Portrait in a Construction Trailer

As a professional photographer, I am sometimes required to deal with some interesting situations. But this one was a FIRST!!!

Several weeks ago, my good friend Jay hired me to photograph an updated head-shot for his business profile. I drove to the address he gave me…and this is what I found. Jay is a foreman with a large construction company. He was on-site, supervising a huge project on Daniel Island. So I got to make his portrait in the construction trailer that served as his mobile office!

Sometimes you just have to think outside the box…and work with what you’ve got! 🙂

CTAR Leadership Conference at Founder’s Hall

The Charleston Trident Association of Realtors has served as the “Voice of Real Estate” in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina for more than 100 years, issuing statistical analysis of market conditions, offering legislative support to its members, and serving as the premier resource for all things real estate. This slideshow is a vignette into the story of the CTAR Leadership Conference, held at Founder’s Hall, located in Charles Towne Landing

Portraits of the Sevier Boys

It’s been a real joy for Cami and I to know Kevin and Nikki Sevier since they were just a young newlywed couple. Watching their relationship blossom, and their family grow, has been very special for us. All grown up now, I had the distinct honor of photographing their two handsome young men at their grandparent’s beautiful home overlooking the Stono River last evening.  Even though boys don’t exactly love having their portrait made, these guys did great and we had a blast!  🙂

Natalie’s Senior Portraits

Natalie is a bright, beautiful, and bubbly young lady!

It’s hard to believe that Scott & Sheri’s little girl is all grown up. Where does the time go!?! But we had a BLAST this weekend, photographing some wonderful Senior Portraits for this amazing girl with a big heart and a bright personality!

CONGRATULATIONS Natalie! We wish you all the joy in the world as you complete your senior year of high-school, and embark on whatever wonderful journey lies ahead!!!

Center for Birds of Prey Annual Gala

Last week I was thrilled to photograph a fundraising gala for an important cause! Aloft at the Cedar Room was this year’s annual celebration of the Center for Birds of Prey, the amazing team that works there, and the incredible work they do for our planet and the wonderful creatures we share it with!

Kara Bale from the Center for Birds of Prey writes: “What a wonderful night! Aloft at the Cedar Room was a fantastic event. The Cedar Room is a beautiful space which allowed guests to enjoy and celebrate the beauty, mystery, and wonder of wild birds while contributing to their conservation and our own future. The energy in the room was amazing! Here’s a quick snapshot of our evening for those of you who could not attend. We would like to extend another special thanks to our top sponsors including Coastal Expeditions, Benefitfirst, and The Boeing Company and to the many others that made this event possible. More photos to come from the very fabulous Chris Smith!!!”

It was an honor and a pleasure to be a part of this great evening again. I can’t wait for next year!!!

Beetlejuice Fashion Shoot

Reid is one of my FAVORITE “creative collaborators” in Charleston!!!  She is so artistic and has such a great sense of humor!

One day while out exploring on my motorcycle, I found this amazing old church ruins with a decaying piano in the middle of the sanctuary. I pitched the idea of a fun fashion shoot to Reid. She loved it!  Wrangling her three beautiful daughters, Sydney, Jackie, and Trinity to model for us, the game was on. They brought their beautiful pet boa constrictors, great props like the vase of old dead roses, and some outlandish outfits from places like Goodwill and who-knows-where!

We had an absolute BLAST and came away with a fun collection of images. Many thanks to Reid and our three gorgeous models!!!

Speedlight Sunset

I love photographing on overcast days. The light is soft, the colors are saturated, and the subjects don’t squint as much. But sometimes the images come out a little flat and lack impact…kinda just blah. Fortunately, I have a great little tip to keep all the benefits of the soft natural light, but add a little extra POP back into the image.

Here’s a little technique I call “Speedlight Sunset”. My preferred setup is to work with 2 or 3 speedlights mounted together on my home-made triple-threat flash bracket. Having multiple flashes ganged together provides me with extra power, directionality, and versatility when needed. But you can definitely do this with just one speedlight as well.

Instead of using your wireless off-camera flash as a fill or main light, place it far back behind your subject in the corner of the frame. For best effect, I try to have it shining through a background element like some low-hanging leaves or a clump of Spanish moss. This serves to obscure the true source of the light, and also defuse the quality of the light so that it looks more like the real thing. For best effect, you should also add a CTO gel over the flash. Also known as Color Temperature Orange, this piece of plastic changes the color of the light source to a deep warm tone, like that of a setting sun.

