Sights and Sounds Eighty-Three

After a relatively short drive through the Peak District we arrived in Sheffield to meet up with my niece Victoria and her boyfriend Tom. They live in a very cool apartment in the middle of the city. We went to a pub called The Old House for lunch.  Dusti had fish and chips and i had the Beef, Bacon, and Black Treacle pie with chips and mushy peas. After lunch we (the boys) went to watch the football and the girls went to do a little shopping and had coffee. Before we knew it was time to go meet dad and head to Knaresborough.  Although we only had a short time with Julian, Sarah and the kids it was great to see them.
We got to mum and dad's house about 6:00 and had a little bite to eat with some tea. I set up  camera in the spare room to shoot a time lapse looking over the park behind my parents house.

We went to bed early and slept well. This morning we decided to take our annual walk into to town around the castle and along the river Nidd. The weather wasn't too bad a little breezy with sunny spells.

 Perhaps the boat shot is my favourite of the day.

 This is perhaps the most famous view in Knaresborough and we always take a couple of shots from here.

 The image above is an HDR photo of the castle grounds.

 A couple of panoramic shots.

Sights and Sounds Eighty-Two

It's been several months since my last post. Last week I returned from NAB Show in Las Vegas. It was another intense week of workshops and classes on FCP X, After Effects, Motion and PhotoShop and like last year i learned a great deal.  With only 7 days to recover i found myself back in the airport on Friday but this time accompanied by my lovely wife as we headed to England for a two week holiday.
The flight out of Charleston was on time which was a little surprising due to the dodgy weather. It was however rather bumpy. We arrived in ATL and grabbed some crappy food from a TGI Fridays.
After a few adult beverages it was time to board the long haul flight to Manchester. Actually it was that bad it only took 7 hours and 20 minutes. It was smooth for the most part and we arrived about 40 minutes early. The food was pretty crap but other than we had no complaints.
We got through Immigration and Customs in about 45 minutes and were greeted by my brother Julian and his wife Sarah. It was bright and sunny in Manchester and definitely had a different feel to when to when we usually visit in the winter.
The drive to Buxton was about an hour and i was quickly reminded how mental the roads are here. Extremely narrow country roads with cars driving too fast was enough to help me temporarily forget any jet lag.  The sun continued to shine as we arrived in Buxton and we were met outisde by Mak the family Border Collie and inside my niece Kate and her cousin Sophia.
A cup of tea was a welcomed sight and then Dusti and I took the first of two daytime naps to try to get some rest.
In the evening we took Mak for a walk along an old railway line. The sun was pretty warm although there was a cool breeze but it was awesome.

Mak kept us entertained as he forged ahead and collected a variety of sticks of which we would throw for him. He played in the stream and chased ducks but never realy left our sight. He would run up ahead and lay down and wait.  The scnery was really cool. On either side of the old railway track were steep hills and cliffs. The trees were just starting to show signs of Spring unlike back home in Charleston where everything was already green.
Once back at the house we had some dinner. Sarah had made some pizza pies and salad and also some cake. We both ate and after some conversation decided to go to bed about 9:45.
I just woke up to the local church bells and some crows, pigeons, doves and whatever else outside the bedroom window. It's another bright morning although the forecast isn't as good for today. The plan is to head to Sheffield for the day and meet up with my other niece Victoria and her boyfriend Tom and later my dad will meet us and take us to Knaresborough.

Sights and Sounds Eighty-One

This past weekend was our annual trip to Asheville, NC for Moogfest. This year Santigold and Orbital were the two bands as was most looking forward to seeing but first we had some hiking to do. Dusti and I did a little research on some good hikes in the Area east of Asheville and in particular hikes with good photo ops. We went to two waterfalls, Linville Fallls and Crabtree Falls. The hikes were a little strenuous but we managed. The weather was perfect with cloudy/sunny skies and a temp of about 70. Here's my favorite pics.

That night we met friends out at a interesting Mexican restaurant called Limones. They had outrageously good margaritas! We didn't have tickets for the fRiday night of Moogfest this year so we had an early night. The next night we had drinks and a bite at a tapas place called Zambra. It was an awesome place and was very popular. After several drinks it was on to the show. We caught the last few songs of Divine Fits who were really good and we were a little disappointed that we missed most of their set. I did enjoy Thomas Dolby. He played a few classics and some newer songs. I'm not sure if he played Blinded by Science as we went back over to the Civic Center for Santigold at 8:45 who were incredible. They were followed by Orbital who blew the roof off. We ended the night with some chill piano music by Harold Budd but only stayed for 15 minutes as we were falling asleep! Great weekend again. I really recommend try to get to Asheville for this music festival the town is so much fun. I'm already looking forward to next year.

Sights and Sounds Eighty

This is my 80th post. I know that's not many really as far as the blogsphere goes. Anyways what better way to celebrate the eightieth post than with a couple of videos. The first one is a short clip i uploaded to Vimeo of a close encounter i had with some dolphins in the Charleston harbor recently. I was shooting some photos and video b-roll for work when all of a sudden these guys showed up.


Dolphins in Charleston Harbour from Jonathan Coultas on Vimeo.


The next video is a video I prepared for a meeting at work. My office recently joined with another department and we were asked to give a 90 second presentation of what we do. So i made a video which is basically a video of some of the videos/photography I have done for work in the last year. Check it out.


