This past weekend I travelled down to Ehrhardt, SC to shoot Crystal and Norman's southern style wedding. It was an intimate, sweet wedding featuring their beautiful daughters, who made the cutest bridesmaids ever. I really enjoyed the ceremony, they had the girls join hands with them and take a family vow, which was beautiful and unique. Congratulations and best wishes to your family and life together!

I spent Sunday afternoon shooting these lovely engagement portraits with an awesome couple that I met at my  last wedding and had a blast hanging out with them and capturing some great shots. They got engaged on a hiking trip, so the wooded area for the first location fit perfectly, and their style for the more formal shots really worked well downtown at the library and performing arts center. They'll be getting married in September, and I wish them all the best in their planning!

If you're on an iPad or Iphone, view the complete gallery here http://www.davidchildersphotography.com/ClientGalleries/Griffin-Engagement-Portraits/

Alyssa and Corey have such a cute story of their first date, he asked her out at the coffee shop she was working at and took her to the movies, and just a few years later they are madly in love and getting married. I've known both of them since before they started dating, and seeing two people grow together this way is so beautiful and special. I can't wait to shoot their wedding, I know it's going to be just as amazing as they are.

See more at http://www.davidchildersphotography.com/

A Simple Check List to Jump-Start Your Photography


This is the first tutorial post for my blog. It's a general guide that touches on a lot of important elements that all lead to creating better photographs. If you are interested in knowing more about a particular step or have any questions then feel free to comment and let me know. These posts are here to hopefully help anyone that is interested in photography, so let me know what you want to know more about. 

1 Plan Your Shot
This seems obvious, but it's important to think about what you're photographing before you even pick up the camera. Consider every detail and think about the best way to capture it. If you're shooting a portrait, find an appropriate location and try to make sure the background isn't cluttered or full of distractions. For a landscape, where is the best angle or spot to shoot it from? You may need to be creative, especially when shooting something that everyone takes photos of, like say a monument or landmark. 

2 Think About the Light
Light is everything in photography. Wether digital or film, all you are doing is recording light. That makes it the absolute most crucial aspect of your shot. Consider the time of day and position of the sun, where the lights are indoors if you're shooting at night, etc. If you are more advanced and using a strobe or flash, think about the best way to utilize the ambient light to compliment the flash, or alternatively how to ignore the ambient and create all of the lighting you need. For example, if you were shooting an outdoors portrait on a bright summer day, would you place your model facing directly towards the sun? In most cases you would want to avoid that, unless you want them squinting and blinded by the light. In that situation it would be much better to take them somewhere with shade, so you still have plenty of light without the harshness, which makes it easier to get a great portrait and easier for your camera to handle the contrast in the scene. 

3 Choose the Appropriate Focal Length
Choosing to shoot wide angle, normal, telephoto, or something like fish-eye has more effect on your composition than anything besides your positioning. A close up portrait with a wide angle is going to greatly distort your subject (as seen above), and a telephoto landscape will probably not show enough of what you are trying to capture, so it's important to understand the effects of zooming in or out. Longer lenses also tend to be slower, so in situations with poor lighting you may need to move closer and use a fast prime to be able to photograph what you wanted to in the first place. 


4 Nail the Exposure
The biggest technical challenge of any photograph is the exposure. These numbers might seem like a foreign language to you, but they provide direct control of every aspect of your photo, from the lighting to the depth of field. If you're shooting a large family portrait of 10 people, you probably will have to shoot at a large aperture like f/11 or higher. It's important to know how to compensate with your iso and shutter speed in that situation to keep your photo from being underexposed.  

5 Shoot From Multiple POVs
Just because you planned your shot doesn't mean you can't do something different after you get it. Some of the best shots come from trying something different while shooting. Try crazy angles and compositions, if it doesn't work you have nothing to lose, and if it does you just got another great photo. For example, if you're shooting animals or children don't stand above and shoot down towards them, get down on their level and shoot straight on. It might not be comfortable but it will lead to better photos!

6 Shoot in RAW
If you're not shooting in RAW format already, start right now! RAW files allow you to adjust exposure, white balance, and much more once you import them to your computer. Most camera manufacturers provide their own RAW conversion software, and there are many others that are free or included in popular software. Photoshop, Lightroom, iPhoto, and Aperture are the most popular RAW conversion software. It's important to note that if you've been shooting JPEG your RAW files will look dull and less sharp when you first import them. This is intentional! RAW files are just like film, you have to process them to get them to print quality, and the increased information they provide lets your editing software do a lot more with the photo and create a better finished product. 



7 Get the Color Right (even in B&W)
White balance is such a simple thing that most people get wrong, but luckily it's an easy fix because you're shooting in RAW. The very first slider you will see when you open a raw file is the color temp adjustment, this changes what your camera sees as white (and therefore effects every color in the photograph). This is especially important for getting skin color right (as seen above). Nothing ruins an otherwise great photo than making your subject look too much like a Jersey Shore cast member or a corpse. For black and white photos, you can't just drop the saturation to 0 and mess with the contrast, you need to adjust the color channels to get your skin tones (or clouds, or whatever) right. You'll be amazed at the effect this will have on your B&W photos, and it will make them that much better.


8 Crop
After you have your photo processed consider if you should crop it. Are there any distracting elements in the corners of the frame that you can get rid of? Be careful though, you don't want to cut off parts of your subject with the crop. A good rule of thumb for portraits is to not crop at any joints (elbows, ankles, knees, wrists, etc) because it will look like you cut it off. It's generally ok to crop the top of a subjects head in a close portrait, as long as you leave the hairline clearly visible.




9 Sharpen
The last step in finishing your photo is to sharpen it. As shown above, a good sharpening technique can really make a photo "pop". It's important to learn the differences in sharpening methods for print and web, because a print needs to be sharpened much more to match your computer screen. 