I prefer to trigger my wireless off-camera flashes with radio waves. Nikon’s built in Creative Lighting System is free and will do the job up to a certain distance as long as the Master flash and the Remote flash can see each other. But to place your flash further distances away, or hide it behind leaves and trees, you’ll need a radio triggering system. I sometimes use RadioPoppers to trigger my older Nikon SB-800 flashes. PocketWizard is another great solution that’s out there. But with the new Nikon D5 (as in this case) and Nikon D500 cameras, I can remotely trigger my Nikon SB-5000 flashes via the built-in AWL (Advanced Wireless Technology). I just plug in the WR-R10 Remote Controller, and away we go!

Many thanks to Kelli and Tom for being so much fun to work with on their beautiful maternity shoot.  Check out more of their images and see more samples of this Speedlight Sunset at:  https://chrisandcami.com/kelli-tom-at-hampton-park/.

I hope this helps open up some ideas and possibilities for taking your images to the next level. Speedlights are small, light, and portable. But they can make a HUGE difference in the quality and creativity of your images!

Head-shots for South Carolina Federal Credit Union

POW!!!  I blinded myself doing test shots this morning when I was setting up to photograph head-shots for the South Carolina Federal Credit Union!  OOPS!!!  🙂

Not-Your-Boring-Headshots

At Chris & Cami Photography, we may have an impeccable reputation, a polished product, and an efficient turn-around time. But behind all the professionalism, we are just regular people, who love what they do, and love having a good time doing it!

It was a pleasure photographing new head-shots for Ben at Colliers International a few weeks ago. It’s nice to know that we’re not the ONLY ones who like to have a little fun with their day!  Yeah Baby, yeah!  🙂

ATI Acquisition

It was an honor being the official photographer for the acquisition and merger between ANSWER and ATI yesterday:

“Analytic Services Inc. (ANSER), a public service research institute organized as a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to informing decisions that shape the nation’s future, today announced it has acquired South Carolina-based Advanced Technology International (ATI), a not-for-profit company that organizes and manages Research & Development (R&D) consortia on behalf of the federal government. Through this acquisition, represented by the law firm of Holland & Knight, ANSER gains approximately 165 employees bringing its total headcount to 515 and revenue growth increases to $500 million per annum…http://finance.yahoo.com/news/anser-expands-national-footprint-advanced-170000788.html

Head-shots for ATI

Advanced Technology International (www.ati.org) is an organization that builds and leads technology development collaborations. They help team members reach consensus, establish priorities and produce technology solutions.

Working with their marketing department was a real pleasure. And everyone I photographed was super nice and fun to work with! We set up and photographed head-shots all morning, as well as a team photos and group shots.  Many thanks to Rebecca for all her help coordinating everything!

Being a technology solutions company, ATI wanted a clean and modern style to their shots. We accomplished this using six Nikon SB-800 remote flashes, a Nikon D4, and a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8.   All the wireless off-camera flashes were controlled by an SB-5000 using RadioPoppers for communication.  Everything was tethered to a laptop so individuals could view their images immediately after their shoot.

If you, or an organization you know, is in need of new head-shots or executive portraits for marketing and promotional material, we’d love to hear from you!

Hotel Room Head-shots

While photographing the Withit Women’s Conference at the historic Francis Marion Hotel this week, part of my assignment included creating head-shots for the professional ladies attending the program.

The motivational conference was held in the elegant Gold Ballroom. So as not to distract from the speakers, and to give each lady the time and privacy they deserved for their photo session, I was asked to setup in one of the hotel rooms down the hall. The point of this post is to show that with a little knowledge, a smart selection of compact lighting tools, and some beautiful subjects to work with, professional portraits can be created just about anywhere!!!

My entire portable studio setup included 6 Nikon SB-800 speedlights, 4 Manfrotto light stands, 2 60″ Westcott shoot-through umbrellas, and a white pop-up style background. Utilizing the given space to suite my purpose, I arranged everything around using the white doors as a reflector for extra fill. A couple of the flashes were used as background lights to create the modern high-key look I wanted. A couple flashes were used to evenly disperse light through one umbrella as the main light source. And the last two were used similarly through the other umbrella as a fill light. This entire lighting kit fits into a large Manfrotto tripod bag for compact portability!

All the flashes were triggered through RadioPoppers, using a Nikon SB910 as the Master flash. The images were photographed with a Nikon D4, and a Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VRII, tethered to my laptop. After each client’s portrait session, we reviewed the images together to make sure there was something in there that they LOVED!!!  🙂