense, and even shot compositions that didn’t include the base of the tree which is very unlike me. Since I wasn’t sure if any of these were going to work out, I decided to make it all an experiment and just shoot what felt right at the moment. I would sort it all out later on, and if I trashed them all, so be it.
The sun was climbing the sky rather quickly which made the light harsher by the minute. I have no problem shooting in harsh light if it suits the subject but, in this case, my subject was primarily in the shadows. I was focusing on getting the moss in the sunlight, but I needed that moss to have a home which was the tree. I needed to have detail in the tree to make that work in the photo which meant that the deeper the shadows, the harder it was going to be to showcase the tree. I also realized that the warm light which had been shining through the moss was getting cooler as the sun got higher in the sky. I knew that my time here was about to end.
It had taken me about 30 minutes to get into a position where I was getting decent images, and now that it was about 45 minutes into the session, the light was starting to fail me. I had been shooting in earnest for only about 15 minutes or so and had shot nearly 30 frames in that time. I had no idea if any of them would work out, but I knew that the light was getting boring at this point and my chances of success were going to be very reduced. I started looking for anything else that I could photograph before calling it a day. Nothing at all was jumping out at me and I was starting to get very sweaty in the heat. Not wanting to be walking around in damp clothes for the rest of the day, I decided to pack it in and head back to the car, and to Toni.
I had been out here for right at an hour which was my intention. There had been 40 frames shot in that time all totaled which was better than I had expected. I still didn’t know if anything was going to turn, out. I knew that there were none that I was particularly excited about and there was a strong possibility that I was going to be trashing the lot of them. When I had that thought, I could tell just how disconnected I was with the area because I was actually hoping that none of them would work so I wouldn’t have to spend time editing and doing a blog about them.
On the one hand, I had gotten the first images in the bag, but on the other hand, I was realizing that I just wasn’t connecting with the area as I had hoped I would. I was really having a hard time with this, and I didn’t like it. If nothing else, I had managed to get some photos and had done it without having to fight the crowds. That was nice, and it was a fun morning remembering how to be a landscape photographer once again. If I were lucky, I would find something else around the Market downtown as that was our next stop.
Because I have learned the lesson that if you don’t have a camera with you, there will be no photos at all, I decided to take the camera bag and tripod with me while Toni and I walked around the market. I can’t begin to tell you how difficult that was in practice even though I knew what I was getting into. The crowds were as bad, if not worse than they had been the last time we were out there which made maneuvering around the displays difficult at best. I was also walking slowly with roughly 30LBS on my back and my shoulders were starting to hurt. The car was several blocks away, so I didn’t want to walk back to the car to dump the camera leaving Toni there. However, half-way through the market, my back had been through enough. I needed to get out and try to find something to shoot. With Toni’s blessing, I was headed back to the main entrance of the market.
The first time that we had been here, I had seen the ornate railings around the entrance and had thought that they would make a great photograph in some way or another. I was going to work something out with them now that I was here with the camera. The crowds were intense and there were no angles that I could work where the people would be out of the way. I looked at isolations of the railings and then looked at some abstract views. None of these really worked out. It was time to play the game of what do I like and what do I not like. There was also a pretty heavy helping of the question “why am I taking this photo?” All of these questions are designed to help me build out a composition that works.
The more I looked around the more I realized that the old lamp posts captured the same feeling that the railings did, but without all the people. In fact, the only part that I didn’t like about them was the fact that there were stoplights attached to the poles. From some angles, there were also buildings that would complicate the view. I had to find the angle that allowed me to shoot over the buildings, while still having enough altitude to include two lights without the traffic control features showing.
I ended up on the one side that was still catching the sun which allowed the lamps to be well lit against the sky. I found a composition that worked nicely with the two lamps staggered in the frame. I then noticed the direction of the clouds and decided that a long exposure would work well here. I built up the camera with the telephoto lens attached which was zoomed to 200mm in order to fill the frame with the two lamps. I then worked out an exposure with the polarizer attached before figuring out which ND filter to use. I decided that the 10-stop would give me the range of shutter speeds that I was going to want. I started out with a minute and a half and found that the entire sky turned white with clouds because it didn’t take long for the clouds to move through the field of view of the 200mm lens. I worked the exposure backwards until I landed on 30 seconds. This gave me the motion that I wanted in the clouds, and I was able to fine tune the overall exposure by adjusting the ISO.
