British Car Show

British Car Show

One part of the Greenville Scottish Games that I enjoy is the British Car Show. It is held on Furman University's shaded mall in front of the main gate to the games. There always seems to be a slightly different mix of cars in the show each year. Many of the cars are older restorations, but there are sometimes new British branded automobiles as well. The new Lotus sports cars are almost always a crowd pleaser.

The car show is now kind of a sentimental favorite of mine since it was some of my photographs of cars from a couple of years ago that got me invited to be a photographer for the games last year and now this year. I wasn't able to get many photographs from the car show last year due to the VIP's schedule. However, I did make it a point to get some shots from there this year.

This particular photograph shows that the cars are lined up for quite a long ways down the mall. In fact, they are lined up down both sides of the mall. Quite an impressive collection of classic British automobiles. The photograph is also a handheld, three-shot HDR composite so that the shadows are not blocked out to complete black. I tried to process the image so that it would look fairly natural without the over exaggerated colors that HDR can sometime cause. It's not perfect, but I think it gets close to it.

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Published in Fete Greenville

Some of my photographs from the Scottish Games were just published in Fete Greenville. Fete Greenville is a monthly, online magazine about events happening in Greenville, South Carolina. My photographs are on pages 5, 11, and 43.

It is kind of neat to see my photographs used in some of those layouts.

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The Royal Highland Fusiliers

Royal Highland Fusiliers

The gentlemen in the above photograph are members of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland (2 SCOTS). These eight men were the honor guard for the VIPs of the Greenville Scottish Games. They recently returned home from deployment in Afghanistan.

I find it fascinating how military uniforms and traditions vary even between nations as closely related as the US and Great Britain.

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2011 Greenville Scottish Games

2011 Greenville Scottish Games

The Greenville Scottish Games were held this year on Saturday, May 28 at Furman University. This was the second year in a row that I volunteered to photograph the games for them. Unlike last year where I was predominately charged with following Prince Edward, I was able to take in the games at my own pace. Both approaches were interesting and fun. However, this year I got to see and experience more of the games than I did last year. I also didn't have to run backwards near as much as I did last year while follow Prince Edward. ;-)

This photograph is the main field which is surrounded by the clans' tents and the review stand. Paris Mountain is visible in the background. I thought that the overall view was reminiscent of photographs that I've seen of the Scottish Highlands. Granted, the Highlands don't usually get temperatures around 95 degrees F with near 100% humidity. Still, it seemed an appropriate view of the games' character.

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We control the horizontal ....

Optical Illusion

The above photograph is one of the optical illusion exhibits at the Children's Museum of the Upstate in Greenville, SC. It was a fun afternoon. Lots of interactive exhibits for Connor to play with. Heck, I enjoyed some of them too. For instance I got to land the Space Shuttle! I didn't crash either. Don't ask me to dock with the International Space Station though, as I couldn't figure out how the controls worked.

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Something to go back to

Reflective Sculpture

As I have mentioned before, I really like to photograph reflective subjects. While waiting for the next leg of my assignment after lunch during the Greenville Scottish Games, I found this metallic sculpture near one of Furman University's athletic buildings. I don't think this is "the" image I wanted to get of it, but I do think there is something there I can work with in the future when I have more time. It is something for me to keep in mind to revisit next time I'm visiting Furman.

We don't always get the shots that we want the first time we see a subject. Sometimes you don't get it the second, third or forth times either. That's OK though. Photography is a growing experience and a way for us to see the world differently. There is no reason not to continue to revisit places, even after we get "the" shot we wanted. Who knows, we might get an even better image then we thought we could in the first place.

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A Work in Progress

Painting the Greenville Scottish Games

An addition to this year's opening ceremonies for the Greenville Scottish Games, was this painter. He was creating an interpretive piece to capture the spirit of the games which would later be presented to Prince Edward as a gift. I didn't get to watch him the entire time, but it was interesting to watch him work while the pipe bands were performing.

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Massed Pipe Bands

Massed Bands

During the opening ceremonies, all of the participating Pipe & Drum bands gathered together to perform for His Royal Highness, Prince Edward. It was quite impressive with between 400 to 500 musicians on the field together. They performed a new march which had been written to commemorate Prince Edward's visit to Greenville, South Carolina. An international competition was held for the composition of this particular march. Mr. Donald Patrick Sargent of Ashhurst, New Zealand composed "Greenville's Salute to the Earl of Wessex" which was the selected winner of the competition.

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Getting Up Early

Sunrise at Furman

All of the landscape photography books say that you should plan to get up early so you can catch the sunrise and the morning's "magic hour". When I was covering the Greenville Scottish Games, I was told to be there around 6 am. The sun had already risen, but wasn't yet visible due to nearby Paris Mountain. It didn't take long for it to climb above Paris Mountain though, and give a nice silhouette effect to some of the trees on the Furman University campus. The colors in this image are due to using a Shady White Balance setting when processing the image. There was a bit more blue in the sky at the time. However, I thought the extra warmth (i.e. orange and yellow tones) that the Shady White Balance setting adds to an image provided a better overall color palette.

