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.