10 Share
So you put all that hard work in and you have a great photo, go share it with the world. The internet has made the world a much smaller place, and services like Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram have made photo sharing an integral part of our daily lives. I share my work across all social media platforms to reach the largest audience possible, but if you just want to share with family and friends something like Flickr is great. You can create galleries (called sets) just like Facebook albums and send them to everyone. You can also share with other Flickr members in groups. There are groups for everything imaginable, from similar subjects like horse photos, locations like the city the photo was taken in, or a million other traits that your photos may have in common with others. 


I hope at least one of those steps give you something to think about and put into practice the next time you shoot. I would love to hear any comments or suggestions for the next tutorial post, especially about particular topics you would like help in. Next week I am planning to have a video sharing my digital workflow for an image from start to finish, so be sure to check back. 

What do you want to be when you grow up?


 In the 2006 indie breakout hit, "Little Miss Sunshine" actor Paul Dano plays an angry young man who seemingly hates the world, but is set on becoming a pilot in the military. Half way through the movie he realizes he is color blind, which automatically disqualifies him from being a pilot. In my favorite line of the film, he responds "If I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and f**k the rest."

 This line blew me away, and has stuck with me ever since. If there is one secret to happiness in life, it's to spend it doing something that makes you happy, something you're passionate about, something you love doing. It's such a simple concept, but one of the first sacrificies we make when faced with growing up and adult life's responsibilities. I think that does nothing but doom you to a life of complacency at best, and utter misery at worst.

 Why do we make this sacrifice, slave away at jobs we don't like, go to school for degrees we have no interest in, or live somewhere that doesn't make us happy? Because we give in to the pressure of the adult world, we lose that sense of childlike wonder and the big dreams we had when we were younger. You were asked it all the time when you were a child, but what do you want to be when you grow up? Now that you are older and know the world better, you're more qualified to answer that daunting question. If you know the answer, the thing you truly want to do more than anything else with your life, then you should spend every day making it a reality. If you don't know, then get out and try new things until you find something you fall in love with, don't use that as an excuse to let yourself be unhappy.



My story

I didn't know until after college that I wanted to spend the rest of my life as a photographer. I started at USC as a music major, then switched to engineering for a summer and journalism for the rest of my time there. After school I worked at a newspaper and ended up being the main photographer and that is when I realized that it was more than just a hobby or something I enjoyed. I knew that this was it, what I wanted more than anything else. So that was it? No, once I knew that's what I wanted I had to work hard at it for a long time before I could be a full time photographer. I never took a photography course in school, so I had to teach myself everything. Working day jobs and shooting portraits of friends in the evenings, waiting tables on the weekends while spending the weeks learning and planning everything I could for my business, it took hard work and sacrifice for years to get to where I wanted to be, and I still have a long ways to go. 

I'm in the process of opening a studio in Florence this summer, and that's just another big step in my journey to make my dream a reality. People often ask me why I would choose to start a business in this economy, and my response is that yes, small businesses often fail, but my chances of succeeding are better this way than trying to find a traditional job that will make me happy, and I would rather bank my success on my own talent and drive than a manager deciding to hire me for a position that I don't truly want. The truth is, there are a million people doing photography as a side job or even for free, but I can't let that discourage me, I will continue to stay my course and I think that as long as I work hard I will succeed in more ways than one. 

I know I'm not the only person in my generation that has realized this, our's is a generation of enterpeneurs and start-ups. Look at the world changing innovations we have already introduced, things like Facebook and Twitter have had enormous impact on the world, and they started from a simple idea from a single person. The most successful and happy people from our era will be the ones that created their own path, made their own job out of what made them happy. My good friend Dylan Sneed is a great artist that has worked hard as an independent musician for years, and some of his latest projects are inspiring others, such as the Artsville house concert series (pictured above) to get involved and do the same. Stacie Fields (pictured above right), a dancer from Hartsville, moved to New York City after school to pursue her dreams, and what could be a more competitive or hard world to throw yourself into. That's what it takes to truly succeed in life; risk, dedication, and drive. It's not about having a bigger home, a brand new car, it's about being happy with your life, every day, not just the weekends.



So where do you start?

You have to realize that chasing your dream and making it a reality is a lot harder than living a typical life, but the reward is more than worth it. You may have to go back to school, work an extra job, spend late nights working on whatever it is that you're pursuing. And it won't happen overnight. It will take years to see minor progress, especially if you're starting from scratch. 

Outliers author Malcolm Gladwell proposed a theory that if you spend 10,000 hours practicing something you can master it and become an expert in the field. Whether you want to be a writer, painter, cyclist, or musician, if you dedicate enough time and effort you will reach a level of success, guaranteed. Olympic atheletes, world-class musicians, and yoga masters all spend countless years on their craft. Now, you don't have to become world reknowned for what you want to do, but if you want to succeed you have to realize that if you don't take constant action then it's not going to happen. Drastic changes in your life require drastic change in your lifestyle. 

But what if you're too young, too old, have a mortgage? Those are all parts of life that you have to deal with regardless, why not be happy with what you're doing in spite of those excuses? Kristen Booth, a great photographer from Southern California, started her business at 18, and now at 21 has achieved success most people never know. Not financially, but in her happiness. She loves what she does and made it her life. Paul Miller, a recent Youtube hit, recorded his first album at 65 after retiring from a day job that had him waking at 5 am for 40 years. He is finally pursuing what he has always wanted to with his music. What is holding you back from doing the same? Nothing. Go back to school, take lessons, stay up late learning everything you can, stay in on the weekends when everyone else is out having a good time, and you can start to pursue your dreams as well. I promise you, it's worth it. 

Check back Friday, I will have a great tutorial post for you lightroom/photoshop users!