Main Photo Blog – Page 2 – Jason Duchow Photography

Destination Senior Portraits with Lacie

My third and final Destination Senior Portrait session with my Class of 2016 Senior Models was with Lacie in the Astoria area. I have visited and driven through Astoria on many occasions and every I would dream of doing some Senior Portraits in many of the locations I would see. Finally my dream cam true! We started out at the Astoria Column, we had some fun throwing small wooden planes sold in the gift shop from the top of the tower and then made use of the awesome view to get the bridge and mountains as a backdrop.

We pondered the idea of going to the famed house where they filmed the movie Goonies, but we decided against it and instead explored the surrounding residential areas and found a nice shaded spot for some natural light portraits.

Next we visited a pier along the river, there were some great buildings on the pier where we could shoot inside and out.

Next we worked out way down the river and found a couple spots with boats, pilons and an old moss covered dock ruins.

We concluded out day at the wreck of the Peter Iredale. This boat ran ashore on October 25, 1906 and has been steadily decaying ever since. The hope was for a vibrant sunset as a backdrop for the portraits but the clouds in the distance had other ideas. So, rather than depend on the weather we added out own vibrant colors to the scene by putting a red gelled strobe inside of the wreckage. This is something I had done previously when shooting a landscape photo of the wreckage and always thought it would be fun to add a High School Senior into the mix. Here is the end result.

Destination Senior Portraits with Sky

The second of my three Destination Senior Portrait sessions with Class of 2016 Senior Models was with Sky. My base of operations for my three scheduled days was Seaside Oregon, for Sky’s senior portraits we traveled south to see what we could find. As can be expected on the Oregon Coast in the spring we had it’s fair share of of rain, but we had enough breaks in the downfall to get some great photos. The first place we stopped was just past Canon Beach and it featured some great rock formations and a very cool waterfall with a shallow enough stream for some rain boot stomping!

Next in our exploring we found a great dense forest spot with a lot of moss covered trees and a nice hint of sunlight peaking through for a rim light on some natural light portraits.

We continued down the coast and found a great turnout overlooking the ocean, the town of Manzanita and it featured some great dramatic clouds.

Next we did some urban style portraits in the small town of Wheeler, Oregon.

In the Rockaway Beach area we braved a few raindrops to get this portrait.

The tide was out so we were able to get some fun portraits on some rock formations just before Garibaldi.

We finished up our time in the town of Garibaldi. There is a great public pier there that I have been dying to do portraits on for years, I tried one time before on a trip with friends but the rain hindered that effort.

After the pier the plan was to do some photos in another spot for sunset, but it started raining pretty hard so we stuck around Garibaldi to see if the rain would stop. Thankfully it stopped just long enough for us to catch a little bit of the sunset peaking through the clouds.

Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work. Jason is also a Sponsored Pro for Interfit Photographic (http://interfitphotographic.com/)

Faith – Destination Senior Portraits

June 10, 2015/in Destination Portrait Session, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

I have long wanted to do some portraits on the Oregon Coast and finally this year during spring break I had the opportunity to do some destination senior sessions with three of my Class of 2016 Senior Models. My first session was with Faith, an upcoming senior from Lakeland High School. I have had my eye on faith as a senior model since the basketball season of her freshman year. Faith is one of the friendliest people I have ever met, every time I would be at a Lakeland basketball game she would seemingly go out of her way to make sure to say hi and give me a huge smile. Not only was she engaging in person but she was also always very active with the content I would post on social media, this of coruse is very helpful when you want people to see your photos online! Finally, after three years of waiting I was able to invite her to be a part of my team of senior models and she agreed without hesitation!

We started out our session at Ecola State Park located between Seaside and Cannon Beach. Before we could make it to the beach we had to stop and get a few shots in moss covered trees.

Then onward to the beach.

After spending some time on the water we headed back to Seaside to grab some lunch. After lunch we visited a location that I knew would be perfect for some photos with Faith, the Seaside Carousel Mall.

On the previous photos I used a fast shutter speed so that everything was crisp and sharp, but I also wanted to do some photos where you had the sense of the motion of the carosel so I used a technique called “Panning”. For this technique you have to use a slow shutter speed and move the camera along with the motion of your subject. This technique is often used with car and bicycle racing but I wanted to employ it here for a portrait. The goal is to get motion blur on most of the objects in the photo while still having your main subject be relatively sharp, here is one of my favorite takes using this method.

We finished up in the mall with a few still portraits and a some laughs.

After the Mall we walked around Seaside a bit and found a few spots around town.

With evening approaching we headed back to Ecola State Park to get the beginning of sunset.

Then, for our final photos of the day we found ourselves at Cannon Beach.

I am so glad that I had the opportunity to spend the day with Faith we had a great time and we ended up with some fun and beautiful images and hopefully some great memories as well!

Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work for www.idahosports.com, The Coeur d’Alene Press, The Bonner County Daily Bee, Priest River Times, Newport Miner, Living Local and a handful of other newspapers and publications.

2015 Sandpoint Graduation and Grad Night Photo Booth

June 7, 2015/in Graduation, Photo Booth /by Jason Duchow

One on One Lighting Workshop in Sandpoint

June 4, 2015/in For Photographers, Models, Workshops /by Jason Duchow

Footprints in the Sand – 2015 Sandpoint High School Spring Dance Production

May 28, 2015/in Cheerleading, Dance Performances, Dance Team /by Jason Duchow

2015 Lost in the 50’s Parade

May 27, 2015/in Parades, Video /by Jason Duchow

Winter Senior Portraits with Taylor Ann

March 28, 2015/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

This winter in North Idaho ended up being a total flop when it came to doing winter senior portraits.. We had a little bit of snow early but then, in the heart of the winter when it was time to actually start doing some sessions with my senior models there was not even snow to be found on Schweitzer Mountain Resort. I even ended up traveling to Glacier National Park at one point to see if I could find any good winter conditions there, I was able to find a bit of snow up high, but there was still a lot less than I would have expected.

Thankfully there was a day when we got a surprise snow storm so I contacted Taylor Ann, my Class of 2016 Senior model from Newport and she just happened to not be in school that day. I quickly gathered up some gear and headed out to meet up with her. Of course the weather was par for the course and as soon as we met up it had warmed up and started raining in town. Since we we were together and had the time we thought we would see if we could find any snow at a higher elevation and the search paid off. We found just enough snow to grab a few fun shots and call it a day. We had nice overcast conditions, falling snow and some nice white snow on the ground so for this shoot we worked completely with natural light.

Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work. Jason is also a Sponsored Pro for Interfit Photographic (http://interfitphotographic.com/)

Favorite 100 Portraits of 2014

January 1, 2015/in Family Photos, Senior Photos, Sports Action Portraits /by Jason Duchow

The job of narrowing down all of the portraits I have taken the past year to only my favorite 100 is so very difficult, I have great clients and every one of them have photos that I love and want to include in my final Favorite 100 portraits of 2014, but alas I have to narrow it down to only 100. 2014 was a great year for me. I added new photos to my portfolio that I have had in my mind for a long time, I learned new things and I pushed myself to try new things. For the first time I entered photos into the Senior Style Guide Hot 100 contest and was thrilled to find out that I had an image selected in the urban category, check it out here. This was a hard job, but now I can present to you a short video featuring my favorite 100 portraits of 2014!

Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work. Jason is also a Sponsored Pro for Interfit Photographic (http://interfitphotographic.com/)

2014 Senior Style Guide Hot 100

December 2, 2014/in Behind the Scenes, How'd You Do That, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

Every year Senior Style Guide accepts submissions from senior photo artists throughout the world. The contest has 10 categories and they choose 10 winning images per category for a total of 100 winning images. This year I entered the contest for the first time and was pleased to find out that I had a photo that made the final cut!

The image that was selected was of Sandpoint High School senior Preston Cole. The category for this photo was “Urban” and it was taken on the backside of an old warehouse near the loading docks. This was a slightly tricky photo to make as you will see in the behind the scenes photo of our lighting set up. Here is the finished image of Preston.

Here is what it looks like straight out of the camera:Now the lighting set up. This image was made using two strobes, one boomed directly above Preston with a 7″ reflector and a 30 degree grid. The point of this light was to light his shoulders and hair as well as the rail, stairs and a little spill on the door. The idea here was to mimic a light on the building above the door. For the main light I used a strobe with a 47″ gridded octa, the light was positioned to create a lighting pattern right between Rembrandt and Loop when he was looking at the camera. The photo was shot with a Canon 5DIII with a 24-70 f2.8 lense at f10.So now let me explain what was tricky about making this photo. If you look closely at my assistant Mark you will notice that the lip on the loading bay was very narrow. It was too narrow to fit the base of the c-stand so we had to use one of the rubber bumpers for the third leg. The bumpers, as you can see, are not level with the loading bay floor so left to itself the stand would not be stable. To solve this we used all of our weight bags on the back legs and had Mark putting his weight on the stand and NEVER letting go! Here is a close up for you.To close I just want to say thank you to Vickie Black and the crew at Senior Style Guide for putting together the Hot 100. I am grateful for the opportunity to enter the contest and very excited to be selected. I am excited to work with the upcoming class of 2016 and look forward to making more great images for them. Who knows maybe one of those will make the cut for next year’s contest!

Jason Duchow Photography is located in Oldtown, Idaho and does on location portraiture throughout Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in environmental portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques and is also known for his freelance sports photography work for www.idahosports.com, The Coeur d’Alene Press, The Bonner County Daily Bee, Priest River Times, Newport Miner, Living Local and a handful of other newspapers and publications.