Keith Lewis Photography

Monday, May 20, 2013

My Home Town

I am from Charlotte, NC and compared to a lot of my friends, I am an anomaly. I am a native Charlottean. While not all that uncommon for a person to still live in the city in which they were born, Charlotte seems to have more than its share of imports, and often when I tell someone that I was born here, I get a response like "wow, you're the first native I have met" Often this makes me feel like a fossil or at least a subject of some rare curiosity like Piltdown man or Bigfoot. Then when I tell them the next line, they assume I have lived in a cave for 50 years. You see, I have never lived or worked anywhere more than 3 miles from where I live right now. I am a throwback to the days when people were born, lived, worked and died all within a few miles radius. But before we start making funeral arrangements (Forest Lawn Cemetery is literally 3 miles from my house) take a look at a few pictures of my hometown, Charlotte, NC.

If you are from Charlotte you may recognize some of the places. Some are shots of places that were established long before I was born. If you have moved away, some of the pictures may be unfamiliar to you as things have changed quite a bit over the years.

Click on any picture for a larger image

Above and below are some of the art pieces at "the square" the corner of Trade and Tryon.

Above is the old Coca-Cola Bottling Co. on Morehead St. all decked out for Memorial Day.

Below is the entrance of the old Wachovia Building. This was quite an impressive building back when it was built. It was a landmark of the night skyline for years, bathed in bright white light on all four sides. Wachovia was recently acquired by Wells Fargo.

Above is the sign from Ratcliffe's Flowers, a now closed uptown Charlotte institution.

The sign now hangs outside of a restaurant.

Below is Fuel Pizza. It resides in an old Pure Oil service station on Central Ave.

Above is Herrin Brothers Coal and Ice Co. on 36th Street

Below is the statue of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg that greets all travelers at the Charlotte airport

Above is a shot of the outside of the NASCAR Hall of fame

Below is a shot from inside the Hall of Fame

I am working on a calendar of iconic places in Charlotte.
Maybe one or two of these pictures will make the cut.

E-mail me if you have a suggestion for a must-have shot for the Calendar

keith@keithlewisphoto.com

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Friday, May 17, 2013

...And the band played on.

Today I happened upon a concert. Actually I heard the music and walked over to the nursing home next door. The facility was celebrating National Nursing Home Week with a big cookout and a concert by the band and orchestra from West Mecklenburg High School here in Charlotte. I did what any practitioner of the photographic arts would have done in a similar situation, I took my camera and snapped a few pictures.

I love taking nature and animal photos and I really like product shots, but for sheer human interest you can't beat people. In a crowd of people, there are always plenty of great subjects at any given time. The key of course is to be in position to get the shot at just the right time.

These kids were great and what a joy for music and dance they brought.

Here are some of my favorites:

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This is orchestra director Johnathon Sullivan conducting. I love that his hands are blurry showing motion. This is accomplished by using manual settings and a lower shutter speed, in this case, I believe it was 1/40 second.

Band members waiting their turn to perform. The orchestra went first so the band had some time to kill and I liked the visual of these guys just sitting with their instruments, obviously enjoying each other's company. This is much better as a candid than if I had posed them.

This young lady, a ninth grader, performed a beautiful violin solo.

I'm not sure why I like this one but something about the sousaphone and drums on the ground and the band members chilling out while the orchestra plays.

I really liked this shot of these girls getting ready to play. A tight shot like this is often more interesting than a wider shot. Look for opportunities to get close when you are shooting in a crowd. Be sure to get some wide shots but always look for an interesting close-up. For me the fingernail polish makes this one.

I liked it so much, I cropped it and desaturated everything but the polish.

A nice close-up of the drum line. A slower shutter speed blurred the drumsticks.

The bright sun glinting off the brass makes a nice shot.

This talented young lady was one of the dancers.

The concert is over and the only thing left to do is load up and head back to school. I liked the way these music stands seemed to sprout out of the grass.

The next time you are out riding around, keep your camera with you and your ears open, you never know what you might encounter.

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Thursday, May 16, 2013

It's really Spring this time

The last time I posted, way back in March, it wasn't even officially Spring yet, though it seemed like it because the weather was so warm. As my Father used to say "if you don't like the weather in NC, just wait a day" Spring has officially sprung now but the weather thinks it's Summer.

I took a walk in my back yard today. If you read my blog much, you know that my yard is my favorite place to take nature shots. So today I grabbed my D7000 and a 100mm Macro lens and went for a few flower close-ups.

A few tips for flower close-ups:

Get close, then get closer. A good close up is not "half-way"

Depth of field is your friend. If your camera allows you to set the f stop      manually then use a bigger opening to blur the background.

