Miami Boat People

Some times the most memorable experiences are the ones not planned.

My friends Jeff and Vicky are getting married in a couple of months which means the mad dash of who can one-up the other with the traditional bachelor and bachelorette parties.

Jeff wanted to plan his bachelor party around a fishing excursion. The plan had us parachuting into Cabo San Lucas and spending a wild, long weekend fishing during the day and enjoying the local nightlife scene into the wee hours of the morning. We’d then make our getaway under the cover of darkness and return to our normal lives before the authorities could lock us up in a Mexican jail.

Then the “Economic Downturn” hit.

Our trip went from a long weekend of excesses in Cabo to a one night stand in Atlanta. Luckily Jeff was persistent in his desire to go fishing and we settled on a long weekend in Miami instead.

Jeff’s brother Mark, the cruise director for our mad-capped escapade, made all the arrangements for us. All we had to do was show up.

He hooked us up with “Mark the Shark” and his partner Tim to do a little fishing. They in turn hooked us up with our lodging. The best part is the boat was docked at the hotel which meant we merely had to step, or stumble, out of our hotel and onto the boat to go fishing.

The fishing wasn’t going to be that great on Saturday, so Tim offered to take us around by boat to a few of the area bars. We all agreed, not really sure what to expect.

What a blast! We had an awesome time.

Tim knows just about every person/bartender in Miami. The best part is he took us to places you would never go by car. They weren’t the typical places tourists go when they’re in Miami.

We’d hit South Beach the night before and this by far blew it away.

We met Tim about noon and settled onto the boat for a 30 minute cruise to our first stop.

Jimbo’s: the land of $2 beers, boccé, smoked fish and the occasional model killing time between photo shoots.

Never have you seen a more eclectic group of people in your life. Story has it that Jimbo signed a low payment, long-term lease with the city of Miami to occupy a space next to a smelly water treatment plant years ago. Today the water treatment plant has been cleaned up and Jimbo’s is sitting on pristine real estate. If it weren’t for his lease with the city, the land would be one of the most coveted pieces of land in all of Miami.

After a few beers and a little boccé, we hopped aboard the boat and headed to Scotty’s.

At Scotty’s we met a few more of the locals, got a round of drinks on the Bachelor’s behalf and devoured a few conch fritters.

We made a couple more stops on our adventure, Tim giving us a personalized tour as we hopped from establishment to establishment. It definitely was the highlight of our trip. 

We couldn’t have planned it any better.

Food for Thought

I do quite a bit of food photography. I take pictures for a food column on the Viking website and I also shoot food for Journal Communications.

When shooting food, I try to keep it as simple as I can. 

For most of my shoots, I'm pressed for time. I'm shooting in between lunch and dinner at a restaurant, sandwiched between two assignments and I have five or six items to photograph. I don't have the time to be fiddling with a multitude of lights, reflectors and mirrors.

And, in the end, it's all about the food anyway, not the number of lights I can endlessly pull out of my bag. That's why my standard lighting kit for food photography is a tripod, several cardboard reflectors (with white on one side and silver on the other) and the nearest and biggest window with indirect sunlight.

This first shoot is a classic Viking shoot. I've got two big windows on my left and a fill card on the right, just out of the frame. I'm shooting a pretty long exposure (over a second) so I definitely need the tripod. The indirect sunlight gives me a really soft light that wraps around the food when I use a fill card. I also need to note that I turned off the lights in the dining room so I didn't mix my daylight from the window with the tungsten from the overhead lights.

 

For the next shoot, I mixed my light sources; using window light and a flash on a shoot through umbrella. The flash is about three stops under the main light (the window) and is just filling in the shadows on the left side. Again I've got a fairly long exposure so I'm using a tripod. I was shooting between lunch and dinner and was able to turn off the tungsten lights in the dining room. I was shooting with a daylight balance so with a long exposure, the lights would have given a color cast to the picture.

 

For the final shoot, I was set up in the middle of the restaurant and away from any window light. So I just mimicked my window light setup but with two flash units.

I've got two lights on shoot-through umbrellas. The main light in the back is at half power and the fill light is roughly three stops under at 1/16 power. Again, I'm trying to fill in the shadows and not overpower the main light. I also didn't use my tripod because I was shooting at 1/200 of second and wanted to overpower the ambient light in the restaurant. (They were open for breakfast and I couldn't turn off the lights like I could in the previous shoots.)

Role Model

First off, I want to apologize if you happened to be staying at the Hilton Charlotte Center City Hotel on February 6, 2009, and had a little trouble getting an elevator that night. You see, me and about 14 of my closest friends, hijacked one of the elevators for a little lighting demo. We pushed every button and rode it to the top floor and back down again. We had to cut it short on the way down after the affects of claustrophobia started to affect a few of the participants, not to mention the lack of oxygen.

