Thursday, Sep. 10, 2009
A photo finish
We are the non-picture-taking Kimes clan.
The rest of my family is snap-shot happy, and some friends of mine have taken what seems like thousands of photos of their kids, downloaded them to social media sites and their iPhones and CrackBerries.
Our excuse: my two-year-old daughter broke our camera.
But that's really not an excuse.
I've got a video camera I bought just before Ava was born and I've used it basically on special occasions - her birthday, Christmas, her first meeting with her great grandmother, etc.
A couple of weeks ago, we hosted Ava's 2nd birthday party and we didn't bring a camera - because, like I said, it was broken.
I did bring the video cam, however, before I'm chastised for being a horrible parent.
So, over the Labor Day weekend, after bugging me relentlessly, my wife broke down and bought a new digital camera and literally busted the packaging open in the car and immediately began snapping photos of Ava as we went to the last Myrtle Beach Pelicans game of the year, and she uploaded the images on Facebook that night.
There's a new commitment to creating lasting memories before these precious moments are gone.
In sum, we're pretty good about capturing those special occasions I mentioned - but not so great when it comes to candid, keeping-it-real documentation of every-day-life.
Yet those seemingly mundane moments can often prove to be the most extraordinary, and I'm not just talking about my household. Broaden that scope to the Grand Strand - especially when you consider some of the unique, weird, wild and wonderful stuff that you encounter in the Myrtle Beach area.
That's why we hosted the inaugural Surge Summer Snapshot Smackdown contest for amateur photographers designed to showcase and provide a forum for talent and also illuminate some of our area's distinct character.
Thematically, the rules were straightforward: we wanted shutterbugs to submit photos that best captured the feeling of what the Myrtle Beach area means to them, whether it is the natural beauty of the marshes or sunrise on the beach, something iconic such as the former Myrtle Beach Pavilion, or perhaps the homeless encampments hidden in the woods not far from high-rise ocean-front luxury hotels.
We got a little bit of all that, and more.
Another caveat is that the photos had to have been shot in Horry or Georgetown counties.
Entries were uploaded to our Web site, www.weeklysurge.com, and our readers voted on their favorites. The top 10 photos garnering the most votes were then judged by Weekly Surge's creative team, and we selected an overall winner.
That's the winning photo on this week's cover of Surge.
And you can turn to page 11 to find out about the person behind the lens, i.e. the winning photographer, as well as view the other top four finalists and also five favorites selected by our team.
Personally, the winning photo is my favorite among the 60-plus images that were submitted.
It's not something that would find its way on the cover of a chamber of commerce brochure, and that's exactly why I like it.
Emery follow-up
Under advice from his political strategists, local biker bar owner Don Emery, whom we profiled in the Aug. 20 edition of Surge, waited until the last day to file, but he is now officially running for a seat on Myrtle Beach City Council.
It should be a very interesting city election on Nov. 3 considering Emery's entry into politics, and the fact that grand-standing former mayor Mark McBride has thrown his hat into the ring to challenge incumbent John Rhodes.
Rhodes defeated McBride in 2005.
And some other interesting mayoral candidates have emerged, too, representing a cross-section of familiar beach industries, including a taxi driver/owner, an hotelier, a restaurateur, a real estate agent and a Web site owner.
Will those anti-bike rally ordinances come back to haunt Rhodes in the voter's booth?
Stay tuned.
