DCI Southeastern Championships - Carolina Crown

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It's time for another photo set from the DCI Southeastern Championships in Atlanta, Georgia that took place on July 28th. Now it's time to showcase the home team!

Carolina Crown

I absolutely adore Crown's show this year. It's such an incredibly emotional rollercoaster from start to finish keeping the audience engaged throughout. The costuming is absolutely wonderful for both the guard and the corps. The fabric and accessories almost take on a life of their own, adding dashes of color, sparkle, and light movement with even the slightest of motion. 

If you'd like to see the full album of photos, visit my Pixieset page. And be sure to keep checking back in every few days for more photosets from this weekend and others!

Cheers!

Natalie

Carolina Crown | Preview Show Weekend

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The lead-up to our preview show weekend is always incredibly exciting because that means it's time to hit the road on our summer tour. This year, I had the privilege of making it down to Rock Hill to be part of the excitement surrounding our send-off show.

I had a blast seeing the show for the first time live, and can say that Beast may be one of my favorite shows that has been fielded in recent years. The uniforms are also to die for - they make any singular moment full of color and movement which, in turn, makes my job of capturing compelling moments so much easier. 

If you'd like to see the entirety of the content I shot during preview show weekend, click here!

 

If you're a fan of DCI, what shows this year do YOU love? What are your finals predictions? Leave them in the comment section below!

Carolina Crown | January Camp

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Another month, another weekend camp with Carolina Crown!

This camp was incredibly meaningful to me. Not only was it the first official camp of the 2018 season, but it also officially marked four years since attending my first drum corps camp. It's crazy to think how far I've come since then - from upgrading equipment to becoming more confident in my skills. 

This camp, my main focus was creating better images straight out of the camera. Instead of focusing on lens changes and swapping around my equipment, I decided to ditch my camera bag completely and stick with just my Canon f/1.8 50mm prime lens. If I'm just being honest, that 50mm lens is my favorite tool in my camera bag. Even though I own lenses that are 'fancier' in many respects, I think it's important to get back to the basics every now and then.

To finish off my photos, I was trying out a bunch of the presets I've downloaded in the past few months and wasn't entirely happy with the look of any of them. So, after many hours and a bit of determination, I made my own Lightroom preset! I was inspired by an aged film look, and I think the overall look of the final product is really pretty. Check out a small sampling below, or click here to view the full photoset!

If you have any questions about my gear or any suggestions for future posts, leave them below! I'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for stopping by! 

-Natalie

Carolina Crown | November Camp

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Nothing makes the new drum corps season feel more real than the first audition camp of the year. It has been almost two years since I last went to an audition camp, so I was understandably feeling a healthy mix of both excitement and nerves over spending the weekend with Carolina Crown. Nevertheless, I stuffed entirely too many things in my carry-on bag, braved the Syracuse early-winter snow, and flew to Charlotte, North Carolina to begin my weekend of work.

Audition camps, for me, are a great opportunity to work at my own pace and really concentrate on what I'm doing in the moment. Since most of the corps is broken up into sectionals for a large portion of the weekend, that allows me to have the freedom to pick which section I want to be with at any given time. I started my Saturday with the front ensemble, then moved to the snare line, bass line, and then spent a couple of minutes with the conductors until lunch time. From there, I hung out with the guard for a larger portion of the evening before calling it a day and spending the rest of my evening dumping my footage on my hard drive and catching up with my friends on the admin team. 

Sunday was a bit of a whirlwind since parents would be arriving in the afternoon for the 'show and tell' portion of the weekend. This is the time of the weekend where every section exhibits a couple of excerpts that they learned throughout the weekend for the parents as well as the other sections. Show and tell is especially exciting for me because while I have seen every section throughout the weekend, I usually do not stay with one section for more than 30/45 minutes, so I definitely don't see in full what every section does. I always feel super proud of the kids at the end of show and tell. Not going to lie, I got goosebumps after hearing the brass line. 

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Overall, I had an extremely fun weekend. I met a lot of cool people, did some really great work, and got to catch up with friends and staff members that, for the most part, I hadn't seen since August. While camp weekends are ususally pretty stressful, they're so worth going to. 

If you'd like to see the full photoset from November camp, click here!

Did you audition for a corps this weekend, or maybe volunteer with one in November? Tell me about your corps experiences below!

Thanks for reading!