59/365 Socks!!!!

My wife recently surprised me with some socks she found online for the baby, when he comes! So I decided to show them off in my goofy manner. They are really cute socks too!

58/365

Today was a good day. I spent the day with my wife. We went and purchased her a rocking chair today for when she has the baby. After that we just rested up for the day. We watched a bit of Curious case of Benjamin Button, but we will have to finish it tomorrow since we didn't finish it. Anyways, for the picture today I take you back to the days before digital. Of course the pic is shot on digital but the camera I am holding is a medium format film Hasselblad.

57/365

Today was a very long day. I had a shoot that was awesome! Shot the menu for a local Japanese Grill called Yoshi's in Draper. It was also awesome because after the shoot, they sent me home with a ton of food from all that was shot today! After the shoot I had a photography workshop that I went too. It was on lighting composite. Very interesting stuff! It was really neat to learn a bit about it. Well here is a pic of me eating one of the dishes that I photographed today! Shots to follow from the shoot today soon hopefully!

56/365

I bet all of you are tired of hearing me say that I am tired, so I wont say it. Today seemed like a long day. But school is done for the week so I can just relax in the evenings. Except for tomorrow because I have a photo shoot at a restaurant and then a workshop to go to afterwords. So I guess life isnt slowing for the weekend actually. Saturday will be a day of resting and catching up with sleep. Then we do it all over again next week! Well, heres looking at you:

55/365

I took some time on todays pic. So I hope you like it. I am sacrificing some sleep to post this, and already sacrificed sleep to edit this to get it up. This is what we get when I go into the studio and start messing around. And then pull it into photoshop with a picture of a city. Well what do you think?

54/365

I am going to let you peak into the mind of Chase. You ready? So on my way out the door for school tonight, I was thinking to myself of what I could do for the photo tonight after I get out of class and back home. Since I wake up very early for work, I try to have the idea going into the studio of what to shoot so I dont get stuck playing around forever in the studio. Well as I am walking out the door, I see a banana, and think, "huh, that could make a funny smile. I am sure you have seen someone stick a banana up to their mouths simulating a smile. So the picture idea was set. Or was it? Well as the night progressed at school, my mind kept going back to the banana, saying to myself "well I cant just hold it up to my mouth and look at the camera, how lame is that?" I wanted my hands free, so toothpicks came right to mind, just put a couple in the banana and bite down one them and there ya go! No holding the banana up to your mouth!. Well, I was set. I was on my way home to capture a fun picture with a banana. But wait, thats not it, my mind was still processing. "Well a banana is not like a full smile, its kinda a bit like Mona Lisa's smile". So I thought I would try and dress myself up like Mona Lisa and look at the camera just like she is in the painting, and I would photoshop me onto this background just like the painting. So I get home, I am dead tired. I eat some dinner, and guess what. I have to get up in six hours. So to dress myself and photoshop I wont be getting to bed at least for another hour. So you dont get banana Mona Lisa tonight. I might try it some time down the road when I dont have to wake up early. Well thanks for reading if you made it this far! Thanks for stopping by! Heres lookin' at you:

53/365

Today was a pretty good day. I had a meeting with a client to discuss the look he wants with his product. We shoot this friday! I will have more details to follow after the shoot! I am excited for this shoot too! After my meeting I went and registered at Target with my wife for our baby. We also headed over to Ikea and bought a dresser for the baby's room which I will be putting up soon. Now I am laying in bed about to watch a movie with the Mrs. and call it a night! Probably one of the best mondays in a while. I hate mondays usually, but not today! Well take care. Thanks for stopping by!

52/365

Well I struck it rich as a rap artist! Put myself up on the charts! Now I am blinging! Got me a gold and diamond grill too! Well at least this is what photoshop gives me... Lol. One part of the get up is real though. The watch is. All other gold is photoshopped! I don't think I could ever do this to my teeth anyways. Also, busting a rhyme is not my thing either. But if you are intersted in hearing a rap by a photographer click here, it starts at about 33 seconds in. Oh and by the way, if you are a photographer looking at getting into commercial work, the video in the link "Sessions with Joey L" is amazing! Well to the pic!

51/365

Today I had a portrait shoot and the family wanted to get some shots in the snow. So we drove up into the mountains where the snow was. But guess what? Despite the nice weather in the morning, and a bit of sunshine, it was snowing pretty hard by the time they had set for the shoot. But the family were champs and bared through it, and in result we ended up with some pretty great shots! I have done some shooting in the cold before, and luckily knew what being prepared for such a shoot would take. I had my snowboard coat on with the hood over my head along with an ear warmer band around my head. I had gloves on to keep my hands warm as I shot away. But this I learned because of a past shoot where I did not have any gloves and my hands froze. When you shoot you cant keep your hands in your pockets! One is holding the camera and the other is pushing the shutter button. So the past shoots I have done over this winter I have been prepared!

