The inbox and calendar are starting to fill up with Senior Portrait requests. I am local to Lakewood High School, Green Mountain High School, Alameda High School and Bear Valley High School. Yearbook headshot deadlines will be upon you faster than you know it (indeed, I can’t believe school starts in roughly 4 weeks), so get your photoshoot scheduled today. We can do urban or mountain. Favorite locations include Red Rocks and spots along Bear Creek toward Kittredge. Rocky Mountain National Park is an option too, but additional fees would apply for travel time.
I was in a funk recently, not really being motivated to shoot. Natalie saw a moth the other day and wanted to get a picture of it, so that started an evening of us taking pictures. I used my Olympus ZD 50mm f2 Macro lens and got the images below. I’ll send a free 8×10″ of your choice (from my online gallery) to the first person that can correctly identify this mystery bug. Just leave the name in the comments below.
You never know when a good photo opportunity will crop up. This shot was taken at my daughter’s 5th birthday party at our house in Lakewood. I didn’t expect to get any good portraits, just normal candid snapshot stuff. One of our family friend’s 1 year old climbed into one of Natalie’s new present’s, a Barbie sized doll house. Then she put her face right up to the door. It was too cute to pass up, and this is the result. Many thanks to her mom for letting me share the photo with you.
You wouldn’t expect it, but our local King Soopers has a cake decorator who is making some pretty cool cakes for people. This one was for our daughter’s 5th birthday.
On 06.28.10, In Uncategorized, By Chester
Then
Now (5 years later):
Happy Birthday Natalie, and Happy Anniversary Jennifer.
Welcome to Chester Bullock Photography.
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What’s in a crop?
When I first started working on this image, I did basic things like cropping it down to get a good focus on the bee. I liked the colors and everything else (Olympus really does a great job with color), so I called it done after the crop. The result is above.
But then I kept looking at it and something was bothering me, but I couldn’t quite place it. I posted it to an online forum and asked some friends for their thoughts. Then it hit me. It is way too heavy on the left. The image seems so busy over there, and it was just bothering me. So then I thought about a couple things. I could reduce how tight the crop was:
Nope, that won’t work. Darn stray petal.
So then I decided to try something else entirely. As far as photo etiquette goes, I don’t know if this is proper or not, but I reversed the image. Just flipped it horizontally, loading everything to the right.
I think it works a lot better this way. Your eyes ease into the image instead of being overwhelmed right away. Or maybe it’s because I am left-handed, I don’t know. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
And for those interested in the technical bits, this was shot with an Olympus E-30, on a tripod (only used two of the legs though), with an Olympus Digital Zuiko 50mm f2 macro lens. I really love that lens.