From the Shoebox – Hickory Nut Falls

Back in June of 2001, I took a day trip with some friends over to Chimney Rock Park to see something I had wanted to from the first time I saw the 1992 film, The Last of the Mohicans… the cliff trail at Chimney Rock Park. It’s where the climax of the film takes place, and it’s just a beautiful spot. I took my Minolta Maxxum and captured these shots.

I recently took my family there. The cliff trail is no longer open. Once the state purchased the park some time around 2006, the passage was too difficult to make accessible to the general public, or so I’m told. Public parks have a higher standard for such things. Having gone down it back in 2001 when it was privately owned, that makes sense. there were some tight squeezes there that seemed like a liability. It’s unfortunate, because it’s easily the coolest part of the park.

Our trip motivated me to go dig up these photos. I didn’t have prints of them all, but I did have the negatives. As I’ve stated before, I prefer to get negatives scanned and converted in high quality at my local camera specialist (shoutout to Biggs Camera in Charlotte, they’re awesome!) as opposed to putting prints from 2001 on my scanner to post here. It usually leads to much higher results. These images are much better than the prints. But you still get that intangible film feel from them.

 

This shot is pretty close to the establishing shot of the falls location in the film ‘The Last of the Mohicans’. I believe this part of the cliff trail is called Inspiration Point.

 

This is looking back toward inspiration point. Pretty close to another shot in the movie, just with a chain link fence.

This is moving in the opposite direction, but this is the section leading up to inspiration point, back toward opera box and the Sky lounge visitor’s center.

The view to the promontory across the gorge. The town of Chimney Rock is in the valley below.

The town of Chimney Rock and Lake Lure.

Has it really been 4 years?

I was surprised I hadn’t posted in so long… but I also wasn’t. I’ve just been busy and photography has taken a bit of a back seat to the grind. My iPhone has replaced my DSLR more than I care to admit as well. At any rate, I recently poured through a ton of old photos in connection with my next post. I’m going to try to get more of those old film negatives scanned and uploaded with some stories of them. So look for the From The Shoebox features to continue as I protect my old negatives It’ll be fun. It’s expensive, so it’ll be a slow rollout. Maybe I can find some more fun stuff to post from more recent adventures. If you’re following my page, thanks and stay tuned.

For my iPhone photography, follow me on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/robblittle/

Halloween

A day late, but this seemed appropriate!

Hope everyone had fun.. we sure did.

 

From the Shoebox – Color Slides

Back in 2001, I took a series of photography classes through Queen’s University. Kristen St. Martin was our teacher and she was great to work with. She covered everything, from the technical side to the aesthetic. Anything I may do good with a camera, I have to give a nod to her. One task was to take some pictures on slides. I recently dug all this out and have started to get them scanned. I was pretty happy with the aesthetic of quite a few of these.

I think some color saturation is lost in the scanning process here. That might just be the nature of the developing process with slides, or perhaps they’ve deteriorated some with age.. I’m not sure. In some scans, there are some noticeable artifacts as well. No doubt that came from displaying these for class, the only other time these were out of their sleeves. Another thing you’ll notice is a strong grainy quality in all of these. I’m certain I used a higher ISO film than I should have, but I think it gives some of these a little different aesthetic that’s interesting, even if it makes the quality look a little lower than I’d like on some. I suppose that’s how the digital age has changed our perceptions about how pictures should be captured. Photoshop has given us extraordinary capability to alter images to look like they were captured differently. It’s turned photography from a medium of captured art to one of process. That’s not a bad thing but it’s created a new set of expectations by the viewer, in my opinion. I still find a lot of things I love about looking at unaltered images, and it’s what I like about photography, real images that aren’t altered.. at least not beyond what could be accomplished with film.

All are from September 2001.

 

Charlotte Center City

Downtown Charlotte has a lot of great architecture, so it’s fun to shoot. Compositionally, I was trying to capture ‘vignettes’ as opposed to whole buildings. I can’t recall if that was something that came out of the class instruction, or just something I set for myself personally. Either way, I’m probably most pleased with composition on most of these.

The dark spaces in this photo could really benefit from capturing digitally. The dark areas are a little too dark. Either way I think it’s a neat composition.

As mentioned in a previous post. , depth of field really makes this work for me.