50/365

Well, we have made it half way to triple digits today of 365 days of self portraits. What a ride its been so far. Some days its been very hard to think of an idea to shoot and other days I have an idea and go for it! I have been pleased so far with the results! What about all of you? Are there favorites? Are you enjoying my photos everyday? Or maybe I just bore you. Well whatever it is, this self project has already in a short 50 days helped me understand lighting better then before shooting everyday with studio lights. I have more confidence with clients when shooting them and in turn been able to capture some really awesome pics of clients! I have had more notice to my work, and in turn will have some really cool shoots coming up for clients! Today I had this fine idea! What do you think? View bigger here!

49/365

Love is what the world needs more of. I know its not the best work yet, but tues-thurs are very hard days to have time to spend because I have school those days. I promise I have more ideas that sound really fun to do, but until then you get some fun light writing! LOVE!

48/365

Well its Wednesday, and I am about to endure my four hour long film class. But before I do so, I will please your eyes with a photo. I am very happy the way this turned out. I was kinda a quick thing because I was really busy today. But after shooting it and seeing the result, I must say it turned out very nice. This guitar was/is my Dad's. I took it from his house (borrowed) so I could learn it. Have not got to far with it, but I can strum a few songs. Keyboard is my main thing! My dad has a really nice acoustic guitar at his house, so I dont feel to bad having this one.

I am kinda excited for the coming two weeks though. I have quite a bit of shoots. And once again in a week, my wife and I get to go see the baby. She will be 25 weeks along! We have beaten the odds so far and now we have made it into baby viability! So the chance of the baby surviving if she has to give birth went from no chance to there being a chance. They cant save a baby till its 24 weeks along. But they thought she would have lost the baby long ago. We definitely have seen a miracle!

Keep coming back for more 365 day pictures and posts! Also for pics of client work! I am also excited for the launch of my website soon http://www.chaselester.com Thanks for stopping by!

47/365

Wow what a day! Back to work early. Weekends go by so fast, especially when you have a holiday weekend! I was super tired today too. I really have a ton of photos to go through and edit, so this weekend will be spent with more shooting and hopefully all the editing! I am super tired tonight, getting to bed I do the usual routine, edit pictures, burn or post pictures online, rinse and repeat. So I thought I would share a glimpse into the editing process!--

46/365

Today I did a picture that turned out pretty nice! Nothing like yesterday in comedy, but just a regular portrait today. I thought I wouldn't embarrass my self too much today, so a normal portrait was fitting. This is what is known as a high key portrait. Over exposed bright colors such as white. What do you think? Good or bad? Tomorrow I might do the opposite and do a low key shot to compare. Other then that, it has been a nice lazy day today on this wonderful holiday! Back to work tomorrow though.

45/365

Happy Valentines day! Cupid was out working hard today. If he did not shoot you this year, I am sure he will next year. Did any of you do anything special? I made steak for dinner, and boy was it a adventure. We were out of gas in the grill and instead of getting more we decided to broil them. So I was watching the steak broil, and I guess the oven expands when it gets hot, so I pulled the rack out to flip the steak and the rack fell causing one of the steaks to fly off the pan to a lower rack in the oven. After all the commotion, we finally got to sit down and enjoy our V-day dinner. We did top off the night with yummy brownie crepes, with strawberries and whipped cream and yummy carmel sauce. Delish!!! Well I did catch cupid in the act of shooting someone, here he is:



out takes:

Cupid after a long days work:

My dad the Pro

My dad is a Pro Golfer. I did this shot for him a little while back and gave him a big print for his office at the golf course. Here it is!:

44/365

Valentines weekend! Look what my wife made me. She has been feeling under the weather lately so it was very nice of her to make it for me. Happy V-day to all you! Whether you celebrated today or are celebrating tomorrow, hope its a good one! I also got a hair cut from last night to tonight. Cant you tell? Its much shorter! Well here is to yummy treats for the 14th of February!

Been a long time coming

Well I have been super busy lately. Still have to take my 365 day photo for today. I have also been doing some product shots today. But as for this post, I have some few weeks old work to post up. So here are some pics from a few shoots over the last month!

Bridals:









More bridals:









Modeling stuff:

43/365

Not much time to spare on day 43. Just recently returned from a game night we had with the cousins! It was fun, though I stunk it up in tonight's games we played. We did have some good laughs. Anyways, just so you know...I love gum!

