Ravenel Bridge Walk A Christmas Gift Itself!

A Christmas afternoon walk on the Ravenel Bridge was a treat in many ways. The Holy Day was a great day to check out the Holy City and the Cooper River from this perspective. The weather was beautiful, a sunny day with temperatures in the low 60s. Many people had the same idea in mind but it was not too crowded along the bridge's walking lane.

We took our cameras and monopods, including Alesia’s new monopod that was wrapped under the tree for her.

December Virginia Trip Photos

We drove to Virginia last week to see my parents at their beautiful home on the Chesapeake Bay. Here is a collection of photographs I took from the road and around the Northern Neck of the Old Dominion.

“The Leaning Tower of Pedro” at South of the Border, Dillon, South Carolina 

Gorgeous Skies!

A simple walk back to the car after a workout at the gym can produce a photography moment. You have to love the ease and access of smartphones and their ever-improving cameras.

I did do some enhancements in the Snapseed app, bringing out the colors using the HDR tool. The Charleston paper has a weekly photo contest. This week’s topic, with winning entries shown in tomorrow’s paper, is twilight. I entered this first image. Fingers crossed... Update: see below- my photo won!!!

This one is pretty cool too. 

This last image I made with my iPhone’s panorama feature. 

What a thrill this morning to open the paper and see that my twilight photo was one of three selected as winning entries!  I'm planning to enter this week's contest. The subject is clouds. And, man, have I taken some cloud photos in recent years. 

10 Best Photographs: Magnolia Cemetery Early Bird Outing

With my trusty Canon SX 50 mounted on a monopod

Up before the crack of dawn on a Saturday? There had better be a good reason!

And indeed there was when Beverly Donald, longtime Magnolia Cemetery superintendent, opened the gate super early so she and fellow members of our Carolinas' Nature Photography Association (CNPA) club could come in to take sunrise pictures.

I rolled in around 6:20 a.m. and had time to grab a selfie in front of a favorite Magnolia Cemetery sculpture- the girl with no hands. She, of course, used to have hands. In fact, she was holding a Bible, but some years ago vandals amputated her arms and the Good Book. There's a special place in you know where for such people!

New Name, Same Beauty at Historic Stono River Site

It used to be called Dixie Plantation but the College of Charleston recently changed the name to Stono Preserve. The obvious presumption: “Dixie” is just not politically correct anymore. Read more in this Post and Courier article cleverly titled "Nixing Dixie."

Folly Beach- Fun on the Edge of America

Nicknamed “The Edge of America,” Folly Beach is friendly, fun and a little funky. The Charleston area has so many special places and this is certainly one of them.

And to be able to catch some rays in early October was pretty special too.

We parked near what is still often called the old Coast Guard station off the main road where parking is still free.

Temperatures were in the low 80s with winds light to heavy at times.

Coming Street Cemetery Comings and Goings

Thank you Hurricane Dorian! Your brush with South Carolina in early September caused a week of school closings along the coast. This lead to the College of Charleston having weekend makeup classes. This lead to me setting up a Saturday visit to the nearby Coming Street Cemetery.

For late September it was unseasonably hot this day

For my College of Charleston “Beyond the Grave” students, a Saturday night cemetery tour would not be high on their weekend fun list. But I tried to make it more palatable by not meeting in our classroom. Instead we met in front of the Addlestone Library and then walked several blocks to the cemetery.

All but a few of my 20 students participated on Sept. 28, though several left before this group photo was taken by my wife Alesia.

Going "Beyond the Grave" with Charleston Historian and Author Ruth Miller

"Touring the Tombstones" with Ruth Miller

Have you heard the one about the busload of morticians?

No joke, it was this twist of fate that began to turn tour guide Ruth Miller into a taphophile- a person with a grave interest in graveyards.

Years ago, Miller took a group of visiting undertakers on a Charleston tour when they asked her to stop at a church graveyard. She complied and ended up learning so many interesting things from the morticians that she was driven to dig more into Charleston’s many churchyards.

Hurricane Dorian: Good Riddance!

Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 was D Day- Dorian Day. This was the day Hurricane Dorian finally closed in on the Charleston area after several days of anticipation. In the wee hours Category 3 wind gusts commenced an assault that would last more than 12 hours.

Our power went off at 5:40 a.m. and returned 20 minutes later. Maybe this won’t be so bad, I thought at that time. But at 8 a.m. the electricity went off again. And off it would remain for 26 hours until 10 yesterday morning.

All Aces in the ACE Basin

One of the many great things about the ACE Basin is that its state and federal nature refuges are almost always open to the intrepid visitor willing to travel to what some may consider the middle of nowhere.

Taken when I arrived (before getting all hot and sweaty)

It had been several months since I trekked to one of the basin’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs ). I found some free time one day recently and with the prospect of soon having to deal with another hurricane (Dorian), I grabbed my camera and bug spray and headed south on Highway 17 to the Hollings National Wildlife Refuge. It’s about an hour drive from my house.