Charleston, SC, is one of my favorite cities in the country. It is a short 3 hour or so drive from Charlotte and is filled with fascinating history, great food, and beautiful scenery. It was the perfect place for a vacation. There are so many places that you can go to on vacation, and there are so many things that you can do. I had one friend who recently came back from whale watching california and loved it! But I’m not sure that would be my sort of vacation.

The first half of this year has flown by. You may have noticed that posts over the last few months have been a little bit shorter than normal and have mainly been about flowers or recipes involving butter. The frequency of posts has suffered over the last few months due to a few other projects that have been taking up my time. On top of my editorial and commercial shooting schedule, I have been working on my first book. For those of you who have written a book, you know what that does to you. For those of you who haven’t ventured down that road yet, a book takes all of your creative energy, and a huge portion of your time. I will release more details about the book and when it will be available at a later date, but for now it is in the hands of my publisher. On top of handing in the book, I also got engaged to my amazing fiancee Sara! The last few months have been both incredibly hectic and exciting! Both are combinations which take away from blogging. The good news is that things have settled down, summer is approaching, and I have a wide variety of stories that I am looking forward to sharing!

After the past several months, I was ready for a vacation. So last weekend, Sara and I took a trip down to Charleston,SC, to relax and visit with our friends Helene and Bill.

There is a problem with being a photographer and being on vacation. What photo gear do I bring? If you are a camera enthusiast, I am sure that you have the same irrational fear perfectly normal feeling that if you don’t bring all of your camera gear with you then you may miss an amazing opportunity to capture something that you don’t see every day. Because of this, I ended up bringing my camera bag with lenses, flashes, tripod, and of course the light stands, diffusers, and fill cards that are always in my car. Upon arriving in Charleston though, I decided to limit myself to one camera and one lens, and just see what I could do with that. For you photo enthusiasts I will talk about gear at the end of the post.

With beaches, history, shopping, and great food, it is an ideal vacation spot. It is impossible to try and talk about all the food Charleston has to offer in one post. It is a city with world class dining and amazing hidden hole in the wall joints. Charleston has it all.

For years, I have been wanting to give The Glass Onion a try. I have passed by it on my way in or out of town on numerous occasions, but for whatever reason I never made it in. I have now been, and I can say that it was worth the wait.

To give you an idea about what the Glass Onion serves and is about, this is a statement form their website

“We offer a moderately priced menu that changes regularly. The mid-scale comfort food draws heavily from the rural South, New Orleans and the Lowcountry. We all grew up with food as a focal point in our lives and want to remind customers of the simple joy brought about by perfectly fried chicken and hearty gumbo. We support local farmers and fishermen by using as many local, all natural ingredients as possible.”

Menu that changes. Check Mid scale comfort food Check. Supporting local farmers and fishermen, Triple check. Ok, I am sold. When a restaurant strives to do these three things, you really can’t go wrong. The whole menu looked delicious, but Sara, her friend Emily, and I all decided to go with the grilled pimento cheese sandwich.

With macaroni salad and cornbread as a side.

When it was all said and done, the meal lived up to my expectations and I will definitely be returning to the Glass Onion again.

That is all for the food part of the Post, now on to the camera part.

When on vacation you want to travel light. For me, this means one camera and one lens. While there are many great lenses to choose from, my favorite to travel with is the 50mm f1.4. It is perfect for what I like to shoot most, people, food, and scenery.

Sure a fixed length of 50mm will not get you the widest of landscapes like a 16 0r 24 mm lens would. It is also true that it won’t zoom to 200mm and get a close up of wildlife you may see. No, it will not remove the expression from your fiancee’s face of “Please stop taking my picture”. You may be wondering then, why I enjoy it for travel? It is perfect for what I like to shoot. Food and people.

I have also found that if I step back a little bit, I can still get a great landscape shot. I don’t shoot wildlife, so I have never found the need or urge to be able to zoom into 200mm. I also enjoy the 50mm for its great low light shooting ability, nice depth of field, and its compact and light weight size.

When deciding what lens is ideal for your vacation, thing about what you will be shooting. It may the 50mm or it may be something else. Use whatever works best for you.

If you are going to be at BlogHer Food in Seattle in June, I will be speaking about taking your food photography outdoors where I will talk in more detail about taking food picture while on vacation.