Photography storyboards by Ryan Smith

Engagement pictures for a couple and their dog on a cloudy day at the Myrtle Beach State Park

Ryan Smith — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:43:42 +0000

I had another really nice couple for engagement portraits at the Myrtle Beach State Park this past week. I’ve got their wedding coming up later this year. This couple brought along their baby for the moment, their little dog. I can’t remember what it was exactly, I know it was a poodle mix of some kind. I have two poodles myself, they are very sweet dogs as long as they are used to being around people. My dogs both love when clients are coming by to discuss a wedding, I tell them people are coming and they will wait by the window.

You have to be a little careful when a couple is mixed race like this one and have extremely different skin tones. His skin was very dark, and she was completely the opposite with very fair light skin. If you were to have a camera on spot metering and only metered for his face, hers would be overexposed. Or the opposite if you metered the camera on her face. Of course this isn’t really much of an issue anymore, modern cameras have so much dynamic range you really can’t mess up. A little shadows or highlights slider adjustments in Lightroom will balance out the dark and light skin a bit. Really a camera like the D800 is pretty much idiot proof even on full auto. The camera amazes me with it’s auto exposure and flash TTL.

Even as good as modern cameras are, I usually shoot on manual and just check every few shots on the screen, you really can’t go wrong doing it this way. Especially bright backlit sunlight is always going to trick up a camera on auto exposure, and you get a lot more consistency on manual which helps for a quicker workflow later when doing adjustments. This was a very cloudy overcast day which made things easier. There is no harsh sunlight or shadows to deal with, of course you also don’t get the nice look of the sunset, but it can be good in it’s own way. I hope you enjoy the pictures below, please comment if you do.

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First ever wedding on the Barefoot Resort Love Course with a bit of Dr. Who

Ryan Smith — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:35:54 +0000

This was the first ever wedding held at this spot on the Barefoot Resort and Golf Love Course. It was held at a really nice spot where they have the recreated ruins of an old plantation home along holes 3-7. The mother and father of the groom were long time members of Barefoot resort, so they were given the special opportunity to do a wedding at this spot. I’ve done lots of weddings backing up to golf courses, but never one where there were no golfers to watch out for. This was special because the entire course was closed down for us, we had the location to ourselves with no one else around.

As you can see below, the couple decided to do a first look to get some of the pictures done before the ceremony. I really like the storyboard format of my blog now, it’s easier to show something like a first look that can be hard to express in a single picture. Thanks to it being cloudy, even though it was earlier in the day we didn’t have a problem with the harsh sunlight. The couple are big fans of the Dr. Who series, so we incorporated that in some of the pictures. The wedding planner Elizabeth Hodges, that I’ve worked with a lot, her son came dressed at The Dr. He looked like he could fit right into that series, he really made a convincing look-alike. I really loved the look of the Tuxedos worn by the groomsmen, and the groom’s top hat. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below, please comment if you do.

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Wedding of mother with four fun kids at the Marina Inn with reception at Joe’s Crab Shack

Ryan Smith — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 03:41:57 +0000

This was a really fun recent wedding at the Grande Dunes Marina Inn with a reception after at the Joe’s Crab Shack at Broadway at the Beach. I didn’t really ask, but I would imagine this was a second wedding for both the bride and groom. Those are always fun, because when it’s the second time it’s usually more about just having fun with the family. Especially when they have great kids with good personalities. Instead of my most important pictures being about the couple, it’s usually more about the family and having fun with the kids.

I’ve actually never been to Joe’s Crab Shack before, the couple said they just loved the food there and that is why they picked it for the reception. When they brought out the appetizers I actually thought it was the full meal. You know the food must be good when everyone has to wear a bib. It seemed like everyone was having a great time.

There is a shot below with the couple kissing with the kids being silly in the background, it’s probably one of my most popular pictures I’ve put on Facebook. There was some really strong overhead sun during the ceremony, I’ve gotten pretty good now about dealing with that, but it’s never ideal. I took the couple out around sunset time at Broadway to do a few more pictures which turned out nice. I hope you enjoy these below, please comment if you do!

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Fun large family with colorful outfits doing portraits at the Myrtle Beach State Park

Ryan Smith — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 02:19:06 +0000

I keep having some really great families for pictures recently. It’s so nice when everyone in the family is in a really good mood and ready to have fun with the pictures. The family I’m highlighting here was a larger size group I took to the Myrtle Beach State Park. When I’m photographing a large group I usually don’t go to the oak trees, but just take them down to a more secluded area of the park on the far side of the pier.