I had the composition set, and I was mostly out of the way on the back edge of the sidewalk. This didn’t stop crowds from walking right by the camera though. Fortunately, I had it elevated high enough that I shot over their heads. Well, there was one exception as a dad was carrying his daughter on his shoulders. He saw what was going on and had her duck beneath the lens which worked out perfectly for the photo. There were about 10 frames shot here trying to get the right look of the clouds. In the end, there were two that worked out well, with completely different looks thanks to the shape of the clouds. I ended up editing both of them with some different choices made. I did color on one, and black and white on the other because I thought that the concept worked well in both presentations. I also flipped one of them horizontally so that it read differently than the other. One is a little more dramatic while the other has a bit more visual tension in it. I think that they both worked well, but surprisingly not as well as I had thought when I was shooting them.
This was one of those times when I thought that I had a great photo figured out, but it seemed to fall short of my expectations. Fortunately, the photos of the moss turned out much better than I had had thought which brought balance back into the day. I was still not feeling totally connected to the location and wasn’t seeing the photographs that I was expecting to. In my defense, this was a setting that I really wasn’t used to, and I had very little compositional formulas pre-planned for the subjects that I was finding. I guess you could say that this was an attempt at improve in many ways. I was sight reading music and figuring it out as I went along. This is harder than it appears and the only way that I was able to make this work was that I had a lot of experience working through the creative process in areas that I am much more familiar with.
After working with some ideas of the railings, I took the camera all built out and walked back down the street to see if there were any other isolations that I could find. I tried some shots of the market as I walked back down, but to no avail. By the time I got to the end of the market, I was done. There was no need in frustrating myself any further, so I packed up the camera and found Toni. We spent some time going into a few more of the stores before heading back to the car. As I was still in a photographic mindset, I took the long way back to the hotel trying to find something to shoot. This time, I was on the back rural roads which is how I find most of what I shoot. I found a few points of interest, but no photos along the way. As the light started to drop, it was time to call it a day. We set course back to the hotel.
We arrived right at sunset and the clouds were looking like there might be some color potential. I had been looking at the lines of a neighboring hotel for the past few days from our window. The architecture had interested me, and I felt that this might be a good time to shoot it. I grabbed the camera and went to an area at the edge of the parking lot that would give me a similar angle to what I had been seeing from our room. I built up the camera with the telephoto lens and the extender to get the reach that I was going to need to isolate the angles that I wanted on the top of the building. The clouds were moving, so I knew that I was going to want a long exposure, but I didn’t think that I was going to need a dedicated ND filter. I just needed a stop or two to get what I was after and that could be done easily with a polarizer. That filter would also darken the windows which I was wanting to do anyway.
Once I got the camera set up, I started to get the exposure time figured out based on the cloud motion. It seemed that about 30 seconds was the way to go once again, and that was easily achieved with the combination that I was shooting. The cloud motion was looking good in the image review, and I was thinking that this was going to be my favorite image of the day. I just had to wait to see if the sky was going to kick off as the sun dripped below the horizon. It was the second blush that provided just a hint of color at the top of the frame. I brightened the exposure by adding another stop to the shutter speed for a solid minute. This would stretch the color a bit further in the sky, or at least that was the hope. I fired off the exposure and when it was done, the color was gone from the sky. I could barely see the hint of pink in the sky with the image review but knew that if anything was there, I could bring it out in post.
That was the last photo that I shot for the day, and it was number 60 on the memory card. It had been roughly 12 hours since I started shooting and I was now finished for the day. I went through the photos on the camera and showed some of them to Toni. They weren’t quite what I had in mind, but I was hoping that when I got home and started working on them, they would rise to the occasion. I also hoped that this day’s shooting would spark some more creativity over the remaining time in Charleston.
That didn’t quite work out and Wednesday was my only day that yielded any photos. That creative umph just never did materialize with me and I decided that it was better to not force matters at this point. I had some photos in the bag and that would be good enough. It was a more successful day than the trip to Williamsburg, VA back in February at least. On the really bright side, I was able to get home today and get the photos edited, eight of them as a matter of fact, and get the blog done. Had I shot more than this, I would have been working on them through the day tomorrow. It all worked out for the best and Toni and I had a great time together in SC. It made us realize how much we like the weather here in the foothills of NC, and we are glad to be back home.
I hope that you have enjoyed this trek as well as the photos that came from it. As always, if there are any photos here that speak to you, please consider purchasing a print. There is just no better way to enjoy a photograph than in the way that it was envisioned by the photographer. In addition to owning an original piece of art, you are supporting my photography which makes it possible for me to go on treks like this. I wish that I could post these photos in full resolution here for you to enjoy, but those files would be much too big to manage which is why we have to settle for these reduced quality images on your monitor or device. When you own a print, you are getting that full resolution photograph with all the detail imaginable. The prints are a sight to behold, and I love being able to share my vision with my clients.
I hope to see you back here again soon for another trek. Things are beginning to calm down a bit and hopefully that means that I will be able to get back out with more regularity once again.
Until next time….
