Tag Archives: life

About Jason

Arvada, CO | Interesting News | Back to the Grindstone

Portrait of a little girl sitting in a restaurant and playing with her toy blackberry. Photographed in Arvada, CO in December of 2010.
As many of you know, I was laid off back in April of 2010. Since that time, I have been splitting my time between running my photography business and looking for a new full time job. Well a couple of weeks ago, a job came up that is really a perfect fit for my skills and background. I just started as the Photographer and Web Marketing Specialist at Prestige Imports in Lakewood, CO. Prestige is a luxury car dealership  specializing in both Audi and Porsche. In my new roll, I photograph the new and pre-owned vehicles, maintain and update the website, design web ads, and keep up their social media activities.

So what does this mean for Jason Noffsinger Photography? Well, if the last couple of years have taught me anything, it’s that it is always best to keep your options open. To that end, I will be keeping the business up and running, but in a scaled back fashion. Most likely, I won’t have much time to spend writing new posts for this blog, but I will be leaving the old posts online. I think there is a lot of really useful content here that people may want to refer to.

Having income from this new job will allow me to just focus on shoots that I’m really passionate about. Most likely, these will be smaller scale portrait shoots with people that really value what I bring to the table – my unique vision. Intimate weddings in interesting locations also hold a lot of interest for me. What I will really be looking for are opportunities to document people, families and weddings for those that really value authentic timeless photography.

So, to sum up, the business is alive and well,  but with a renewed focus on the things that I do best. Additionally, I am really happy to be out of “limbo” (for the first time in well over two years) and working on exciting projects at my “day job” as well as in my personal business. Please let me know if you have a project that would be a good fit with this new direction.

Tech Info:
Natural Light
Sigma DP2s
Sigma 24.2mm f2.8 fixed lens (41mm full frame equivalent)
Adobe Camera Raw

Personal Work

Glenwood Springs, CO | Photo School | Pretty Pictures

There are a few places that I tend to think of as my “home towns”. I have spent most of my life in the Denver metro area so that is the most obvious. But another town that holds special meaning for me is Glenwood Springs, CO.

When I was a sophomore in high school  my family and I passed through Glenwood on vacation. I loved it – the old buildings, the mountains, the river – it just seemed like such a nice place to live. A couple of years later, I got the opportunity to live in Glenwood when I started attending photo school at Colorado Mountain College.

At CMC (sometimes referred to as See Me Ski), I learned the techniques, history and craft of photography. Being isolated in the hills above town, provided a perfect environment for learning. There really wasn’t much to do besides sleep, eat, go to class,  and work in the labs. This was back in the days when labs housed enlargers and chemicals rather than Macs and inkjet printers. But I did have a couple of classes using some new software called Photoshop.

During my first week at CMC, I did manage to find time to meet Julie. Who, as it turned out, was from right there in Glenwood. About three years later, we were married at a large house that overlooks the CMC campus and Mount Sopris. Julie’s Dad still lives in Glenwood, and we try to get up there every chance we get.

Below are some pictures from a trip to Glenwood back in the fall of 2007. These were all shot over the course of a couple overcast days on black and white film using a yellow filter. The yellow filter rendered the autumn leaves a very light tone and provided great contrast with the dark tree limbs.

I’m not sure if these are great pictures, but I like them, and they remind me of “home”.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger. Enjoy…

Glenwood Hot Springs water slides
Colorado Highway 82 bridge support

Building exterior and balcony
Dead flowers
Autumn tree

Tech Info:
Nikon F3
Nikon 35mm f2.8
Yellow Filter
Ilford HP5 Plus
DR5 Process (B&W Slide)

Camera Scan
Sigma SD9
Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro
Photosolve Xtend-a-Slide

Personal Work

Wray, CO | A Portrait And A House | Goodbye Papa Paul

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Infant girl being held by her great grandfather
On Christmas day, we lost my Grandfather (My Dad’s Dad). He was over 90 years old, and his health had been rapidly declining, so it was not a surprise, but it was a shock. We waited until the following day to tell the kids, and then we had to get everything ready for the funeral. I printed up an 11X14 of this portrait of Grandpa Paul with Molly, to stand along side the casket at the funeral. The final print turned out really nice, and added a happy element to an otherwise sad occasion.

Along with this picture, Julie and my sister-in-law, Jess, put together a large presentation board showing a wide variety of pictures from Grandpa’s life. There were photos going all the way back to 1942. Seeing all of these images together really drove home the importance of protecting your memories. I know there are a lot of people out there who have pretty much stopped carrying a camera and are just using their cell phone cameras instead. If this sounds like you, please make a conscious effort to get those pictures off of your phone and on to your computer, and then make a conscious effort to make some prints.