This was a really cloudy, not very nice looking evening. When the sky is overcast like this you do get a really clean, less harsh lighting on the pictures. You will notice there are no harsh shadows and issues you might get with a clear sky. Of course, that is why I like to go near sunset, so I can get better control over the shadows when the sky is clear. Sometimes I have clients worry their pictures aren’t going to look good if the sky is overcast. But that isn’t true at all, you just get a different look. I would say it’s more like what you get in a studio with softboxes and more controlled lighting. I hope you enjoy the pictures, please comment below if you do!

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Another fun couple doing engagement pictures at the Myrtle Beach State Park

Ryan Smith — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:24:53 +0000

I met this couple for the first time on Friday to discuss photographing their upcoming wedding. While they were in the area we decided to do some last minute engagement pictures on Monday at the state park in Myrtle Beach. I’ve said it a lot of times before, but doing engagement pictures is really the best way to get to know a couple, and for them to get to know you as the photographer. If they like what you do during the engagement portraits, they are going to like you at the wedding as well. Pictures of the couple after the wedding is pretty much the same thing, just a little more rushed and with a little more stress.

We are finally getting some good weather, it was a beautiful evening with a great sunset. I notice it seems to be a really popular thing to get some flare from the setting sun in the lens. You certainly wouldn’t want it in every picture because it washes it out, but it can be a cool look. The really expensive Nikon lenses have a special Nano Crystal coating on them to reduce flare because it’s not normally something you would want. If you get the sun over to the side but in the frame enough where it’s hitting the lens you will definitely still get it.

One other thing I thought of. Because of constantly looking into the sun I know I need to always wear sunglasses. However my current ones completely make the screen on the back of my camera not visible. I realized you have to get sunglasses that are not polarized. I ordered some nice Ray-Bans that should be really good without being polarized. I’m hoping that will make it so I don’t have to keep taking them off to see my screen. I hope you enjoy the pictures below, please comment if you do.

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Family portraits – three boys and a little sister at the Myrtle Beach State Park

Ryan Smith — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:29:32 +0000

I realized I needed to blog about some family pictures, I really don’t do it often enough. I’ve had a number of really cute families recently, and before things start getting really busy I wanted to highlight a recent one. This was a family with three sons and a little girl that I took pictures of on a cold afternoon at the Myrtle Beach State Park. Whenever I hear it’s going to be a bunch of boys I worry a bit, sometimes guys can be hard to work with. But if everyone stays in a good mood, and tries to have fun and make the best of it, the pictures always turn out nice. I thought this was a really cute and happy family, I hope you enjoy the pictures below.

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Beautiful evening for bridal portraits at Atalaya Castle in Murrells Inlet, SC

Ryan Smith — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:50:28 +0000

I was able to work with a really pretty bride the other evening doing bridal portraits at Atalaya Castle in the Huntington State Park. The evening was great except for being a bit cold. Because of the 5:00pm closing time of the Atalaya Castle, we had to stay outside the castle to be able to catch the sunset. The poor bride almost froze to death by the end of the session, but I think it will be worth it to her when she sees the pictures. She did a pretty good job of not looking cold, at least as long as you don’t zoom in on the 36mp Nikon D800 images and see all the goose bumps.

I’ve been trying to get better at posing hands, with bridal portraits you have a lot more time than at the wedding for trying different hand positions. You will notice below I have the bride doing a lot of different things with her hands, not everything worked that we tried, but that is how you get better at it. Another thing I’m working more with is off camera speedlights. I put a Gary Fong Power Snoot on my second flash behind and to the left of the bride on a lightstand. The power snoot creates a more concentrated light that pretty much just hits where you aim it. You will notice it in a number of shots where you see a separation light on the brides hair and her side a bit. It just gives the pictures an extra pop when you can do that. Something a lot of beginning photographers don’t realize, taking a picture isn’t just having a good eye and being able to aim a camera and push a button. You have to get more technical and pull out some real equipment if you want to take something that really stands out. I hope you enjoy some of the pictures below, please like and comment on the post if you do!

