Inside the Frame

There’s a photo that Justin Falk displays prominently at the Charleston City Market, an almost impossibly captured moment in time showing about fifteen C-17s in the sky above Charleston.

“The 82nd Airborne was celebrating their anniversary, so they all took off from Joint Base Charleston with like 3,000 jumpers, heading to Fort Bragg,” said Falk. “A couple of days earlier, one of the engineers doing that mission came through the market. We started talking, and he told me about it and asked if I could get a picture of it. He said, ‘I'll buy it from you,’ and told me where the flight pattern was going to be. Most photographers went up on the bridge, but where I’d gone, they just happened to go into formation right over my head. I love that image.” 

As much as an artist as his photographs prove him to be, Falk still has that sense of wonder that gives him humility and approachability. He loves to find that moment, that flash of time, in which his camera has captured something remarkable.

Falk grew up loving photography, raised by a father who had a dark room at home and taught him how to develop film at an early age. Still, he never imagined himself turning his hobby into a full-time career. “I only really started about eighteen years ago, here and there, while I was waiting tables. I did that for years and won a couple of awards for my photographs, which made me want to learn how to get better,” Falk explained. “But then I had an issue with a new manager at the restaurant where I was working — we really didn’t see eye-to-eye on anything. I went out in a blaze of glory, and then I went home to my girlfriend at the time and asked, ‘What am I gonna do now?’ She said, ‘You’re going to spend $3500 to buy a brand-new camera, and you're going to really do this.’”

Though the relationship may have come to an end, Falk is quick to credit his former girlfriend Meg John for where he is now. “I wouldn't have any of these images without her. People come into your life sometimes for a reason. One woman got me to Charleston, and another helped me create the things that I do today.”

A native of Staten Island, Falk moved to Charleston in 2007 after a friend told him she was moving from Baltimore to Charleston and encouraged him to follow. After he found a place on James Island, he drove, “white-knuckling it all the way down I-95,” from where he’d been living in Baltimore. “It was the best thing I ever did,” he said.

Almost two decades later, the transplant has a love for Charleston’s natural beauty and architecture that is self-evident in his photographs: the moss-draped trees at Magnolia Gardens, the sunsets over the shores at Folly, the shrimp boats shrouded in morning mist over Shem Creek, the church spires of St. Philip’s set against a sky swathed in pink. Falk has a skill that makes people stop and stare, makes them wonder what was happening outside the frame, makes them feel.

“If it doesn't move you, it's not a good photo,” relayed Falk, whose landscape photography has won awards and been featured in national and local publications. And while he may have skills that yield shockingly vivid photos of lightning flashes that come with stories of near-death experiences, Falk isn’t too proud or precious with his talent to photograph between 35 and 40 weddings each year. Named one of the best wedding photographers in Charleston, his Instagram is filled with both candid and posed photos of happy couples.

Eventually, Falk hopes to re-focus his camera on his second love: rescue dogs. “I’ve started a fine art photography business that will donate a huge portion of the profits to helping people that have selflessly rescued a dog with the unexpected costs of medical care when they can’t afford it,” he said of his new venture, Soul of a Dog, which was inspired by the unexpected loss of his rescued Pitbull, Gus.

Trained on a dog or on the sky above Charleston, the lens of Falk’s camera captures the vision of an artist and a moment that will forever be preserved.