What I Do in 90 Seconds V.2.0 from CARC on Vimeo.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Nine

We just returned home from a week long holiday in Maryland and Washington DC. We drove up to Cobb Island which is in the south west corner of Maryland right on the Potomac River. It took us about 8 hours to get there but we left at 5:30AM so it didn't seem so bad plus our car is so comfortable the trip was a breeze.
What greeted us was this view where we would be spending the next six days.

It was very hot for the first few days including the Annan family reunion day. This reunion actually included three family names that all descended from my father in-laws dad and siblings. It was held a Greenwell State Park in Maryland and was about an hour from where we were staying. I knew some of the family but others i met for the first time. It was a fun day with food and stories in abundance.

The rest of our week was spent relaxing. I got a couple of rounds of golf in with Steve which was fun although my golf was pretty bad. We really enjoyed sitting in the back yard watching the wildlife including a large umber of Ospreys. I tried to take pics of them but i don't think i had an adequate lens. You can see the one below has a fish in his claws.

On Thursday we drove to Washington DC for two nights. We met up with Dusti's cousins Lisa and Courtney. We spent the first day at the US National History Museum and the Holocaust Museum. We also walked checked out the Washington Memorial. It was extremely hot outside so being in the museums was a welcome break. The holocaust Museum was pretty amazing. They has one room filled with the shoes of victims of the Nazis it was this exhibit was the one that really struck me. The smell of the leather just made it so real compared to all the photos and video which i of course had seen over the years on TV etc. There was just something about those shoes. It was very sad.
DC was a very cool city. I was amazed on how clean it was. The only drawback was they were renovating the Mall and the reflecting pool was drained which hurt my photo ops.

On the Friday morning Dusti, Lisa and i took a cab to the Lincoln Memorial to catch the sunrise. I knew this was going to be special. We got some terrific shots of the light coming through the memorial on the statue of Lincoln. There were very few tourists around this early. A few joggers but that was it. We managed to shoot the Vietnam Memorial and and Korean War Memorial also.

After taking a short nap we spent the rest of the day at the Museum of Natural History. This was the highlight of the holiday for Dusti. She loved it. We saw all kinds if fossils, dinosaur bones, precious gems including the Hope Diamond which is apparently was formed 1.1 billion years ago and is worth 280 million dollars. It was really impressive and along with all the other museums we went to it was free.

After our long day we met up with my former high school friend Andy and his friend Emily at the Elephant and the Castle for a few pints of Guinness. It was a great way to round off our holiday. The next morning we left DC at 5AM and got back to our hour exactly 8 hours later!

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Eight

As promised here's a video of our weekend in the mountains. I kind of did a rushed job and in hindsight i can see shot i could have done better but overall for a quickie i am pretty happy with the results. The music is by a Swedish band called First Aid Kit. They are obviously heavily influenced by old time country music. They remind me a little of Neko Case. The song "Emmylou"which i used was chosen before we even went away and even though it refers to more winter type weather i still think it fits the footage. All the footage was shot by Dusti and myself with our two Canons the T2i and the T4i.
Enjoy.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Seven

We just got back from a long weekend in the mountains. We stayed with my brother and Mike for the first two days and then stayed at the Pisgah Inn on top of the Blue Ridge Parkway. On the drive up we stopped at Table Rock Mountain for a picnic. We were going to go on a walk but the heat was blistering so we decided to head on to Brevard. We did a little shopping in Brevard then went to Simons. We ate out that night at a small restaurant in downtown Brevard called Falls Landing. It was pretty decent. When we got back to Simons we were both pretty tired and were in bed by 9!

Perhaps the best part of the weekend was the two walks we went on. On Saturday we went to Triple Falls waterfall with Mike and Simon. It was a pretty small walk but it was nice nonetheless. Below are a couple of shot of the waterfalls.

Yesterday we did a little more of a hike than just a walk. After driving up on to the Blue Ridge Parkway we found a decent trail that would take us to the top on a mountain. It was a really cool walk. After parking we walked through some woods which opened out into a meadow. It was full of flowers, butterflies and bees. In the picture below you can see Dusti walking towards the meadow. It's right above her head in the distance. The mountain to her right was what we ended up climbing and after about an hour we reached the top and that is where i took the panoramic shot of Dusti. It was a pretty awesome view.

After getting back to the parking lot about 2 hours after we started we downed some water then headed to Waynesville for lunch. We ate at Clydes which was like old Alex's that used to be in Charleston (decent food cheap but nothing to  special).  After a little window shopping we then headed back up to the Parkway and to the Pisgah Inn.  Here's a couple of panoramic shot this morning at sunrise.

I filmed a lot of the trip and will compile a short video later in the week so stay tuned!  Oh here's a couple of bunnies and a chipmunk for good measure! These little guys greeted us outside our balcony this morning.

Sights and Sounds Seventy-Six

It was July 4th yesterday and Dusti and I decided to get in to the spirit and watch the fireworks at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant. We rode our bikes armed with our two cameras and two tripods and headed to the old bridge that used to connect Sullivan's Island with Mount Pleasant. We figured this vantage point would be good for a panoramic view of all the firework displays from Folly Beach, Downtown, Mount Pleasant, Sullivan's and Isle of Palms.
I experimented with a couple of panoramic shots  in which I combined several photos together using the photomerge option in Adobe Photoshop. I watched a couple of really good tutorials by Richard Harrington on how to do this. I was pretty pleased with the results. Below are two shots one of the sunset which combined five photos and a firework shot which combined three shots. You can click on the image to see a larger version.

Here are some other firework shots.