Happy 4th of July! Well as of this posting, it would be Happy 5th of July! ha!  So last night I took our “little tornado” out for the fireworks display at the North Charleston Riverfront Park. They always have a really nice setup out there for everyone to enjoy. Plenty of food and jump castles and slides for all of the kiddies! I even took Austin down one of the slides just because he was still a little smaller compared to all of the other big kids that were running around him. As far as the pictures go, do you know how hard it is trying to get a 2 year old to look at the camera while huge firework explosions are going on behind him?? Uggh! That was tough. I have plenty of shots of the back of his head though! ha ha!

So my video guru of all things video and special effects, Trevor Erickson, created a really cool video logo for my business. What’s a video logo you ask? Well instead of just having a plain text logo appear at the end of my video slideshows, I can now have this super cool one here below! Yes I’m a guy and like these “techie” sort of things! ha ha! I thought I might even try to find some cool, royalty free music to set it to. Not sure about that just yet…..  Do you like / dislike? Let me know in the comments below. If you want something like this for yourself, just contact ol’ Trevor below by rolling your mouse over the “click here” text.

My good friends Trevor Erickson and Nick Smith entered their movie, Cold Soldiers, into the first annual Charleston Film Festival last week and won the”Audience Award” for 2010! Yay! I got to play a part as a get-away / stunt driver in the film which was a lot of fun. I have always enjoyed acting and working on films because there are so many people involved when producing and shooting an movie and it really is a lot of time, energy, and effort involved. I think both the guys worked almost three years trying to get this made with little to no budget. The whole crew had a great time at the Terrace Theater for the opening night premiere. Even though the weather was really nasty, a ton of people showed up which was great! I got to shoot some of the images for the movie poster sometime last year and Trevor put the layout design together which I think turned out  really nice! Trevor also had Force Protection come out to the premiere and bring on of the awesome vehicles to have on display. Force Protection is a local company that builds armored vehicles for all of troops fighting overseas. You probably already saw The Buffalo in the Transformers movie last year and didn’t even know that it was built right here in SC! Also, a big thanks goes out to my friend, Gordon King of ProPac USA, who was nice enough to not only allow us to use is sweet Ford GT40 in the film, but also his BMW. (Gordon was also a credited stunt driver in the film.)

Here’s a link to where all of the images are located: Click Here

Cold Soldiers Movie Poster:

Michael Furlinger of the Terrace Theater introducing some of the movies for the opening night.

Nick and Trevor speaking before the opening of their film.

Sold out showing at the 7:30pm time block.

Two of the actors from the movie who also happen to be photographers here in Charleston, Sasha and Charlie.

My buddies Chris Smith and Charlie Thiel at the premiere.

This is a quick pic of owner Michael Furlinger (in the middle) with Keva and Karen Keys who had the short film, Letters from Home, right before Cold Soldiers opened.

Nick and Trevor beside their movie poster before going into the theater.

My good friend, Gordon King, who was one of the stunt drivers in the film.

Some of the cast of Cold Soldiers: R.W. Smith, Nick Smith, Charlie Thiel, Trevor Erickson, Tom, and Michael Easler.

This was the awesome truck that Force Protection brought out to the premiere. It’s the little baby brother, The Cougar 4×4, to the bigger Buffalo truck that was used in the Transformers movie.

Here’s some of the crew from Force Protection with Nick and Trevor.

The first teaser trailer that was created for the movie: Once I figure out this new blog upgrade to WordPress and how to embed some of the YouTube video trailers, I’ll update this post. Uggh!!!!

Well my “not so little” anymore sister in law Lindsay graduated from Auburn University on Dec. 18th. She was the last girl (out of 3) to finally make it through! I know that my father in-law is much happier now that he doesn’t have to pay anymore tuition payments! ha! I’ve only known her since she was a little iddy bitty thing walking around with the curliest hair that you have ever seen. Oh, and you should hear this girl sing! Amazing voice!

Talk about a big difference in the weather from when my other sis in-law graduated back in August. We went from super hot in the summertime to freezing cold in the winter! Not to mention it was raining and cold. Lindsay was a good sport about it and toughed it out for a few shots on the campus outside. (we were about the only crazy ones out there, umbrella’s and all….)   She didn’t have to many layers under her cap and gown while shooting and I think at one point she started to turn blue! Congratulations Lindsay on this big achievement and we’re all so happy about your new job that you start next week! Yay!!!

Her slideshow is below!

