Tag: South carolina

Upstate South Carolina Waterfalls

This past weekend, a friend and I took a brief respite from the Charleston humidity and spent a couple days in Tryon, NC. We had mapped out a couple of waterfalls we planned to visit while in the area, both just over the state line in South Carolina. The first one, Wildcat Falls on the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway (SC 11) is very accessible from the roadside and consists of a lower and upper falls. I converted the lower falls photo into black and white IR. The next stop was Twin Falls in Sunset, SC and what a surprise that was! I was astonished to see how much water was cascading over the top. There were more like 4 or 5 falls because of increased volume due I guess to summer storms in the area. Beautiful sight.

Charleston Evening Views

I was looking back through my folders of aerial images the other day, and thinking about how much I have missed not being able to fly over the city and photograph it in all its moods and seasons. Unfortunately, COVID19 led to the demise of my helicopter pilot’s business. I don’t think there are many businesses who cannot say that 2020 was a very challenging year. Exceptions of course would be Zoom, social media, and other high tech companies. Anyway, these images were taken during an evening flight back in November 2017. The air was warm and there was a full moon rising. A little slice of heaven.

Fun New Project

I have just begun a new project for clients who own an historic downtown Charleston home and whose passion it is to create window boxes that represent the four seasons. The idea is to photograph the window boxes for Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, and then to create a finished art collage of one canvas that includes a favorite image from each season. Here are a couple of images from the Spring collection.

Road Trip to SC Peach Country

Spring in the south is a wonderful thing. For refreshing the soul, try driving randomly through the area of Ridge Spring, Johnston, and Monetta in upstate South Carolina while the peach orchards are in full bloom. Every year I am compelled to take that run up Highway 78 from Charleston and every year I am so glad I did.

Pecan grove

New Challenge for a New Year

Every so often I find I need to switch gears and focus on a new thing in order to keep growing and keep learning. I have decided to spend my “growing” energies in the pet portraiture genre. I do love animals, and so I will work on applying my “people portrait” expertise to producing portraits of pets. These are some that I have done in the past, but I also have ideas for different styles; quirkier, different, amusing. Stay tuned.

Gracie & Lacy at the Forte Jazz Lounge

Businesses of all kinds on King Street are struggling to come back. Not only has the COVID19 virus wreaked havoc with their vibrant tourism-driven livelihood, but their troubles were compounded by the riots that took place in downtown Charleston in May. Many enterprises have not survived, as evidenced by all the dark and boarded up storefronts I passed this weekend. One location that is gamely fighting to revitalize is the Forte Jazz Lounge. The owners showcase talented performers and musicians in a relaxed, laid-back (socially distanced) environment. On Saturday night I enjoyed performances by the talented sister duo, Gracie and Lacy, as well as from the legendary low country artist, Ann Caldwell. Get out and support these local artists when you can. You will be glad you did.

The Newly Renovated Cathedral of John the Baptist, Charleston SC

Because of my association with one of the contractors who worked on this amazing project, I was asked to photograph the end result. This has been ongoing for many months and a massive amount of work has been done in many different categories. It is beautifully restored. Congratulations to all who contributed to this very impressive result.