This photo makes it look like this could be a large waterfall or a small fountain. It’s the latter, just a nice close up of a small portion of it.

 

Miscellaneous Landscapes

What I loved about this was the color differences. The red dirt, the green trees and the blue sky. I’d love to recapture this with more color vibrancy. Mooresville, NC

 

Compositionally, this was difficult to capture, and I don’t think I really captured what I wanted. The top of this tree had broken and fell to one side. In the winter with no leaves, you could see it. But in the summer, it looked a little surreal as if branches were sticking out the side. I’d love to have this one back to redo.

Again, I love differing depths of field in an image. This was taken from in front of my apartment in 2001.

 

Lake James, NC

I used to travel to this area for work, and it’s a very scenic and lovely area, so shooting there just makes sense.

 

 

 

Night Photography & Effects

This is a quick and short one, but thought this had some fun ones to share.

 

This shot is up there as one of the coolest photos I’ve ever taken. As with most night photography, this was taken on the Bulb shutter setting.  I held it open for about ten seconds at 70mm, zoomed out slowly and then held for another 10 seconds at 300mm. So you essentially get two shots superimposed, with the streaks between the two. I absolutely love the way this turned out.

 

Icehouse is a local restaurant in Southend (the Southend area had become a recurring shooting location for me.. it was close to my house) and I really like how this turned out. Bulb setting, held on the close up, then zoomed out before releasing the shutter.

 

The surrounding street had a lot of different light sources on it, so the streaking cars effect is a little washed out with all the diffused sources. I needed more traffic to make the car streaks standout more, but the overall aesthetic works ok.

 

The clouds were moving rapidly over the moon, so the blurred clouds in this photo were actually much better defined to the naked eye, but are streaked in this photo, which makes for a nice moody picture.

 

From the Shoebox – Random Shots on Film

I recently went looking for some older family pictures, so I pulled out all my old negatives and prints and found some shots I thought worthy of posting, so I scanned these in to share. Not sure where the artifacts are from. My scanner seems pretty clean (and new for that matter!), and I don’t recall seeing much on the prints, but maybe the scanner is picking up some dust on these? Who knows.

But there is a noticeable character that film adds to photos that you don’t get from digital. I think all of these have that intangible quality that only comes from the chemical process of film. Makes me want to go back and do more with it!

 

From Charlotte –  A friend used to own an events company, so I went and shot this rooftop plaza and street level entrance for his promotional materials back in 2001 or so. Tony’s Oyster Bar is no longer there.

 

 

From Wilmington, NC – Loved the light in these. This is taken from Downtown Wilmington’s Riverfront. The battleship is the decommissioned USS North Carolina. This is is from sometime in 1999.

 

 

From Los Angeles – Summer of 2003

Nighttime from the hills overlooking the city. Might have been the famous Mulholland Drive, not sure.

 

These were taken on Hollywood Blvd. The building had a TV company’s logo on it that was familiar, but now I can’t remember. Anyway, this is just fun with reflections. The differences between the two photos are a rotation of the polarizer filter I had between shots, and I also zoomed in slightly on the second to crop out the edge of the floodlights on the bottom left of one of the tree’s reflections, and the slight encroachment in the upper right corner of one of the actual palm fronds of one of the trees. Kind of a neat contrast, and it’d be better if the pictures were the same, structurally speaking… but really cool to see the difference in optics.

Who doesn’t love palm trees? The Roosevelt is a famous hotel in Hollywood, and chances are you’ve seen it in a movie or show. My wife and I had not met when this was taken, but we stayed there a few years later on vacation. Beautiful old hotel.

 

 

City shots

A winter’s day a few years ago. I remember it being cold, but not too windy.

 

      

                  

Fall leaves 2011

i’m starting by cleaning up my drafts box. Today, Just a quick homage to the soon to arrive autumn leaf season. One of my favorite times of year.. if only winter weren’t right around the corner!

