Garrett is a senior at Bear Creek High School in Lakewood, Colorado. We had a great time shooting his senior pictures at Corwina Park in Jefferson County. The photos came out great, and Garrett was fun to work with.
If you need senior photos taken for JeffCo schools (Lakewood, Bear Creek, Green Mountain, Golden or Evergreen), contact me today to get your session scheduled. Slots are filling up fast, and yearbook deadlines are right around the corner.
I recently had the pleasure of taking Senior Pictures for Golden High School Senior Chris K., Class of 2011. We had a great time shooting in Corwina Park outside of Evergreen.
Headshot due dates are closing fast. Contact Chester today to schedule your Senior Picture shoot for this year.
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.
Recently I was contracted to do some product photos for a new local Colorado company – FirstGearKits.com. Based in Evergreen, they sell various types of emergency kits to cover potential natural disasters in whatever area you live, work or play in. Having been a Boy Scout when I was younger, I still believe in the motto “Be Prepared” and definitely see the value in kits like this. Heck, as often as our kids lose cellphone chargers, a kit including a hand crank cell charger would be worth it by itself.
Photos from the 13 year old, 0 flight Jefferson County Junior Baseball League game between the Louisville Bulldogs and Lakewood Tigers are now online and available for purchase. Most of the photos are of Lakewood players, but there are also some photos of Louisville players as well (including the catcher). As part of being the official team photographer for Lakewood this year, I intend to get action photos of every team to complement the Picture Day posed photos we are taking on May 16. If you have another JCJBL team you would like photos taken of, please contact me.
To stay current on what games I will be at, and to know when photos have been posted, please become a fan of my Facebook page.
Only one thing seems to generate a livelier debate in the photography world than Canon versus Nikon – stock photography. Magazines and blogs are rife with material talking about the evils of microstock, the difficulties of getting proper rights managed sales, and people wondering what the problem is. It has indeed become a world where anyone with a good camera can contribute, but it doesn’t appear a lot of people are making any money at it.
When I finally decided to get serious about photography a couple years ago, I thought I could make a go of being a stock photographer. Then I had a wake up call. I submitted several images that i thought had real potential, only to be rejected for what seemed like various and random reasons. Indeed, some of the stock photo companies seem to have so many reviewers working. As a result, the subjective part of what gets accepted and what doesn’t feels very disjointed and random. Ultimately, I did have some submissions accepted. I have even had a few sales (the sum total has amounted to about $3.50).
The bottom line is that, for me anyhow, stock photography was not all I thought it could be. Sure, there are success stories out there. But as with other parts of photography, there are a few well known success stories sprinkled in among the majority of people who have had little success. What made me write about this today? I was reading a copy of Photoshop User last weekend, and a nice parody of the concept of stock photography was presented. Earlier in the morning, there was a Denver Post article talking about how Colorado is pursuing the license rights as a taxable item. My hat is off to the photographer mentioned, Dan Coffey of Edwards. He has enough money coming in from stock photography to have a significant tax problem if the state can come after that income source. But he is one of the few. If you are thinking about getting into the stock photography game, think long and hard about it, and look at your images with a very critical eye.
I think it hit 70°F yesterday here in Lakewood, Colorado. While February and March are the snowiest months in Colorado, spring is right around the corner. And with that comes the time to start thinking about Senior Pictures for the class of 2010. If you like the work I have done, contact me today so we can start thinking about when and where we can get a start on the pictures for your Senior. If you haven’t seen my work yet, take a look at my portrait portfolio. My rates are reasonable, and I will make sure you are happy with the end result.
It’s been interesting to see this guy grow up. When I first met Garrett he was 9 years old, sitting in his mother’s garage, trying to put a bike back together. He is 15 now, and will be 16 this spring. He is as tall as me now (6’2″), and a very charismatic person. People enjoy being around him. He is also a naturally gifted athlete that could do well at anything he set his mind too. Currently that is skateboarding. He is a big person, both in height and presence. I think shooting from this perspective (down on the ground) really captured that about him.
