Yes, it has been a few days, but Day Three was quite full. We left our hotel early to visit some wonderful, moody, old ruins up over the border in South Carolina. This location is marvelous in inclement weather, as it creates mood and mystery, so Arnie and I wished for rain … but perhaps not quite as much as we got. Extremely severe thunderstorms made it prudent to stay and enjoy our coffee and tea at the hotel longer than we had planned. Prolonged zaps of lightening overhead followed by shattering claps of thunder made going outside less than appealing.
As we finally felt safe enough to leave, we heard tales of hotel staff having normally-twenty-minute drives take an hour and a half, so we kept our fingers crossed. We had seen no warnings along the route we were taking.
Although it was still raining hard, it had abated quite a bit. The long, horizontal streaks of lightning were no longer followed by thunder. The storm was passing, but we still took our time.
When we arrived, our participants were amazed. Tall columns reached up to nowhere. While crumbling, walls were basically intact, there was no roof overhead. Gravestones were here and there around the ruins, rather than in tidy rows. There was just the mystery that Arnie and I had described to our group.
Contrasting with all this was a magnificent Dogwood. You may have seen a blossom on it that I posted while we were doing our final scouting. It was still lovely, and the white against the old brick was a photographer’s delight. Many of our group incorporated it into at least one of their photographs in one form or another.
While it rained during our time there, albeit mostly not heavily, that did not stop people from making some great images. We pushed them and prodded them and pointed out possibilities to those who were having a temporary block.
It was time to move on and have some lunch. We headed to Beaufort (BYOO-ford). It is a charming, seaside town with lots of stately, 19th-century houses, white picket fences, lovely gardens, and porches and verandas galore. Being mid-day, it wasn’t a great time to photograph, but quite a few of our participants found a way around the challenges.
Shrimping is big along this part of the east coast, at least it was before the fishing industry tanked and made it near impossible for fisherman to make a living. They do it out of love.
The season was over, so the boats were tied up to piers and getting a thorough going-over in preparation for the next season. Engines were being broken down and rebuilt, seines mended, lines checked to make sure they were still strong, pilot houses given a thorough cleaning, in short all the things necessary when owning a boat.
It is really difficult to find a fishing village where the boats are not tied two and three across. There is no way to isolate the features of these wonderful old boats, so Arnie and I were pleased several years ago when we found this particular village.
I think I mentioned in the scouting part of this series that Mark has given us permission to go out on his pier. It’s an old pier, but the boats are lined up one behind the other. We gave several assignments for this location. One was to shoot into the light. Generally with these exercises, Arnie and I do one to show people what we mean. This was mine.
People had fun and found all sorts of images. I can’t wait to get them all and put some of them up in a student gallery.
As with our workshop days, there are a lot of lessons, and it was no different this day. It’s OK, and often desirable, to shoot in the rain, as long as you protect your camera. Shooting into the light can really produce some very interesting images. When shooting around boats, one has to be careful of shore lines beyond that can be very distracting. The light only gets better after sunset. Light often comes from unexpected sources. There were others, of course, but it all made for a full and successful day.
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