Blog Update

If you’re one that was hoping to follow and/or see more out of this blog, I’m sorry for the lack of posts. Life gets in the way of our hobbies sometimes, and I really just haven’t had the time to update, or to take pictures like I used to. That’s not to say I’ve stopped taking pictures, but it has slowed down a bit.  Most have centered around our son, and my wife and I have decided not to post pictures of him for public consumption. I’d certainly love to share them… he’s such a great subject for obvious and biased reasons, but it’s just a personal choice. But in the process there are often incidental shots that I try to take that can be shared, so perhaps I’ll pull from some of those and post them here.  Lately I’ve been busy perusing my hard drive, and there’s plenty to post.. so maybe I’ll find some time to drop some into a post or two.

Couple of past post related topics… I’m sad to report the old Queen Park Cinema was torn down to make way for the future of the property it sat on. I’m glad I got to photograph it when I did, and its demolition certainly brought some traffic to the blog last June.

On a happier note, for those who saw the previous post of Jim Avett’s show at the Evening Muse, there’s something of a follow-up. Some colleagues and I were happy to spend some time with Jim Avett on his farm in conjunction with some volunteer work we do. Jim was a gracious host and has so much to offer in the way of life experience and his anecdotal stories are just so wonderful. He played a bit for us too, and that was pretty special, and so here’s a public thank you to Jim, and a photo of us all on the day we visited. I may post our follow up to that when I get it done.

 

Once again, feel free to drop a comment into a post.. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks!

Robb

Jim Avett & Friends (& Family), CD Release show for ‘Second Chance’, February 3, 2011 at the Evening Muse

I contacted Jim Avett to ask if I could photograph this show, and he was happy to say yes. I’m not sure permission is needed for a show at the Muse, but I always like to ask. I much prefer shooting artists I’m interested in, and certainly Jim is in in that category.

I was a little late to The Avett Brothers party. I’ve lived in Charlotte for close to 15 years, and didn’t know about them until about 3 years ago and they are one of my favorites now. I soon discovered that their Dad was making music as well, and when I got his CD’s it instantly took me back to the music and sounds of my childhood. My family used to gather around and play country and gospel songs when I was young, and Jim’s voice and playing reminded me so much of those gatherings.

So I couldn’t resist when I heard he was playing the Muse last Friday. The Mrs. was kind enough to give me a pass from my duties of tending to our 2 month old, so I grabbed the camera bag and headed up. Jim brought out a bunch of different players, and as a nice surprise Scott and Seth came out to sit in on a couple of songs. So I’ll start out with my favorite shot of the night, four Avetts on stage about to play and sing together and Seth sharing a greeting with his sister. I presumed they had not seen each other in some time. Great stuff, I must say. (click on the picture below to enlarge).

I’d never seen a crowd that big at the Muse. Jim is a local treasure for a lot of people and he had quite a crowd out to support him and to hear his new songs, which were fantastic by the way. Pick up his new CD, ‘Second Chance’ at his website or on Itunes. To hear Jim talk about life, music and what it takes to be considered a success, go watch this outstanding piece by UNC TV’s ‘Our State’.

Ok, back to photography. Technically speaking, what can I say? The stage lighting at the Evening Muse continues to be difficult to work with if you want a proper White Balance, but what you see is pretty true to what it looked like while there and I thought it worked out fine despite the heavy color saturation. I don’t intend to insult the venue when I say that, it’s the nature of the beast with stage lighting. The Evening Muse remains the best place in Charlotte to see live music in my opinion. In the end I was happy with the setting I came up with.. I think it served the aesthetic well. I would prefer that skin tones not appear so red, but it really turned out to be an accurate depiction.

So it’s a long post, but there were so many I liked, it was hard to narrow down. Perhaps I’ll throw some more up down the road.

“This song sounds like Bob Dylan on Bad Day”

The night started off with just Jim and guitarist Ray Morton

Diane Reed Cox on Cello.

The “Apple of Jim’s Eye”, his daughter Bonnie

Scott said “I’m not used to having someone in between me & Seth”

Jim said “When they were little, I’d have to sit in between them at church so they’d behave”. Or something like that.

Here they’re playing Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got to Memphis”

Another photo similar to the one at the top of the page.

Bonnie claps for her Aunt, who is in the audience.

For four people that have pretty different vocal styles, they sure do sound great when they sing together. They’re singing a fantastic version of gospel classic, “Angel Band”.

David Childers opened the show, and here he and his guitarist Randy Saxon sit in with Jim & Ray.

There are some alternate photos (and perhaps a few repeats) on Facebook.