42/365

I look very bald in this pic. I don't think I am this bald....yet.... Almost time to start shaving all the hair off completely. I do need a hair cut though. But I was messing around to day with limes. Didn't you know that limes are good for the eyes just like cucumbers? But even better! The stinging means its working!

41/365

I am on a black and white shadow theme these past couple of times. I played around with one light today trying to see what kind of lighting effect I could get. I am happy with todays result. What do you all think? There is not too much to report today. I am tired from my new work schedule. But the good thing is I get of right around noon which gives me plenty of time if I have clients to shoot. Well here is todays pic!

40/365

I had an idea to play with the shadowing light kinda like I did on day 35 as I was driving home from class tonight. Though as I made it closer to home the wheels in my head just kept turning until I saw an image in my head I wanted to accomplish. Well I think I got pretty darn close to how I saw it in my head. There might be a few more night things I would add if it were not so late and I had to get up early in the morning. However, I am very pleased with the way this photo turned out. So here is day 40! What do you think the title of the photo should be? View big on black! Much better looking Thanks for stopping by!

39/365

We went to the doctors today to meet with the specialist again. My wife is 23 weeks along. Well everything was pretty good today. The baby still has cysts on one of his kidneys, but the other kidney is functioning just fine. A person can live with one kidney. But everything else looks very good. So it looks like we have had a miracle. Well here is my son:

38/365

Wait.... who is supposed to be gaining weight? Thats right, I have put on a few pounds too during my wife's pregnancy. Is that normal? I don't know. Anyways, today we have made it to 23 weeks! We go in to meet with the specialist again tomorrow! I will let everyone know how things are going! Thanks for stoppin' by, and enjoy the picture...

37/365

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, what about five pictures...in one? I guess this picture is worth five thousand words then. Well, the weekend has been a very good one thus far. I had a food shoot today for a possible client. I caught up on sleep, and went out with my wife and purchased her some maternity clothes. And I am very happy that the weekend is still not over. I now have a fan page on facebook, so head on over and become a fan. I am planning some give aways for my fans here in the near future. Well for the pic today: Want to see it larger? Go here

36/365

This is my picture for the 365 days weekly photo contest over at flickr. The theme this week was motion. Well yet again this week we have a knife, and also some sort of food. Here it is a papaya. Yum. We ate it with our dinner too. Out of all the pictures that are submitted in the week, only five are selected to vote on. You can head over to Stephen's blog to see the five selected tomorrow and vote for your favorite. The voting ends sunday night and the winner announced monday along with a new challenge for the week. I won week two with this photo. Since I won week two I however don't think that I can be up for nomination till next week's contest because of the rule over in the contest. But it was a fun photo to do anyways. Here it is....enjoy!

35/365 man of mystery

Who ever said Austin Powers was the man of mystery never met me! Ha! JK. This picture was an idea spawned from the film genre "film noir". We watch one of these type of movies last night in my film class. If you dont know what this genre is, they were films made back around the 1950s that had to do with crime or some similar subject and were associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style (shadows). I wanted to do a Black and White that was visual like this. That gave way to imagination. So in this photo I left the left side of me dark and there is shadowing over my whole self. Leaving me...The Man of Mystery...

34/365 Close Call

*Disclaimer*
If you are trying a 365 day photo project, do not try this at home or anywhere...I am what you would call a professional (at not poking my eye out with a knife). If you decide to try this, I wont be held responsible if you end up having to wear a pirate patch the rest of your life, or a glass eye. Though I think it would be pretty cool to have a glass eye. I would get many different styles. Have any of you seen "Last Action Hero"? Arnold Schwarzenegger is the main character in it, but the main bad guy has many different styles of glass eyes in it. That would be cool. You could play plenty of pranks with a glass eye. But I think I will stay with my real eye instead. I like seeing too much. Couldn't do photography without seeing. Well this is a real knife (kitchen aid) and the knife is really that close to my eye. No editing the knife in. What you see is what you get. Here it is:

33/365

So I must admit, this was not the picture I had in mind for today. I do like it however. Its kinda funny, and if anything else I like the lighting. My original picture for the day just didn't turn out like I was hoping but this one turned out pretty good. Hopefully I will get to shoot some of the ideas I have soon. Anyways, here is the pic for the day. Goodnight! Come back tomorrow!

32/365

I had this idea for a while now, and decided to put my eyes through the pain. Yet another sacrifice I am willing to make for the picture! LOL. Onions always kill the eyes. But oh do they flavor a meal! What about you guys? Do you like onions? Do you hate onions? For me it depends on what their on or in, and also what type of mood I am in at the moment. Well here is todays pic! Thanks for looking!