What is the point of all this? When you are taking a portrait of someone, you are trying to get the essence of who they are. Garrett, just like other teens these days, spends a lot of time in front of the computer. But his passion has always been outside. Riding a bike, shooting baskets, riding rollerblades and now skateboards. This is who he is. It’s easier for me to interpret this about him, since he is my son (well, step-son). But as a budding portrait photographer (thanks to his sister’s need for senior pictures this year), I want to know these things about my clients so that I can capture who they are. They won’t be the same person in 5 years as they are right now. That’s why I think it is so important to achieve this. And that is probably why I have been moving into the senior picture business so slowly. But I am ready, and have a couple of kids who I will be doing pictures for in the coming months. And of course, I have the big guy lined up for next year (Garrett is currently a sophomore at Lakewood High School here in Colorado).
I have had my Olympus E-510 for over a year now, and I can say it has served me well. From time to time people ask me why I chose to go with Olympus for my DSLR purchase. There were a couple of factors at work. The kit I purchased (E-510 with two lenses) was very competitively priced compared to what Canon and Nikon had to offer. To get comparable equipment from the other two would have cost me a few hundred dollars more. Sensor resolution (10MP) was the same as the other two manufacturers. And then there was the big deciding factor – image stabilization. Olympus was the first with IS for their DSLR cameras. You had to buy the 510 to get it, but it was there. Even better, it is in-camera. That means the lenses don’t cost extra if you want IS (or VR) in them. That really helped frame my opinion up front. But this wasn’t (to me) a small purchase.
Wolf Camera, in conjunction with Olympus, had a special deal going where you could “borrow” a camera (E-400 or E-510) for a weekend to take some pictures and see what you thought. I jumped at that chance. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, they were out of the 510s. I took the 400 home for the weekend and really enjoyed shooting with it. I must admit, I was intimidated by making the jump from my P&S (Canon Powershot G5) to a full on DSLR. But I had a good weekend of shooting, and decided what the heck.
I then started doing my research online. I found the 510 for an even better price from B&H Photo/ Video. Fortunately for me, the manager at Wolf decided to match the prices I found at B&H when I was ready to walk out the door. That willingness to eat the margin a bit also meant I will buy from them in the future – mostly prints and stuff I think.
Now that I have had this camera for roughly a year, I naturally have my list of likes and dislikes about it.
Likes:
- Lightweight (in my camera/ laptop backpack, this hardly adds any weight)
- Great image quality (never had an issue with the image quality)
- Sensor cleaning (the sensor cleaning system seems to work well, don’t see any problems in my images)
- Kit lenses are good quality (I wouldn’t know what ‘great’ glass is, but these do everything I ask)
- Live view (even if I never use it)
Dislikes:
- Limited EV bracketing (3 shots, in one stop increments)
- Unique Olympus USB connector (cables are more expensive and harder to find)
- No tilt/ swivel LCD (was useful on my G5)
- Requirement of Oly xD card for pano mode (I can take panos manually and stitch in something else though)
- “Live capture” software has additional $$ cost
- FL-36 (seriously, why did they even build/ sell this?)
All in all, I can’t say I made a very poor decision in buying this Olympus. It continues to serve me well. That said, Olympus as a whole doesn’t seem to be very innovative at the moment. This worries me. I don’t have a huge investment in Olympus glass and gear, but it would be nice if they had an upgrade path that looked enticing. Compared to what I am seeing from Canon and Nikon, Olympus has a lot of catch up to do. I am not ready to upgrade just yet, so this isn’t of immediate concern. Who knows, maybe they do have something impressive in the works. They need to. The E-3 is outdated now, and the E-30 is not even close to being an evolution.
Slots for Senior Pictures are going fast
With the kids back in school, everyone wants their Senior Pictures soon. Slots are filling up fast, book yours today. Urban or mountain landscapes, we shoot on location for Seniors in Alameda, Bear Creek, Green Mountain, Golden and Lakewood High School’s.
Yearbook Headshot Due Dates: