Soccer for a Cure - Charlotte, NC

This past week the South Meck Mens Varsity soccer team participated in the "Soccer for a Cure" tournament in Charlotte, NC.  Teams played two games over two days.  Final rankings were based on the following points: 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie, 1 point for a shut out and +1 for a goal differential for each goal up to 5 goals.


South Meck tied Lake Norman 1 to 1 and beat Ashbrook 3 to 0.  South Meck finished 7th. Independence won followed by Ardrey Kell, Charlotte Catholic, Marvin Ridge, Myers Park and Providence.


It was a great opportunity to see how my 50D would perform in low light.  All images were shot without flash at high ISO.  These were shot with a 70-200mm at ISO 2500 - 3200 f3.2 - f2.8.  I am pretty happy with the results.

 

Denice

This week, while attending a Meetup of the Charlotte Portrait Photography Group, I was able to capture a few frames of Denice.  These were shot with a single bare bulb Einstein Strobe.

Light Painting - Blue

Here is a series of Blue themed self portraits and a few of my son. All portraits were photographed in Charlotte, NC and were created in-camera with some minor editing in Photoshop.  Blue gelled flashes as well as a blue wand were used in their creation.

Charlotte Photography Meetup Group - Light Painting 7 - Portraiture

Last night, I hosted my 7th Light Painting Meetup with the Charlotte Photography Meetup Group.  We usually shoot outdoors, but tonight we were fortunate enough to shoot inside in the AC.  For those of you not familiar with light painting, it is capturing light through a single long exposure.  Exposures can be seconds to minutes to hours.  There is no limit to what you can create.  All images are created in camera without the use of photoshop or other programs to create the lighting effects.


We had a great group of photogs and for most this was their first time light painting.  We covered a lot of tips and techniques in our 3 hour session. Everyone got to be a shooter and a model.  Everyone got to create their own unique images.  And everyone got to experience the WOW and the frustration of crafting an image.  Photos from our meetup can be seen here. 


I was so busy, I was only able to shoot about 7 frames.  Chris Ballance was my only model of the evening.  I am pretty happy with such a high keeper ratio from this shoot.  

 

Light Painting is not necessarily about having a sharp image.  Most images have a soft quality to them because the image is painted with a moving light source.  When you move the light, the shadows that are cast move also.  The camera records the first shadow and the second and third and can give an out of focus look to your images even though the model is stationary.  This is just part of the craft.  If you want a sharp image, don't move your light source or use a flash.


I think the most important aspect of Light Painting is the flow and emotion you feel from the image.  I have studied incredible images from Patrick Rochon and Aurora Crowley that are slightly out of focus, but quite awesome just the same.

Irene and Mindy

I recently had another incredible light painting photo shoot with my favorite LED flow performers Irene and Mindy in Raleigh, NC.  We shot at my favorite location, underneath a bridge, down by the creek.  I have photographed them before but the previous sessions focused on capturing their performance art.  This time I wanted to focus on creating portraits of them using creative lighting.

Since these are long exposure images of 1 sec or more, I would typically put the camera on a tripod, but this time I experimented with hand holding the camera and loved the results.  Since I was photographing in a very dark environment, the flash exposed the performers and froze them sharp.  After the flash, the camera only recorded the movement of the LED lights until the shutter closed.  One second seems to be the magic number for this type of exposure.  All these were shot in Manual Bulb mode.  I simply held the shutter open manually after the flash.  Once the images were edited I realized that even on Bulb mode I captured all these images right at a 1 second exposure.

This technique really changed the flow of the shoot.  I could now move about and creatively frame my shots without fear of a blurred image.  I think we got some beautiful frames!