My buddy Tommy "The Talent" Metthe was gracious enough to pose as my model for a lighting demo I gave at the Southern Short Course in News Photography a few weeks ago in Charlotte, NC. 

I tried to keep everything simple, from the lighting setups to the equipment I used. As a travel photographer for Journal Communications, I have to pack very light. For my lighting kit, I carry three strobes, two light stands, a couple of umbrellas, a modified ttl cord, some gels, a couple of David Honl grids and snoots, a couple of small ballheads with hotshoe adapters, a couple of umbrella adapters, three omnibounces and four pocket wizards. The umbrellas, lightstands and umbrella adapters fit snugly into a small tripod bag.

Here's a little "Monster Light" on "The Talent" in the elevator. I used a snooted strobe positioned low under Tommy's chin to light his face. I had him lean in just a little to get the light just hitting his face and not falling on his shirt. I also positioned a light behind him to light up the back of the elevator.

The hotel has some really cool high-backed chairs. I used one snooted strobe overhead to light "The Talent" and a strobe behind the chair to light the wall.

 

Here, I lit "The Talent" with an umbrella and placed a strobe behind him with an omnibounce to light the area behind him, just slightly overpowering the ambient light.

Again, we went back to the high-backed chairs and used a snooted light on "The Talent's" face and a zoomed-in strobe with a red gel to hit him from the side.

Guns, Honky Tonks and Cowboy Boots....Gotta be Texas!

Last month I got to travel to San Antonio, TX, for the second time in my life. Luckily, this time I wasn't confined to a golf course for the week.

I was there working on the Business Images of the Alamo Area Magazine which covers about eight counties around San Antonio. This wouldn't necessarily be a hard thing to do if this were a magazine in say, Maryland. 

But this is Texas. And everything is big in Texas. Even the counties.

One of the stops on my (pardon the pun) shot list was the Hill Country Shooting Sports Center in Kerrville, TX. The site will be hosting the second round of Olympic qualifying matches, as well as future national and world championships.

Some pictures you just happen upon. This windmill is in the town of Helotes, TX. Helotes is derived from the mexican word elotes, or corn-on-the-cob.

Of course, a trip to Helotes isn't complete unless you stop by John T. Floore's Country Store. Floore's opened in 1946 and helped give Willie Nelson his start, where he performed every Saturday night.

This is Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in Big Foot, TX.

The town of Hondo, TX, is planning to make the Hondo Municipal Airport the centerpiece of their future economic development plans and develop their own version of Port San Antonio, an air, rail and truck logistics/distribution park.

Starlings flutter about the Torch of Friendship sculpture by Mexican artist Sebastian in San Antonio, TX.

Just a view scenes of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, TX.

Not Your Grandfather's Mountain

Hugh Morton inherited Grandfather Mountain in 1952 and started developing it into a tourist attraction. Shortly thereafter, he built the mile high swinging bridge, which tends to sway in the high winds that can hit the mountain.

Located between the towns of Linville and Boone, NC, the mountain was originally named "Tanawha" by Indians, meaning “a fabulous hawk or eagle.” Early settlers gave the mountain the name “Grandfather” after seeing the image of an old man in one of the cliffs.

Today, the mountain rises to an elevation of almost 6000 feet as it looks out over the Catawba River Valley.

As I entered the gate to Grandfather Mountain, the attendant warned me "You may not be able to see much. There's a lot of fog up there."

He was right. You could barely see across the swinging bridge there was so much fog. I had to wait for the it to roll through before I could tell that the bridge didn't actually vanish into thin air.

On my way to Grandfather Mountain, I stopped by Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, NC, to photograph their newly remodeled Industrial, Engineering and Customized Industry Training Division. John Hauser is the Dean of the school and is posing in one of the new high-tech labs.

Lyndell Duvall works on one of the new CNC Milling Machines at the school.

I See Dead People

Malcolm Johnstone became interested in telling ghost stories after visiting Gettysburg three years ago and taking a ghost tour.

Today, the Executive Directer of the West Chester Business Improvement District can be found giving visitors a tour of the town's ghostly haunts, spinning a little history and fiction into his talk.

The tours have become popular, drawing crowds as large as 60 people a night to take a walk along the streets of this town about 30 minutes outside Philadelphia.

The clock tower at the Chester County Courthouse

The statue of Old Glory outside the Chester County Courthhouse

The Beer Sampler at the Iron Hill Brewery

Serving the lunch crowd at Three Little Pigs

A game of tag football after school