Keep steady. if the wind is blowing or you are shaking then your flower could be blurry, use your body or a piece of cardboard to block the wind from shaking the flower.

Look for good color contrasts. See beyond the subject to the background and take it into account, even if the background will be blurred, you will still see the color contrasts.

Think about using a fill-in flash to lighten shadows and make the foreground pop.

Without any further ado, here they are...click on any picture for a larger image.

A couple of red roses (Mr. Lincoln)
On the lower one, I desaturated the green from the background to make the red roses stand out.

Above: Clematis, Below: Banana Shrub

Above: Kale, Below: White Ladybanks Rose

Above: Trumpet Vine, Below: Fringe Flower

Above: Honeysuckle, Below: Wild Blackberry

Above: Immature Blueberries, Below: Rose (Dr. Van Fleet)

Spring is a great time for photography, so grab your camera and get out of the house.

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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Staying home

If you have read many of these posts, then you know I like to stay home and take pictures in my own yard. I never seem to run short of subject matter. Today is one of those days that makes you glad you live in the South. Not even St. Patrick's day yet and the temperature is almost 80. Instead of piling in the car and joining the crowd, I decided to stay home and shoot pictures in my back yard. Here is what I saw.

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Yellow Pansies:

Dill starting to emerge:

Heirloom lettuce growing in plastic containers:

Peach trees in full bloom:

Radishes ready to pick soon:

The bird already left this nest:

Saturday, March 9, 2013

"Spring is busting out all over"

Seems odd since my last blog post was about an unexpected winter storm that dumped six inches of snow on us. Well welcome to the South. Like my Daddy always said, if you don't like the weather here (the Piedmont of NC) then wait a day or two. Actually the snow was gone in a day and a week later it was in the sixties. Today was one of those great days in early March that makes you want to plant something. Bright sun, no wind, temperature in the mid sixties and so many people out walking or jogging that it is hard to drive a car through a neighborhood.

I took advantage of the day to take a few pictures in my back yard. It started because the pussy willows are bursting their buds with that familiar tuft of softness and I wanted a good close-up of them. I grabbed my camera and a 100 mm macro lens and proceeded to take lots of pictures. Then I turned my macro lens on my garden. I ended up with a handful of decent shots that I thought I would share.

click on any picture for a larger image:

I will start off with the reason I went outside with my camera in the first place - pussy willow (salix discolor)

These are some mixed salad greens:

Radishes are starting to sprout...won't be long now:

This is baby kale, great in soups or salads:

More mature kale is good in soups, sauteed or even made into chips in the oven:

Peas emerging from the soil thanks to warm weather:

Even the Bonsai tree is putting out new shoots for Spring:

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Snow Day

I live in the Southern United States - North Carolina to be exact and we rarely get snow where I live. When we do get a blanket of the white stuff, no matter how small of a dusting, it is a pretty big deal. My relatives in Florida understand, my friends in Chicago, not so much.

We got a somewhat unexpected blizzard this past Sunday that left a few inches of snow covering everything. With this being such a rare event around here, I, like millions of other southerners grabbed my camera and headed outside. I had a few hours because it started melting as soon as the sun came up and by 5:00 PM it was almost all gone.

Taking pictures in the snow is not easy. I had some successes and some abysmal failures, but all photographers know that nobody else ever sees your failures.

Here are a few that came out pretty good. I'll share a few tips that may or may not help next time you decide to take a "snow day"

Click on any picture for a larger image:

I took the above shot with a wide angle lens, I did a few things that helped it turn out pretty good. I like the bush in the foreground as scale reinforcement, sometimes in a wide angle shot everything gets "lost" in all the space, so if you can include a foreground object it can help. Also the sun through the branches was nice. The dog also adds scale.

Get close to your subject. Snow and ice can be very interesting close-up subjects. These were taken with a 100mm macro lens.

Pay attention to white balance. If your camera has automatic white balance, sometimes, snow, or white sand can mess with its mind and give you some weird results. I played with some different settings and found direct sun to be the best setting. Several of these were shot on different settings and are a little too blue. This could easily be fixed in Photoshop, but why not save yourself the trouble and get it perfect in camera?

Don't always trust your camera's auto setting. Consider going manual and expose for the subject that you really want to see. I loved the way this tree was lit by the sun, but it didn't stand out enough with auto. I exposed for the tree manually and the rest fell into place.

Keep an eye out for interesting shapes made more interesting by the snow. This is a piece of lattice on my deck that reminded me of a honeycomb.

Or the juxtaposition of this Japanese lantern, lit by the rising sun, hanging from my deck, in front of the winter wonderland created by the snowy trees in the background.

No matter what the weather conditions are where you live, I'll bet there are plenty of opportunities for some great picture taking.

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