When I process my images, I usually try a variety of White Balance settings to determine which might be the better match for how I want the image to appear. Sometimes it helps to get the White Balance perfect. Other times, the White Balance can add a creative choice of color tonalities to an image. It depends on what you want or need the image to do.

Of course, I wasn't really needed to photograph anything so early in the morning. I am glad that I did arrive that early though. I was able to get this photograph and a couple of behind-the-scenes photographs of people finishing preparations for the games that I would not have been able to get otherwise.

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The Best View

The Best View

When I saw these girls had climbed up on to the light-pole, I knew it would make for a good picture. That vintage-styled clock added just a bit of extra flair. To me, the photograph captures the excitement of the parade and some of downtown Greenville's personality.

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There She Is ...

Miss America

The current Miss America, Caressa Cameron, was one of the parade participants. She also sang the US National Anthem at the Scottish Games the next day. I don't think that I got a single bad picture of her on either day, although the one above is my favorite of all of them.

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Parade VIPs

Parade VIPs

Here is a photograph of of the VIPs watching the Great Scot! parade from the reviewing stand. His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex is waving to a parade participant, the Mayor of Greenville is next to him, and one of the Clan Chiefs is on the right of the photograph.

More photographs later.

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Great Scot! Parade

Spectators

I know it was quite on the blog here last week. I apologize for that, but I was getting ready for something. Now that it is finished and have approval to post the photographs, I can finally talk about it here on the blog.

More after the jump.

A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted about permissions to use some photographs that I took at last year's Greenville Scottish Games in this year's program. I thought it would be a good opportunity, so I agreed. However, it didn't end with just those photographs. I was also selected to be one of their volunteer photographers for this year's event. More importantly, this year the Greenville Scottish Games had a major VIP ... His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex. It is the first time that a member of the British Royal Family has visited a Scottish/Highland Games in the US, perhaps even outside of Scotland. It also marked the first visit of a member of the Royal family to South Carolina and the Upstate. To top if off, I was the "Principal" photographer for the Games tasked with documenting the Prince's visit to the Parade as well as the Games. Needless to say, it was an exciting opportunity.

The Festivities started Friday night with the Great Scot! Parade in downtown Greenville. The review stand was in front of City Hall which ironically put Prince Edward directly across from a local hot dog restaurant called "The Hot Dog King". I thought it was quite humorous placement. The parade itself was fun to cover. All of the clans attending the games were present, as well as all of the pipe-and-drum bands. There were also various other dignitaries, Miss Teen South Carolina, Miss South Carolina, all of the current Miss South Carolina contestants, and finally Miss America.

How often am I going to get to cover an event with a member of the Royal Family and Miss America?

The photograph above shows just a few of the many spectators that lined the streets early to see the parade.

I am still excited about this past weekend.

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Pretty Birds

African Grey Parrot

Some of the animals at Hollywild Animal Park have been rescued from owners that could no longer care for them or that needed to find the animal a better home. Tank, the rhino I showed a couple of days ago, is one of Hollywild's rescued animals. He has been at the park for about twenty years now.

The park also has a few parrots that local owners brought to the park because they couldn't care for them any more. Above is the Park's African Grey Parrot. African Greys are extremely intelligent birds. Some have learned not only how to mimic words, but how to use them in context as well as teach other parrots how to "speak" English. Case in point. When I finished photographing this parrot, I told it, "Thank you." The bird promptly replied with, "You're welcome." This got quite a few impressed chuckles from the other photographers.

More after the jump.

Yellow-Naped Amazon Parrot

Above is Hollywild's Yellow-naped Amazon parrot. It has a yellow patch on the back of it's neck, i.e. the nape, hence the name. This bird was quite a talker and had a very clear voice. It mostly said "Hello" with various inflections, but it did use other words and phrases too. I believe it said "Goodbye" to a photographer that was leaving it. The bird also seemed to relish the attention as it always had this mischievous gleam in it's eyes.

Scarlet Macaw

Finally, I got to photograph this Scarlet Macaw. These are the birds that come to mind when most people think of parrots. They are large birds who need a lot of room. Their tail can be a couple of feet long for example. This particular macaw kept moving around the tree it was placed in which make getting good shots of it difficult. Still it was a beautiful bird.

The park also has a yellow-crested cockatoo which I only got to see briefly, and didn't get any particularly good photographs of it.

All of these photographs with the parrots were taken with the new Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII which I got to borrow from the Nikon representative. It is such a nice lens. I love how it makes the background blur out to such a smooth set of tones and colors. That blurring effect makes the subject stand out so nicely from the background.

Have a good weekend. Maybe stop by Hollywild if you are in the Greenville or Spartanburg area.

