Playing with Lightning

When I was little, I remember calling for my Mom during night time thunderstorms to bring me in to her bedroom. She would come running in and then guide me back to her room with her hands over my eyes so I couldn't see the lightning. I would sleep on the floor next to her bed on the closet side, safe in my little cocoon. 

 Now, three and a half decades later, I am the protector during the storms as my son flies down the stairs literally, I think he may only touch two or three of them, as he sprints to my bedroom to hide. He loves storms, tracking them on the radar and watching weather shows, that is until they hit us. 

 With today's temperatures soaring in to the upper 90's, it was only a matter of time before the storms fired up. A beautiful line of storms developed along the shore of Lake Ontario 30 miles to the north, treating to us to an evening of star lit skies and a natural fireworks show. I did what any sane person would and grabbed a big metal tripod and headed out to an open field. Cade came with me, but watched from the safety of the car, claiming it was the mosquitos keeping him in there. Unfortunately, the storms collapsed before reaching Canandaigua, offering no relief to our painfully dry summer.

Sports Division

A few years ago we went through a period at the studio where we didn't get any seniors, family portraits or weddings from a particular town. For nine years I had done the photos for the soccer league in that town and the only thing I could attribute the lack of other business to is that I was known as "The Soccer Guy" and not an artist. I made a decision back then that sports photography was too much like an assembly line and it was hurting my portrait business. I couldn't have been further from the truth. It just took me a few years to realize that doing sports photography didn't have to be the boring grip and grin assembly line photos and that we could make them as cool and artistic as our imaginations would allow. 

It is with great pride that I introduce our new website and Sports Division of Chesler Photography. Our philosophy behind this new division of our business is to not only do the photos for sports leagues in a way that hasn't been done before, but to offer teams and individuals the opportunity to have really cool, unique photos done with a huge range of cool products. What makes our league photography different is that we don't want to rush in and rush out just to collect as many order envelopes as we can, in fact, we don't want to rush at all. We want to slow the process down and take time with each athlete to get great expressions with great lighting, even if it takes us an extra day or two. Think of it as the fine dining of sports leagues instead of fast food. 

In addition to the league photography, we are also doing really unique Extreme Sports images where we blend several images together in to one collage with really cool Photoshop technique for an end result that has no comparison. We are doing these for our high school seniors as well as teams and individuals, both in portrait sessions and action photos during tournaments. 

Check out our new website at http://www.cheslerphotosports.com. The site is still in it's infancy and will be expanding our galleries in the near future. We welcome any feedback on the new site and we would be totally grateful if you would pass along the site to any sports league organizers you may be involved with. Thank you Ellen from Lake Effects Web Design for putting the site together for us.

Here are a few examples of our Extreme Sports images.

Frank and Jacque

I love Mondays! It's normally my day off, so I've grown fond of what is widely considered the most dreaded day of the week. Today however was different. I had the opportunity to shoot a rare Monday wedding at the Inn on the Lake in Canandaigua of Frank and Jacque. 

 So far this wedding season it's been one spectacular wedding after another, with great couples at great locations. Frank and Jacque were so totally cool. I barely had to direct them at all. They were so comfortable and natural in front of the camera with their affection for each other and awesome sense of humor. We had so much fun all day. 

 We did a pre-ceremony reveal which allowed us time to walk the pier in Canandigua and play with some of the boat houses. The wedding and reception were both on the back lawn of the Inn on the Lake under blue skies with perfect puffy white clouds.