Photos of West Virginia - lunatic asylums and Appalachian weddings!

Hey everyone!

We just got back from a week-long trip to the beautiful state of West Virginia. Thought I'd share some photos whichyuall. Check out the link for a lot more photos and blabbering.

Link: http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/westvirginia2010/

We went to the Trans-Allegheny Asylum for the Insane. Really interesting. It's been abandoned since 1994, and it smelled a bit, but it was fascinating. As some of you know, I have a fascination with abandoned buildings. And when they're allegedly haunted and amazingly historic, I'm really hooked!

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We then began preparing for the wedding. As I mentioned elsewhere, I was going to be attempting to be a wedding photographer for the first time, a rather difficult thing. So with the rehearsal dinners, learning when people would be doing what, learning how to use the flash I just purchased two weeks before that, figuring out how to shoot in really low light, learning how to light things, etc., we were running around a lot on this trip. But we did have a chance to sneak in a day trip to Cathedral Falls:

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And here are some photos from the wedding. These aren't masterful or anything, but I think they're good for a first attempt at wedding photography. I was totally exhausted at the end of the day.

A professional wedding photographer told me that she felt that wedding photography was one of the more difficult kinds of photography because of the logistics, organization, low lighting, the necessity for mastering different kinds of lighting, the "choreography" of everything that's going on, hyper-emotional people, and so on. Anyway, here's some photos from the wedding:

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There's also some fun photos of people cleaving meat...the couple specifically asked that I take photos of that!!

http://www.elevenshadows.com/travels/westvirginia2010/

Those wedding pics are awesome Ken!!

Thanks, Boosh. I really tried! My flash batteries died in the middle of the couple taking vows, but those photos still miraculously came out well. It was exhausting doing all that, though, and then leaving really early to fly home the next day.

Like I mentioned, the wedding photographs aren't masterful but I think they came out well, especially when you consider that this was my first attempt at something that is not easy to do. I took a crash course on figuring out how to use a flash and how to organize people and light them for weddings. Whew!!!!!!

Since this was a favor for my girlfriend's family, I did it for just the price of the new flash. I lost a bit of sleep doing this because I kept churning over things that I was trying to absorb, with the thought that people would be looking at these photos for the next hundred years!!

Well done on the wedding photos Ken, i think you've got some nice pics out of a bad situation (lighting wise).

I love the group photo, the girls at the front are all making funny faces and the lady on the left looks as though she's saying "Wait!, i need to have a scratch"

The bride dancing shot is great, its got a nice sense of movement. You managed not to over flash that one too, nice job.

The trowing of the bouquet, is that a fish-eye on that one? All the guys seem to look like card board cut outs in that one, its really peculiar. Great action shot though.

The two chef guy photo's look like hotel brochures, i mean that it a really good way that, cracking shots imo.

So how did you manage the settings? What lenses did you use? I assume you had to up the iso (some pics are a bit noisey, but it suites the ambience)

Ade

Nice job.... as usual.

Thanks. Not that I'm aspiring to be a wedding photographer, but if I were to do it on a regular basis, I'd need a MUCH faster lens. And more and better lighting (not that there's anything wrong with an SB-600 flash, which is a darn good flash).

No. That was taken with an 18-200mm VR Nikkor lens, just a regular lens, no fisheye. I did the fisheye in PhotoShop because I thought it would add more drama even though the regular photo was fine. That's just me messing around in PhotoShop. I like how the guys in the back look really flat and far away, while the groom looks really full and 3-D. I also like how the guys seem to sort of wrap around.

I should at this juncture let you know, too, that the bride (my girlfriend's cousin) is a photographer, and is going to process all of the photos. She's quite adept at PhotoShop. I just gave her all the raw photos. The photos that I put on the West Virginia photos (these and a bunch of other ones, along with the travelblog)

I processed myself, just to have fun and try and make the photos look more interesting. I was more active with the processing for the wedding photos than for the Trans-Allegheny Asylum for the Insane. That said, I'm stoked with how those photos came out.

The last one, a rather demented hotel brochure. Thanks, though, I appreciate that. I think the first one looks really really good.

So how did you manage the settings? What lenses did you use? I assume you had to up the iso (some pics are a bit noisey, but it suites the ambience)

I used just one lens, a Nikkor 18-200mm VR (the first issue, which has the lovely lens creep, not the second issue, where they apparently addressed that).