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Corvette

Corvette

Lighting at the Carolina Auto Show is a strange, fickle thing. It is held in a big, dark expo building. There are low power fluorescent lights for general lighting so visitors can see where they are going. The cars themselves are light by multiple, bright spotlights, plus they are polished to be as reflective as possible.

All of this means that you just can't count on the lighting, but you have to work with it. Add in the people around the cars and it can be a challenge to photograph stuff. How I handle it is by looking for particular details that stand out to me. Rather than photographing the entire car which likely has people inside and all around it, I will photograph the hood ornament, or the name badge, or some unusual set of lines. Basically, I abstract it I suppose.

This photograph is of the hood of one the more popular cars at the show. I helped that it was the first thing you saw when you came through the entrance. The 2010 Corvette had people around it and inside it constantly while I was there. However, I really liked the hood detail and the car's identifiable badge. It is red like a 'Vette should be. It looks like the hood of a fast car. It says to me everything that a Corvette is supposed to be. I didn't really need a picture of the entire car. This one said it all.

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Belated Happy New Year

Hood Art

Well, it is 2010. Time really seems to be speeding by me. It doesn't seem like very long ago we were worrying about the Y2K bug yet it has been ten years since Y2K became a memory. It still feels like I graduated from college just a couple of years ago rather than twenty. *Sigh*


We haven't been out much lately so there haven't been a lot of new photographs to post about. However, this past weekend I went to the Carolina Auto Show in Greenville. This was the third year that I went to the show. It was the first year that I went by myself though. I wanted some time to wander around alone and my wife was gracious enough to watch our son. There had been some things that had been getting me down and I really felt that I needed to get out by myself. I'm glad that I was able to. Walking around the car show with the freedom to photograph at my own pace helped to get me out of my little funk. I've said before that the camera has kept me sane these past couple of years, and this was another time that it was as much therapy as expression.

The car show itself was good, if a bit smaller than previous years. Most of the major manufacturers were represented. However, there were a couple of brands that I wanted to look at that were not at the show. Some of the local car clubs were present showing their Mustangs and Exotic sports cars. There was even a Tesla all-electric sports car. It was the first Tesla that I've seen first hand. I didn't know there was even one in the area until now. Plus, a there were a few after market vendors and organizations with displays as well.

The photograph above is of the work of an after market customization artist. It is the raised hood of a Toyota model that has been completely customized from the paint job, to the engine, to the interior. It was a beautiful car. You can see more of this shop's work at The Artwork of Richard Markham.

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Reedy River Falls at Night

Reedy River Falls at Night

This was one of the last photographs I took while at Falls Park. There is a spot light that illuminates the falls at night and I liked out it backlit the water going over the falls. This is not an HDR image, it is a simple long exposure of 30 seconds. Long exposures turns water rapids into silky white blurs.

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HDR Gone Wrong

Reedy River Falls at Night

I tried to capture quite a few different angles of the Reedy River Falls and the Liberty Bridge. After the sun had set and the light was turning that beautiful blue, I thought that I would try to get a set of images of the view you see above. Unfortunately, I made several mistakes taking the images to merge into the HDR software. This left me with an HDR image that I didn't really like at all. However, as I was playing around with the various settings I got the image you see above. Everything about it from capture to processing was "wrong", but there is something about this result that I find intriguing.

"Correct" doesn't always give the best results. "Wrong" can sometimes be more interesting. Something to think about I suppose.

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Falls Park in HDR

Falls Park and the West End

Here is another HDR image taken this past weekend. I posted a similar view earlier this year which was taken on the other side of the river. I like this one because of the reflection in the water and the people enjoying the park.

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Reedy River Falls in HDR

Liberty Bridge and Reedy River Falls

This past weekend I went back to Falls Park in Greenville, South Carolina to try to photograph the Liberty Bridge and the waterfalls again. It is one of my favorite places to photograph although I have not yet gotten "the" photograph of the bridge that I want. The bridge's unique lateral, suspension arc and position make it a difficult subject for a photograph to do justice.

This time I went to the park during the late afternoon and stayed into the early night. That was really only about an hour and a half to two hours considering how quickly the sun sets this time of year. I was hoping that would allow me to get good exposures on the sky and the surrounds. However, in actuality, the sun was close to and even sometime even in the frame due to needing a wide angle of view to encompass the entire bridge. I also had some ideas on how to get some better angles of the bridge.

Considering the bright sky and shaded areas of the park, I thought that maybe some HDR (high dynamic range) techniques might work in this situation. I took quite a few sets of bracketed exposures and later merged them using Photomatix Pro software. In the end, I still think I can get a better image. There were several problems with this set of images. I made some mistakes while shooting the brackets. I didn't pay as good attention to the compositions as I should have while shooting them. I also think I need to more practice on the HDR processing.

Still, I did get a few images that I liked even if they are not quite what I ultimately wanted. Practice, practice, practice. It is what makes hobbies fun and it gives me a reason to go back to the park again.

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