From Creative Tastes

Chess Pieces

This year there was a large chess board set up for people to play with. The pieces were about three feet tall. The squares were about one foot on a side. I saw a couple of people actually playing it throughout the evening. One family was trying to teach their kids how to play. Kind of neat. I don't remember it being there last year.

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Creative Tastes

Spartanburg Creative Tastes

This past Saturday, the City of Spartanburg held the Creative Tastes festival. Creative Tastes is an annual event which spotlights local restaurants and dining. There are a couple of stages for musicians, a wine tasting pavilion (which appears to be quite popular) as well as activities for children.

My wife and I tried fried lobster tails which were quite yummy. I also got a mini steak burger which was equally good. Our son had some pizza from a local pizza restaurant as well as some ice cream for dessert. We were there for about an hour to an hour and a half. I think there were not as many people there as last year, but it was a beautiful Labor Day weekend. I suspect a lot had left town for the long weekend.

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Scottish Games

Cheeky T-Shirt

We went to the Greenville Scottish Games this past weekend. It was hot, but there were enough clouds and breeze to keep it from being to stifling. I don't know if I just wasn't in the mood for photography that day or what, but I didn't take as many photographs as I usually do and only came away with about nine or ten that I liked enough to process. Still, we had fun so I guess that is the most important thing.

More after the jump.

The two events that we had the most fun with this year were the sheep dog competition and the classic British car show. It is amazing to watch those sheep dogs herding the sheep. The dogs really seem to enjoy herding them as much as the spectators enjoy watching them.

There were dozens of beautiful classic cars at the auto show. They were parked along the tree-lined drive toward the Furman University stadium. It was a great place for them. The trees gave quite a lot of shade from the sun to keep people comfortable while they admired the cars. And boy were there cars. Old Rolls-Royces, MGs, a Triumph Roadster with a rumble seat (I think that was my son's favorite), Sunbeams, classic Jaguars, and new Lotus sports cars. There was even a DeLorian. I don't recall any Aston-Martins though. I saw some older Mini Coopers side-by-side with some of the new models. The new models look positively gigantic next to the classic ones.

My son did also enjoy the children's area. There were free bounce castles and he got his face painted.

That's it for today.

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Nifty Fifty Goes to Town

Enjoying the Day

This weekend, the city of Spartanburg hosted a festival called "Spartanburg Creative Tastes". The city is undergoing a downtown revitalization and this festival was conceived as a way to highlight the town's growing cultural and artistic communities. It was a combination of art fair and restaurant fair. Local artists had their works on display and for sale. Several downtown restaurants had concessions so people could sample some of their cuisine. Plus, several local musicians and performing arts groups gave performances through the afternoon and evening. We had a lot of fun there, sampled some good food, and heard some good music. The city hopes to turn this into an annual event if it was well received, and judging from the turn out of both vendors and festival goers I think it will be back again next year.

One thing I decided to do while we were at the festival was to travel lighter than I usually do. So, I took the battery grip off of my camera, mounted my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens instead of my usual zooms, and packed the camera with a few essentials into my smaller camera bag. I still carried my 18-135mm zoom in the bag as well as my flash, but as it turns out I didn't need them. The 50mm lenses are sometimes called "Nifty Fifties" by photo-hobbyists. They are affordable, well made, sharp, professional quality lenses. The 50mm lenses used to be the "kit" lenses packaged with consumer SLR cameras prior to the advent of good quality zoom lenses. It approximates the angle of view of the human eye on 35mm film and is a simple yet robust little lens. Nifty Fifties are perfect little lenses when you are wanting to travel light. Their small size makes them easy to pack into a corner of your camera bag. Yet they are excellent low light lenses for the average person due to the wide f/1.8 aperture. The 50mm f/1.8 is frequently the second lens that many photography hobbyists get after their initial camera kit.

I had not been using my 50mm very much lately, so I thought this little festival downtown would be a good time to take it out and use it. All of the photographs I took at the festival were taken with it. Something that I'm kind of proud of is resisting the lure of the zoom I took with me "just in case". With just a little moving around on my part, I could generally get compositions that I liked. A prime lens like the 50mm does force you to think about your photographs a bit more before tripping the shutter. It's small size also made for a very unobtrusive profile in the crowded downtown festival.

If you don't have a 50mm lens yet, I do recommend you get one for yourself. They are very affordable at around US $100 and generally have exceptional image quality. This gives them a very good "bang for the buck" as they say and opens up low light as well as shallow depth of field situations that your kit zoom might not be very good at.

During the festival I took a mixture of festival and architectural photographs. There are a many older, restored and unrestored buildings downtown that have a lot of character. My budding interest in architectural photography was tempted by the many details in these older buildings. The full gallery can be found here on my Zenfolio site. A couple more photographs to whet your whistle after the jump.


Architect's Building

The Windjammers - Clarinet Solo

In Need of Repair

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