Quick edit – I was playing around with some new Nik Software plugins. Google is now giving the complete collection free to anyone that purchased individual plugins before! I’ve never used some of the plugins like HDR Efex. I usually stay away from any strong effects, but after playing around I thought the first image below looked cool! So I added it here. I’m still mostly keeping away from strong effects though, they tend to look dated quickly.

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Cute couple with big smiles doing engagement pictures at the State Park in Myrtle Beach

Ryan Smith — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 02:19:13 +0000

I really made a big storyboard for this couple’s recent engagement pictures at the Myrtle Beach State Park. They looked great in so many pictures I just kept making selections. The way I do a blog post, when I’m going through the pictures in Lightroom, I put a flag on every picture that I think might be good for my blog. The nice thing about Lightroom, there are star ratings, color ratings, and flags. So you can have multiple different ways of marking images for different uses. I use star ratings (use keyboard keys 1-5) to pick the actual pictures that will be delivered to a client, which is usually well more than half of what I took. I use color ratings (keyboard keys 6-0) for things like separating a wedding ceremony from a reception, usually for marking large groups of pictures. Then I use the picks flag (push the p key for pick, u for un-pick) for my favorites that I might use in a blog post.

I always seem to find something to talk about in my posts, I hope some of the things are helpful. Back to this couple, I saw the light was perfect in one of my favorite spots around the oak trees. I really love when you can get a real power from the sunlight coming through the trees. I hope the engaged guys appreciate that they have a girl that will smiling at them like you see in every picture here. I hope you enjoy the pictures below, please like and comment if you do! As with all my recent posts, these are fully retina display ready, so to fully view these you need a new iPad or other high dpi device.

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Calculating credit card processing fees with Javascript when charging fees back to a client through a form

Ryan Smith — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:47:42 +0000

Once in a while I like to write a geeky post with something new that I’ve learned. I’ve always charged my credit card processing fees to the client if they choose to use a credit card. For Google Checkout, and other processors like stripe.com that actually helped me out with this, they charge a flat 2.9% plus $.30 per transaction in fees. This might seem like a simple calculation, but to charge this to a client it gets more complicated. You could just multiply the amount by .029 and add $.30 to find the fees which would be easy. But then you have to add that fee back into the amount, then when you process the transaction the original amount plus the fee have to go through the payment processor, so there is a fee on the fee. While this extra is minimal, it causes a problem with Quickbooks because it’s nice to take in the exact amount of the invoice. I knew there had to be a way to calculate this exactly, even though I was always good at math I’ve forgotten everything I learned in school. The support at Stripe.com gave me a formula that will take into account the small extra fee added when charging the fee back to the client. So here is the Javascript that can be added to a html form to calculate this.

The first part would go in your form where the user inputs the amount, or however you want to do this. I just let the client enter in the amount on their invoice I give them separately. You can see this complete form on the ‘all’ menu of my website if you want to view the full source.

This is the formula to calculate the amount to charge the client for the fees and the fee on the fees. I hope this make sense.

function Calculate()
{
var price = document.form.amount.value;
price = price * 100
var fee = Math.round(((price + 30) / .971)) - price;
price = price + fee;
var total = price / 100;
document.form.amount.value=total;
}

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Engagement pictures at the Georgetown Harbor Walk and new Retina display support for pictures

Ryan Smith — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 03:30:59 +0000

This is my second blog post to fully support the iPad with Retina display. Sadly, the images for all my older posts are not high enough resolution to support a high dpi display like the Retina iPad without having to upload everything again. Most people that use the 3rd or 4th generation iPad probably don’t understand how it supports image viewing on the web, they just know that sometimes pictures look really fantastic on it. In fact very few websites actually fully support it. Basically what happens now on my blog, if it detects a retina display, it will serve up a double resolution image. For example, on a normal display you will see a 1250px wide image, on an iPad Retina you will get a 2500px wide image, however the image will still fit the same space on the screen, it will be the same relative size as on any other display. The pixels are just more densely packed together so the image will look extra sharp and clear. I actually haven’t seen any other wedding photographers online that support the retina displays on their websites. If you have good eyesight and you look closely, you will notice how much clearer the images in this post look compared to most websites.

Anyway, enough about that. This was a great session I had with this couple at the Georgetown Harbor Walk. They saw pictures of the last couple I photographed at this spot and they wanted to do something similar. The sun had changed position a bit so I had to change some angles from what I did last time. I think everything turned out really nice, let me know in the comments below if you enjoy the pictures!

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