Myrtle Beach trek, Part I: Almost-lost shoot is now one to remember

Some 12 years ago, I stopped into the then-Cord Camera shop across from the Star-News complex on Delaware Street in downtown Indianapolis, where at some point I lamented to one of the staff members about how I inadvertently erased images on a memory card that I had already recorded over.

Surprisingly, he told me there was recovery software that could restore most, if not all, of those "lost" images. So the next time I was in the shop, I brought in the memory card, and he took it and processed it through such software. Sure enough ... he found almost every one of the images I thought I'd lost forever. I remember that they were from an August 2006 shoot of the Wright Brothers Band performing a free concert at Garfield Park's MacAllister Amphitheater. Sadly, that and all of Indy's Cord Camera shops have since closed, but I owe it a huge thanks for saving my images back in 2006.

I hadn't repeated that somewhat traumatic experience of losing or inadvertently erasing images on a memory card again ... until last week on a trip to Myrtle Beach with Lee Ann. The images were from a personal "documentary" type shoot at a large tourist attraction called Broadway at the Beach. We had visited this place briefly on a prior visit to Myrtle Beach; my shoot last week was much more thorough.

I had no indication during the shoot that there was anything wrong. It wasn't until I got back to the room and tried to upload the photos to my laptop that the fright took hold. All I could find on the card were images I'd taken (but not erased) from a shoot on the previous day. I was totally perplexed. I put the card back into the camera, and still saw nothing but stuff from the two-day-old shoot.

I was demoralized to lose a day's work like this, and to do so without any apparent or logical reason. Dispirited, I immediately sunk into mope mode. I didn't feel like talking or doing anything. Lee Ann was wonderful to pick up on that immediately.

A career IT person who once also worked in portrait photography, Lee Ann went online to visit a couple of photography troubleshooting websites, where she got a strong hint that the issue I experienced could have been caused by a virus that the laptop picked up at some point after I used it the day before while accessing the Internet using the resort's unsecured Wi-Fi. Not only was the resort's Wi-Fi unsecure, but I had neglected to disconnect from it after using it the previous day -- and I had left the memory card in the USB port. I know better; I just spaced it.

Lee Ann then found some image recovery software online. She downloaded it, installed it on the laptop and ran the program. In about 20 minutes or thereabouts, she'd found all but about the first 80 of the 800 images I thought I had lost. Considering that I had been shooting each composition in triplicate for later processing in high-dynamic range (HDR) software, those missing 80 images meant I really had lost only about 25 or so compositions. And lucky for me, those images were the least important in the shoot.

The photos recovered with the restoration software are what you see in this post. So it's a pretty special one to me. Thanks to a pretty special person.

My choice for the lead-off photo no doubt is inspired by our visits last fall to Brookgreen Gardens at Murrells Inlet, south of Myrtle Beach. If you recall, Brookgreen Gardens is a rarity in that it exhibits scores of sculptures in open spaces displayed in various landscapes -- meadows, along ponds, in heavy foliaged areas and even under cover. The Brookgreen Gardens visit pushed me to do closeups of sculpture sections and to try varied vantage points, such as my low angle on this installation sculpture at Broadway at the Beach.

The lead-off photo shows one of quite a few sculptures of children that can be found in the same general vicinity at Broadway at the Beach. You can see one of the others below and the rest are in the full gallery (link in next paragraph).

As always, to view a larger, sharper version of an image, simply click on the photo. This is particularly helpful when accessing the blog while using a mobile device. To see a full gallery of my shots at Broadway at the Beach, click on the link you see in this sentence.

The two shots of the totem above reflect different approaches in handling the composition. At left is the scene that was very close to how I saw it at Tiki Jim's restaurant. It caught my eye because everything was completely dark except for the eyes, teeth and the coloring you see in the hair and brand name. In post-processing, I added some shadow detail to give it perspective, but as my eyes saw it, the area on either side of the totem -- again -- was total darkness.

The version on the right is what resulted from normal processing in high-dynamic range (HDR) software. By "normal processing," I mean I did very little (if anything) once I melded the three images of different exposures using my normal processing settings in Photomatix editing software. If nothing else, you can see how even the minimum HDR processing can introduce substantial detail and pop to images without making them look like, as a former photo club member once described it to me, "clown vomit" (yes, Erik, I've not forgotten that).

Above and below: Perspective and closeup shots of an installation art pool sculpture near one of the park's accesses. 

Lee Ann and I dined at Paula Deen's (above) on our previous visit to Broadway at the Beach, but we didn't make it around to the other side of the man-made lake to get this view of the establishment. Deen's southern cooking restaurant is on the upper floor; a gift shop consumes the bottom floor. Below is a view of a Yankee Candle store, which is not far from Paula Deen's. 

That house you see above is intentionally tilted. In fact, all is not right about the house at all, which I'm sure is part of the attraction's allure. As you'll see in a photo down below, the printing on the bottom outside of the house is upside down. Below is a better view of the water slide in the background of the installation pool sculpture photo above. 

When I first came upon the the beast you see below (along with its bright green four-legged partner, which is not pictured), the Christmas shop shown above was in the background. I moved around to get the shot below and avoid that bizarre juxtaposition.

Above: Here is that upside down signage on the tilted house that I mentioned higher up. 

Above and next eight below are examples of other interesting signage I came upon on the grounds. 

Above: Gulls and pigeons constituted the bulk of the 80 images I totally lost -- the ones at the start of my shoot -- but there were still two dozen or more others at the start point of recovered images that gave me some good ones to show off. The fowl were not intimidated by human passers-by, which enabled me to get pretty close to photograph them without them flying off scared. It also told me that a lot of the visitors probably feed them. There are more examples in the full gallery. 

Above: I figured I should present at least one of the castle and waterfall shots I made. I took quite a few. 

Above: I visited a local craft brewery while at Broadway at the Beach. I sampled a flight of eight beers at Liberty Brewery, and unfortunately ... none of them stood out for me. The previous day, Lee Ann and I had dined at a restaurant in the Market Common development, and I had a draft IPA from New South Brewing, another local craft brewery, with my meal. I thought it was splendid. I wish I had gone there instead.  

I'll end this post with a couple different perspective shots of the ferris wheel on the grounds. It wasn't in operation when I was there ... probably closed for the season.  

Next up: A look at Market Common, a relatively new mixed-use development on Myrtle Beach's southside.