Serendipity, A Camp, A Storyteller, And A Beautiful Family Photo Session.

I dig serendipity.

This one starts with my wonderful wife.

That photo above was taken at Cardinal Park. I covered the historical significance of this park in a prior post. In short a civil rights legend and a horrible person brought me to this place.

Cardinal Park was purchased by the father of Mitch Capel as a place where African Americans could swim in a segregated NC years ago.

From their website:

The Cardinal Park is one of the best-kept secrets in North Carolina. Described as “a little slice of paradise”, this beautiful recreation facility was established in 1962 by the late entrepreneur, businessman, and philanthropist Felton J. Capel, Sr.

So that was the local civil rights legend. Where does the horrible person come in. Welp.. An intolerant oaf harassed Mitch Capel. For the reasons you would expect… Those closely related to why the camp was purchased to begin with. Anyhoo. Enough time talking about that. A meeting was held to discuss the incident and my wife attended as a representative of the North Caroline Department of Justice. As an Assistant Attorney General to be specific. I married up. As a follow up we attended a poetry event at Cardinal Park. The speakers were great. Had a great time.

And then we met one more person. A speaker arrived whom we had the opportunity to speak with for a while.

So camp covered and storyteller covered. What about serendipity and a family photo shoot? I am glad I imagined you asked.

The serendipity is following the thread of that chance meeting a couple of years ago leading to Linda Gorham and I becoming FB friends and her reaching out to me when she needed family portraits.

Gladly.

A bit of back and forth and we had a day and time locked. 10 folks to be photographed with little kids in the cards. On to what I brought this day.

A camera.
A lens.
A big flipping softbox.
Light source.

More detail? Ok. But a caveat first. Any brand and even other cameras from this same brand would have done. Ok, specifics.

Again. Any similar kit would have done just fine. Below are some of my favorites that have been added to my portfolio.

Inside:

Settings varied a bit as I tweaked things but I quickly landed on manual camera settings and TTL. Inside I went with the 35-150mm and f/5.6 for small groups and the Tamron 17-28mm and f/8 when all were assembled (not pictured below).

Outside:

It was very hot outside so of the options that Linda provided we chose the open shade option. I started with the 35-150mm and would have done just fine. With the open shade option came a busier background so I pivoted to the precious, aka the Sony 50mm f/1.2 G Master. And blur the background it did.

For the first shots they laid out a blanket and sat the little ones on the ground. So of course I laid on the ground on my stomach to get the perspective I wanted.

The pic below is a part of my favorite sequence as the little one came for my camera.

And here are the last few group shots and my favorites of the day.

Well, that about wraps it up. Most importantly Linda was very happy with the images and said her family had a good time taking photos. I had a great time also. A great result.

-ELW