Ballet

So I must say, I am a fan of ballet. I have never actually been to a ballet, but the dancing and art is very beautiful. Last year, around this same time of year, I wanted to do some ballet portraits. After asking around, a good friend of mine introduced me to some awesome dancers. We ended up doing some studio shots, which at the time I thought were very awesome shots. We did end up with some fantastic results. The issue now I think was I was just starting out in learning studio lighting, and in general was still picking up on how to really shoot photography. I could produce results that were great, but after a years growth, I can do much better now.

Over the course of this past year, I have deaply studied using artificial lighting (small strobes and large studio lighting) in most all my work and balancing that light with ambient light when not in a studio situation, such as outside in sunlight. Now in most all my work I use studio strobes, whether I am inside or outside. And one reason I do this is because the light creates some very unique looks, and adds drama and emotion to the photo, much more then ambient light alone can do. Some refer to it as creative lighting. It can become quite a burden though somtimes when hawling all this equipment around. But its worth it.

So feeling I have grown quite a bit this past year in my style and in my knowlege, I decided to invite these two dancers back into the studio for some updated shots. I believe what we came up with was a hundred times better then last year! Now what do you think about these shots?







And here is another awesome thing! I am giving away a fine art print of one of the ones on a black background! A 16x20 mounted on hard gator board ready to be hung in your house! How do you win? Its pretty simple- Head over to my fan page on Facebook and hit the like button at the top if you have not already. Then hit the tab called suggest to friends, and suggest to your friends! Once my page gets to 225 likes a random genorator will select a number. When someone likes my page it puts them on the top of the list of people that liked my page, which in essence they are the "xx" person to like my page. If you were the 190th person to like my page, you will have the number 190. Thats where the random number genorator comes in. The number it choses will be whoever liked my page at that number. And that person is the winner and will recieve this fine art print! Good luck and thanks for stopping in!

This past month

Well, as I said in my first post this year, I wanted to be more active on this blog. I have become more active on my fan page on facebook, though I really would like to get this blog up and going more often. I have had quite a bit of shoots over this past month. I will go over a few of the shots from these shoots in this post. Though I would like to post per shoot, but that will be a future try. Anyways, why don't we start.



This photo is a bit outdated. Its my boy's 8 month photo. Since then though my little boy has actually turned 9 months, so I will have to update soon with the nine month photo. But anyways, this shoot here is something my wife and I have been doing since he has been born. It portrays his growth every month. We have done the exact same photo with him in his rocking chair and his stuffed animal since he was two months I believe. Once he hits one year, the photos will become every other month or so.



A new model contacted me wanting to do a shoot with me. This was from our studio shoot. A more business look here. I have started a new venture in my photography, which is micro stock. I now contribute to micro stock. If you are unfamiliar with it, its a place where businesses or really anyone can go, and search a photo topic and find thousands of images to download for whatever use, commercial, school, business meetings, advertising.... etc. I have been shooting and uploading since the beginning of this year. And that is what most of my recent work is for. If you are interested in helping me on this venture by any type of modeling, do contact me and we can throw around some ideas!



This was actually a shot I did last year in a shoot I was invited to participate in with a close photographer friend of mine -Erica Newell-. I shot this on a medium format Hasselblad film camera. The reason its part of my portfolio now is, I recently developed it in the darkroom and scanned it into the computer. I really like how this turned out. Film to me is exciting for the fact of the anticipation of what it will look like! And the lighting and mood in this photo turned out fabulous!



This is Elle. I had shot her and a friend last year in a dance photo shoot and wanted to get her in the studio. I have seen these type of portraits around from photography friends, and love the look. So I have started to shoot similar beauty type shots. From this shoot, it turned out very well. I really liked the end result!



This is Elle again. This was fromt he same shoot. I had planned on doing a creative nerd shoot, and that was the initial reason she came to shoot in the studio, but the creative nerd shot I want to do, got pushed aside. But I wanted to edit one from the shoot we had. This turned out very well, and very funny!



This is Camille. Her mother is a photography friend of mine. Camille likes to help out with modeling when she can, and she agreed to help me in my micro stock venture. So for this shoot I had her dress up as a nurse. This shot was one of the favorites from the shoot!



This is Rachel. She is a friend of mine, who so very often likes to step in front of the lense. She usually has brown eyes, but when she showed up to the shoot, she was wearing these blue contacts. Which I new would look really awesome in the shots. This shot was one of the favorites.




These last two images were from last weekends shoot. I have been trying to shoot my friend Zeb again, for a while now. He is a busy man. He works for United Way and does much good for that company here in Utah. We wanted to do a busines type shoot. The top image was a friend of his that came and helped out. The bottom image is my friend Zeb. Tired worn business man with a fan blowing his tie and the papers infront of him. It turned out really nice.

I will be updating more photos hopefully from all these shoots, and of course more photos from the shoots I have coming up. Gotta get into the habit of blogging more! So busy, and so many things to do! Thanks for stopping by. If you would like to step in front of the lens, you can contact me at gmail- chaselesterphotography@gmail.com

New year 2011

Well, I am trying to make a comeback to my blog here. I am hoping to make this blog more of an active one. I have not been around on it for a while now, and have seen the numbers of visitors drop because of my inactivity. I have revamped myself for 2011. With the release of my newly designed website (still working on a bit), which you can go view at www.chaselester.com, I have decided that I would also like to be a more active blog poster so that I can share more in detail of the shoots I have, and everything else that happens to me in the photography world and in my life. I have already had quite a few shoots this month and have a couple more before the close of the month. So come back to see whats going on in my life. Here is to the first post, of many more to come in 2011!

As a parting to this first post, I thought I would share a new piece of gear I just got in the mail this week. A photography product table. I finaly got it set up last night, thanks to the help of my wife, who pretty much had to take apart the progress I made on putting it together and re-put it together due to me reading directions wrong. I thought after it was together I would give it a go. This leaf has been begging to be photographed for a while. This leaf has been naturally aged by the elements- Mainly a bunch of rain, then drying out, then rain, then dry then rain, then snow, then wet, then dry. Its been sitting out in the driveway for months. Since last fall I think. So I finally picked it up and brought it in, and the results are very nice. The detail in the dead leaf is amazing.



Now if you want to see the detail a bit bigger, click here.

Thanks for stopping in!