I used the SB-600 flash a lot for both the wedding ceremony in the church and the reception because both areas were very very dark. I used a HonL gel most of the time to compensate for the incandescent light. I just got these two weeks before the wedding, and took a crash course on how to use it, but anyway, what's great about the SB-600, a Nikon speedlight, is how it interacts with the camera. IOW, it fully adjusts to the settings of the lens. If I zoom in, the speedlight adjusts to compensate. Very nice. Since this is my first flash, this was especially handy since I really don't know how to use one very well, and am just learning about bouncing light and all that (I'm a good travel photographer, but always used natural lighting before).

I typically set my D90 for ISO 800 f/3.5 to f/5.6, probably about 1/50 shutter speed depending on the situation for the hand-held stuff at the church, I think about ISO500 and f/5.6 and 1/50 for the formal shots, and maybe a higher ISO like around 1000 or 1250 for the high balcony shots. I couldn't use a flash for these because I was too far away, so I boosted the ISO since the camera was on a tripod so I could shoot at 1/50 or 1/60.

Now, my 18-200mm lens is a slow lens, so if I had a faster lens, I could have circumvented many of these problems.

That said, the noise on my camera, even at ISO 1250, is surprisingly negligible, especially when you compare it to my older Nikon D50, which was supremely noisy at ISO 800 and above. Here's a shot at ISO 1250 with my D90:

The noise you are seeing is most likely in the processing. Some of the photos, like the tossing of the garter or the second and more menacing looking chef/meat cleaver shot, I put a film grain on it because I liked the way it looked, so that's not noise from the ISO, which was only ISO 800 for the garter shot anyway.

BTW, I just purchased the Nikon D90 camera a couple of months ago, and absolutely love it. Major upgrade from my older Nikon D50.

I'm very fond of this one.

It's like a wallmap in the throne room of trouble town.

Wow, thanks! That's one of my favorite shots from the whole vacation. That's inside the doctor's home, one of the wings of the insane asylum. The doctor and his family - including kids - lived on the premises. How would you like to grow up in an insane asylum? Some of you perhaps feel as if you have...but how about among 950 patients?

You have a gift! I know nothing about photography but love the way you captured the personalities. Awesome church, too!

And yes, West Virginia is a beautiful state.

Is it just me?

I find weddings to be more scary than insane asylums.

They can both be frightening!!!

Today's photography subject should be a little easier. This evening, I'm going out to the Joshua Tree desert to photograph the Perseid meteor shower. Gonna do some cool long exposures, just having fun with it. Nice and peaceful, just checking out Mother Nature's Light Show.

Thanks for way2def and everyone's comments!!

Wonderful yet again Ken.

I bet they had a hell of a band!

Outstanding!

Worthy of National Geographic, IMO.

M-F I drive through the MS Delta. Lots of portrait-worthy material there, I wish Ken could pass through some time.

Your photos are uniformly great...but I can really see the waterfall shots as desktop backgrounds

They seem like a fun family ... even the "Formal" shots were pretty informal.

You may have misgivings about some of the technical aspects but the shots

capture the humanity of the event in a very nice way.

I'm sure the family will cherish them for years to come.

Great work Ken.

I like them. The couple getting married are definitely very informal. The whole wedding was Disney-themed, and...well, anybody who wears Mickey Mouse ears at a wedding is probably quite laid back!!

Well, you know, I was really *nervous*. I mean, wedding photography is hard. I didn't know how to use a flash. I didn't even have a flash until two weeks before. And so, yeah, I was nervous. But I do think that for a first-time wedding photographer, I did well. I'm happy with the shots. But at any rate, I really appreciate your comment. That's what any of us ultimately want to do: capture the humanity, the emotions, the feelings of the people. Using the gear properly is important because we want to be able to use it in such a way that it enhances and doesn't interfere with achieving that.

I hope so and believe so. That's part of what got me nervous: thinking that her family would be looking at these photos for the next fifty or a hundred years!! But I think it came off well! They seem very very happy with them, and I was happy to do it for them.

Thank you! I love photographing people, and this was a fantastic challenge, a lot of work, and ultimately, a lot of FUN.

Sort of curious how I seem to like documenting things, by the way. I love recording musicians. I love photography. So many similarities between the two.

I also wanted to say again that I really appreciate the warm comments and encouragement and everything.

The formal shots...well, I chose all the goofy ones for my blog because I thought they'd be more fun and interesting for people who didn't know them (or perhaps even if people did know them! ). There are a lot of more serious ones.

What I did was when I was photographing the formal shots, with each combination of people, I started out by having them pose seriously. Then I went to the goofy shots. If I felt that the first serious shots were a bit stiff looking, I then had them go back to the serious shots a second time, hoping that they would be more relaxed and loosened up after the goofy shots. If nothing else, it would be fun. And everyone was only too willing to go along with the goofy shots!!!