Yep, it’s that time of year again when it takes a little longer to get out of the

bed because you’re a year older than before. So besides having my

beautiful wife and son fix me breakfast this morning and get some gifts, I

got an email from an organization that I am a member of called ISPWP. It’s

the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers. There are

photographers from all over the world who are members with  some

incredible talent to say the least! Each quarter they have a photo

competition between all the members and I thought I would submit a few

that I had. Since this is the first time I have ever entered anything like this, I

wasn’t expecting to much. To my surprise, I found out that I placed in the

Top 20 of my catagory, Venues and Locations. Wow! That’s so cool! I

totally wasn’t expecting that and what a nice birthday surprise to wake up

to!! I submitted a beautiful wedding that I shot at Cypress Gardens last year.

Heather and Matthew were married last November and at Cypress Gardens

they place the bride in a canoe and paddle her through the awesome cypress

trees to get out at a dock near the wedding site. It was such a fun wedding

and we got some great shots! Thanks to all my “Facebook” friends and folks

emailing me B-Day wishes! You guys are great and I love ya’ll! Here’s

another link to the site.

So we had an awesome Halloween party at my sister in-laws house yesterday with all the kiddies! Of course I had to do a couple of quick pics of the kids who were there. Our little man Austin was such a super cute cowboy! I guess you shouldn’t call a cowboy cute, but he sure had a fun time! If you need to find your child’s picture, just email me and I’ll send you the link to all of the images online.

Our family portrait! I just had to put the “mullet” wig on Austin!

All the kiddies who came to the party! What a cute bunch!

Here’s our awesome little cowboy. I’ve been getting this “look” a good bit these days. Almost kinda like “ok dad, hurry up and take the picture…..”

Austin and his cousin Bryson digging through the pumpkin looking for more candy. Just what a 2 year olds need, more sugar to go crazy!

Austin having a grand ol’ time just a swingin’.

Now Leigh’s cousin, John K., is a chef here in town and of course he had to make some cool designs for the kids. Gotta love the watermelon brains and gummy worms. The other one that he made was cut in half and you opened it to scoop out watermelon balls to eat. That’s either really creative, or really disturbing depending on how you look at it…….

Congrats to my friend Eric Bass of the rock band Shinedown! He has been with the group for about two years now and they have some songs on the radio that most of you are familiar with. So I thought I would post some links off of VH1’s website. Eric and I knew each other from high school and he and my wife used to play in the high school band together. This is a long way from marching on a field for a football game! ha! Oh yeah, they will be in Myrtle Beach on Oct. 20th at the House of Blues and I’m planning on going to check them out! WooHoo! If the video is slow to load for you, just click on the Shinedown link above.

28dk6vzqn3

Well since Kayne West had his big upset at the VMA’s last week, this was the latest that he has been up to. This was just too funny not to post up! Thanks for the link, Christie!

Well a few weeks ago we were at my wife’s most favorite place in the whole world to visit, Auburn University! ha! I know that if we didn’t live and have family in Charleston, she would so want to move to Auburn, Al in a second! So we went to my sister in-law Christie’s graduation ceremony on Aug. 10th. Now this girl has worked long and hard for this degree. After working in NY for Ralph Lauren designing children’s clothes and then getting married and having two children, this was a major accomplishment! I am so proud of her! Yay Christie!

Her cute little family! It was only like 95 degrees or something when this shot was taken! 

Now this was too funny not to post up. I didn’t even notice the girl standing behind Christie until I was processing all the images. There were probably a lot of college grads who will be looking for work like this girl.

I wanted to include a shot of the nose bleed seats that we had during the ceremony. As you can tell, I had to “reach” out a long ways with my lens to grab some shots!

Ok, so I have to do a little setup for you on this shot. Now this is the AU sign right in front of Samford Hall that is on campus. It’s probably the most photographed spot in all of Auburn. So there was a line of graduates all the way down the street waiting to have their shot with the sign and Samford Hall behind them.( About a full hours wait time.) Seeing how we only had a few minutes before Christie had to be seated inside, I thought I would make my own shot. So I’m standing in the median of the street with cars whizzing by me and people all over the place getting in my shot. I had my brother in law stand just a few feet down from her with my off camera flash to help throw some extra light. People who had been standing in line were giving us these weird looks as to what we were trying to do. What would have taken them (people standing in line) an hour to do, I grabbed in about 5 minutes! Oh yeah!

Here’s a quick little slideshow of some other pics. If you want to see all the images that are online, just click here.