Marrington Shoots

We lived in Charleston, SC for almost 5 years during the 1980's and during that time I used my wife as my primary, and almost my only, model. I did get to shoot with one or two other ladies from time to time, but those opportunities were few and far between. That was fine, really, since Wanda was such a great model and always willing to pose for me, so I had lot's of opportunity to practice with the camera.

The image to the right was taken in a place called Marrington Plantation, which was actually a park area on the Naval Weapons Station. Wanda and I spent quite a bit of time shooting on the plantation, as it was conveniently close to our home, and we would often bike there during the week for a picnic and a photo shoot. During the week the place was essentially deserted and we could wander around the grounds for hours without running into anyone else. We were almost surprised once by a group of young boys out riding their bikes, but they didn't see us and we were shooting clothed shots at the time anyway.  We had a bit of laugh about that inciddent.

During this time, I experimented with black & white film quite a bit, but I finally determined that I really preferred color images. B&W is great for composition and tone, but I just prefer the pop of color. The image above was taken with a Canon AT-1 manual focus, manual exposure camera and a Vivitar 70-210 Series 1 zoom on Tri-X film. It's a scan from a print, rather from the negative, but a decent image all the same.

We've always played around a lot with our photography and had fun shooting in interesting places. This sign warned visitors to Marrington that there were dangerous alligator's in Mark's Pond - so we just had to take this shot.  We also did a shoot with Wanda in hose, heels, and lace lingerie at the edge of the pond. Strangely enough, we never saw any 'gators while we were there.

I have many more images from Marrington and from those days in Charleston, so I'm sure a few more will pop up now and again in this blog.