Sandpoint Senior Photos – Jason Duchow Photography

Favorite 100 Portraits of 2015

Every year at the end of December I have the extremely difficult job of going through all of the photos I have taken for the past 12 months and picking out my favorite 100 portraits. With such great, talented and creative clients this is a job I mostly look forward to, but with a hind of dread as I know will have to eliminate from contention many portraits that I really love. I readily admit that I do have an biased connection to some of the photos that I choose as I know the challenges that went into making them. It may be that someone else might choose a very different top 100 list, but then it would not be MY favorites 100 portraits of the year. With the number of jobs and clients I have every year narrowing this list down to 100 unfortunately means that not every one of my clients or subjects makes this end of the year video, I wish they all could be here but then I would have to have a top 200 or 300 portraits video and that would double the play time of the video and with attention spans what they are these days keeping things shorter is often sweeter!

One of the photos featured in this video was selected by Senior Style Guide to make their yearly Hot 100 issue featuring the best senior photo artists in the country, I am humbled and honored to have been selected for this honor a second year in a row. You can check out the winning entry on this blog post. I think that is enough words, now on with the show!

Thanks for taking the time to check out my video. If you want to see my selections from last year you can check out my Favorite 100 Portraits of 2014 here.

Destination Senior Portraits with Lacie

June 12, 2015/in Destination Portrait Session, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

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.

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.

Austin’s Senior Photos (Sandpoint Photographer)

December 10, 2012/in Senior Photos, Sports Portraits /by Jason Duchow

Austin is the keeper for the 2012 4A State Champion Sandpoint Soccer team and we worked together at the end of August to capture some images for his senior photos in. Now that the season is over I was able to get his final choices and work up a blog post. As I often do we spent the first half of our time getting the more traditional yearbook friendly photos, then when we had those finished we concluded with some more dramatically lit soccer themed photos and some action portraits.

We were even able to sneak in a quick family portrait.

Now on to the action shots!

Jason Duchow Photography is located near Sandpoint and Priest River Idaho and serves throughout Idaho and Eastern Washington. Jason specializes in on location portrait photography often with the use of dramatic lighting techniques. Jason also does freelance work providing top quality sports photography for www.idahosports.com, The Coeur d’Alene Press, The Bonner County Daily Bee, Priest River Times, Newport Miner, Sandpoint Newsline and a handful of other newspapers and publications.

Paul’s Senior Photos (Rathdrum Photographer)

September 27, 2012/in Portraits, Senior Photos, Sports Portraits /by Jason Duchow

Paul is a senior soccer player from Lakeland High School, we captured some fun images at a number of different locations in Rathdrum and then finished up our time at the High School to take some sports themed photos.

This next photo is one of my favorites from the entire senior photo season, we set up this shot to look like it was taken after dark and then I turned the stadium lights on in Photoshop.

Michael’s Senior Photos (Sandpoint Photographer)

September 20, 2012/in Portraits, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

Michael has quite the smile and he used it liberally during our senior session! Here are some of the finished images from our session!

Kelsey’s Senior Photos #2 (Priest River Photographer)

August 10, 2012/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

This last winter I had a great studio session with Kelsey, now that summer is in full swing we were able to have our outdoor session to wrap up her senior photos. Here are some of the final images from our afternoon at Priest Lake.

Ian’s Senior Photos (Sandpoint Photographer)

August 9, 2012/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

Here are some of my favorites from Ian’s senior photo shoot.

Ashlan’s Senior Photos (Sandpoint Photographer)

July 14, 2012/in Portraits, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

This week I had a great senior photo session in Sandpoint with Ashlan, here are some of the final images from the evening.

Megan’s Senior Photos – (Sandpoint Photographer)

April 26, 2012/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

Recently I worked with Megan to create her Senior Portraits, we started at her home and them took a trip to Garfield Bay to finish up our session.

In Megan’s back yard stands the playhouse that was build by her father when she was little, unfortunately it was used very little ever since the discovery of a spider inside many years ago. We braved the risk of spiders and I set up a flash inside the small building as well as one outside aimed through the window. Since the building as well as it’s furnishings were now very small compared to the now adult sized Megan I kept thinking of Alice in Wonderland growing too large for the house she found herself in. The cards hanging on the wall, minus the Queen of Hearts, seemed quite fitting!

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