Here Comes the Bride

So my friends Jeff and Vicky got married a week ago.

I’ve tooling around with the idea of shooting more weddings so I asked Vicky if I could shoot a few bridal portraits of her.

With the wedding date fast approaching and Vicky and my schedules getting tighter and tighter, we finally found a weekend when we could both be in the same city at the same time.

We had no set plans on where to shoot, so we drove around Wilmington and scoped out a few locations. We shot in front of a fountain downtown, under an overpass near the battleship, on a pier, in an Irish Pub called the Dubliner and in the now infamous photo booth.

All in all, we had fun. And that’s what made it a great shoot.

 

Thinking Inside the Box

I can’t take credit for coming up with the idea for my photo booth. It’s an idea I’ve had rolling around in my head for a few years ever since I saw Frank Micelotta use one to photograph stars backstage at the 5th Annual TV Land Awards.

Ever since then, I’ve been looking for an excuse to build one. That excuse happened this past Saturday.

My friends Jeff and Vicky got married this past weekend. For their wedding, we decided to build a photo booth.

There were a few logistical problems to be solved:

Portability - Since known of us owned a trailer or van, we had to be able to break it down and move it either in my Honda Element or Jeff’s pickup truck.

Sturdiness - It had to be able to handle drunk people. We knew there were going to be plenty of them around.

Looks - It had to have that photo booth look. I didn’t want to have a curtained off area and call it a photo booth. If we were going to do it, we had to do it right.

But the problem that loomed in front of us, and we really wouldn’t know the answer until the day before the wedding, how do we get it there? You see, my friends were getting married on an island.

Jeff and Vicky were getting married on Bald Head Island. It’s a small island off the coast of North Carolina near the town of Southport. You take a passenger ferry to the island and, since they don’t allow cars on the island, you either catch a tram to wherever you’re staying on the island or you take a golf cart.

At first we thought we were going to be able to get the photo booth on the ferry. That was until the porters got a look at it. They nixed that idea in a heartbeat.

The next possibility was the barge that makes daily trips to island carrying supplies. Only, it was about ten minutes away and our ferry was departing in about 25 minutes. It didn’t leave a lot of time to dilly-dally.

When we arrived at the loading area for the barge, we checked with the attendant to see if we could load it on the barge and ship it across. She wasn’t sure. It had to be secured on deck and if it couldn’t we were going to be out of luck.

We needed to check with Jack. “Where’s Jack?” “He’s on the barge.” “Where’s the barge?” “Hopefully on it’s way back from Bald Head.”
Precious minutes were ticking away and we had a nervous bride-to-be and five carloads of stuff that had yet to be loaded onto the ferry.

We didn’t have much time.

Luckily, the barge finally appeared and we were able to locate Jack. “No problem. We’ve got a few chocks that we can use to secure this and it won’t be any problem. Pay the attendant and bring me your receipt.”

We’re cooking with gas!

We got the photo booth to the island and over to the reception area.

On the day of the big wedding, Jeff and I raced over to the reception tent and set her up.

It was a huge hit! Bigger than we thought.

Originally we were going to make prints and give everyone a little souvenir to take home with them. No way now. We had over a 1000 photos taken in the photo booth at the reception. There was no way we could print that many photos.

We also learned that the maximum capacity is about 8.

All-in-all, it was well worth the effort. Now how do we get it back? We’re still working on that.

My name is Todd.....and I have an addiction

It seems I can’t go a day without my precious caffeine.

When I’m traveling, my drink of choice is an iced, triple-tall, hazelnut, nonfat latte from Starbucks. For those that don’t speak Starbuckanese, that’s three shots of espresso with a little hazelnut syrup and nonfat milk over ice.

My record is 13 shots of espresso in one realllllllly long day. I hope to never challenge that record again.

So it was with much reluctance that I was assigned a story on one of my biggest vices in the world: coffee.

I was shooting for the next issue of Images of Cowlitz County magazine in Longview, WA, and one of the main stories was on the plethora of coffee shops in town. They have your regular coffee shops like Guse’s which has been roasting their own coffee for over two decades. There are coffee shops in little log cabins on the side of the road. There is even a coffee shop in a caboose. It’s called the “Espresso Express.” Go figure.

There seems like there is almost a coffee shop around every corner.

Ken Guse started his brewery after retiring from the local Weyerhaeuser plant over twenty years ago. It’s literally the center of town. Everyone who is anyone stops in for a cup of Joe. On the wall, above a long table that looks like it came from City Hall’s boardroom, is a reproduction of a mural of the town’s founding fathers. Except the faces have been replaced with those that frequent the coffee shop for the daily 9am meet-up of regulars. A fitting tribute to those that have and still do direct the goings on in Longview.

Guse no longer runs the coffee shop. His daughter Georgia has taken over the reins. She still roasts coffee in the roaster her father built almost 25 years ago. The regulars still come in every morning, their personalized coffee mugs hang from a rack on the wall. And they still run the town over a couple cups of coffee from that de facto boardroom at Guse’s.

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.