Senior Portraits – Jason Duchow Photography

Senior Portraits with Joselynn – Central Valley High

March 29, 2016/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

I was very excited to work with Central Valley Senior Joselynn for her senior portraits because of something we have in common. Joseylnn is a stand out Track and Field athlete with a passion for the throwing events (Shot Put, Discus and the Hammer). When I was a freshman in High School I was introduced to the throwing events and fell in love with them so when Joseylnn applied to be a Senior Model and shared her interests with me I knew I had to work with her! We started out with a studio session where the main focus was to get some images highlighting the throwing events, especially her favorite event the Hammer.

During out outdoor session we started out at the Central Valley Track and Field complex with our main goal being to get a great action portrait of Joselynn throwing the hammer. Yes, it did make me a little nervous having that 8 pound ball flung around near my lights and camera but mostly I put my faith and trust in Joselynn’s skill and abilities and she did not disappoint!

Joselynn has seen a photo I did of a past senior in a tunnel with some dramatic lighting and wanted to get a similar photo in that location with her Letterman Jacket, I was happy to oblige. This tunnel is very narrow, this makes the lighting very tricky but without the lights this tunnel would not be a very interesting location so it is well worth the contortions that we have to do to make it work.

For the rest of our session we headed off to Farragut State Park and the Marina in Hope, Idaho.

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/)

Senior Portraits with Cody

March 28, 2016/in Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

Cody was one of my Class of 2016 Senior Models from Sandpoint High School, she is an extremely talented softball player. One of the things that always stood out to me was Cody’s dimples, but as we started working together I realized she does not have dimples . . . . she has a single dimple on her right cheek. We worked together on three different occasions, first we had a studio session which was followed a couple of days later by a fun road trip session. We worked together a third time when I needed to test out some equipment that I received from Interfit Photoraphic, those photos will be posted on the blog later. To start out, here are a few from our studio session.

To start off our outdoor session we were at the Sandpoint High School Softball Field.

After the softball field we loaded up in the car and took a road trip to Montana. The final destination was the Ross Creek Cedars and along the way we kept our eye out for some interesting spots. We found a great spot along side the highway with a nice patch of lupines.

A little further down the road we found a great spot along side the river. There was a thunderstorm moving in quickly so we hustled to get the light set up and it was certainly worth it, the look of the rain falling in the distance made one of my favorite landscape portraits of the 2015 portrait season.

The rain came down very hard, but thankfully it did not last long. We continued down the road and endured some light sprinkles to get some photos at this location.

When we got to the Ross Creek Cedars it had started to rain again. We covered my strobe with some plastic to protect it from the water and thankfully the thick trees helped with the light rainfall. With the overcast conditions the area was fairly dark but we were still able to manage to get a handful of good shots.

As we left the Cedars the combination of the sun peeking through the overcast sky and some low level clouds in the distance made for a very cool scene. The only angle we could get at it included a guard rail along the road, but we made use of it and captured the scene.

We debated about where to go to try to capture the sunset, in the end we decided to back track the same way we came and as luck would have it the best spot we found was the same spot on the Clark Fork River that we had been when we had the thunderstorm roll in.

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/)

Senior Portraits with Andra

March 28, 2016/in Senior Photos, Uncategorized /by Jason Duchow

Andra was my Class of 2016 Senior Model from Post Falls High School. For her portrait session we started out with some time in the Studio, she is a setter for the Post Falls Volleyball team so we spend a lot of our studio time working on some sports themed photos for her.

After the studio we explored some areas in Eastern Washington. At the next location we started out with some natural light portraits and then we pulled out the strobe so we could capture all of the vibrant colors of the spring grass, deep blue sky and the great cloud formations. You can see by the vibrant colors we are able to capture why I love working with my senior models during the spring, you don’t get these same colors in July and August!

After a while we moved on to the greenbluff area just north of Spokane.

We finished up with some shots around sunset time.

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 2015

January 1, 2016/in Family Photos, Senior Photos, Sports Action Portraits /by Jason Duchow

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.

Destination Senior Portraits with Sky

June 11, 2015/in Destination Portrait Session, Senior Photos /by Jason Duchow

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/)

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/)

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