To go along with the portrait above, I wanted to show some interesting pictures that I shot this summer. The three images below were shot in Grandpa Paul’s home town of Wray, CO. The house shown in the photos was actually my Grandpa Paul and Grandma Nondice’s first home. They moved in shortly after Grandpa returned home from World War II. As you can tell from the pictures, they very well could have been the last people to live in this house. It is almost completely overgrown with trees and bushes. This is probably an appropriate metaphor to end this post – my Grandfather’s house, being reclaimed by the Earth.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger. Enjoy…

Small house completely overgrown by trees
Small house completely overgrown by trees
Small house completely overgrown by trees

Tech Info:

Portrait
Sigma SD9
Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro
f4 | 1/90 | ISO 200

House
Fuji GS645S
60mm f4 Fixed Fujinon Lens
Fuji Acros 100
Ilford Ilfotec DD-X Developer
Epson 4870 Scanner + VueScan + Adobe Camera Raw

Personal Work

Westminster, CO | Documentary Photos | WHS 2009 Las Posadas

With the Holidays upon us, I wanted to put up some documentary pictures that I shot last year at Westminster High School’s Las Posadas celebration/parade/march. The event was a lot of fun, it included Mary, Joseph and even a real donkey. There were candles, guitars and lots of singing. The large crowd moved from church to church through the old town area of Westminster and ended up back at the high school for refreshments after the march.

It was pretty cold, and very dark, so photography was a challenge. I wanted to document the event, but using flash would have been very intrusive and would have looked awful – red eyes and blown out faces with pure blackness in the background. Instead, I chose to shoot in the available light (err – darkness). I utilized the  highest ISO the camera would allow and then under exposed by about a stop, and I also used my fastest lens. It was too dark for the camera to auto-focus (without an annoying AF assist lamp) , so manual focus was the order of the day.

Even though these pictures are very grainy, I think they do a good job capturing the spirit of the event. They are authentic. They illustrate the setting of the event – the cold and dark of a December night, punctuated by the warmth and light of community and candlelight.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger and read a caption. Enjoy…

Principal Pat Sanchez welcomes the crowd
Students wait for the celebration to begin
Students light their candles
The donkey has a quick snack
A student sings
Students laugh as they wait for the celebration to begin

A little girl waits for the celebration to begin
A girl's face is lit up by her candle

Members of the community hold their candles
Choir Director Larry Meerdink walks and sings
Mary, Joseph and their donkey

Students huddle together
Two students play the parts of Mary and Joseph

Students play guitars
Two students play the parts of Mary and Joseph
Two students play the parts of Mary and Joseph
Students play guitars
Students hold candles and sing
A woman holds a candle and sings

Tech Info:
Nikon D200
Nikon 50mm f1.8
ISO 3200 (underexposed, so more like 6400)
It was DARK!

Portrait

Arvada, CO | Kids Portraits | Airplanes, Wagons & A Big Bruise

Kids are resilient. Ten minutes before I shot this series of pictures, Jaxon managed to fall and bang his forehead on the asphalt. I would have been laying in bed for a week. He cried for about thirty seconds, and then wanted to get down and play. We watched as the bruise started to come out on his forehead, and I went back to taking pictures. This was something important to document, as a toddler he is pretty much a walking bruise. That’s just who he is at this point in his life.

Jaxon never seems to get too worried about it. He has more important things to think about. Like airplanes flying overhead and wagons to pull and climb on. I guess he figures bruises are just the price you pay for the freedom to walk around and check things out.

I really like the authenticity of these pictures. The bruise, the clothes, the hair, the setting, it all feels real – because it is real. A picture doesn’t have to be staged and styled and manicured to be beautiful. Life is what it is, and I like to document it. Let me know if you have a life you would like to have documented.

You can click on any of the images to see them larger. Enjoy…

A toddler looks up to the sky
A toddler holds up the handle of his wagon

A toddler slams his wagon handle to the ground
A toddler plays in his wagon

Tech Info:
Open shade late in the day
Nikon D70s
Nikon 35mm f2
f2.8 | 1/400 | ISO 200
Adobe Camera Raw
Photoshop Unsharp Mask to boost midtone contrast

Personal Work

Westminster, CO | Documentary Photo | The Kids Are All Wet

Here is a fun documentary photograph to kick off the weekend. Back in September, the family and I went to a free concert at the Westminster Promenade in Westminster, CO. While following Emma around to make sure she didn’t cause too much trouble, I noticed the kids playing in this fountain.

As the sun got lower in the sky the light got better and the scene got more interesting. Also, most of the kids started to clear out, and I was able to get this one frame with a couple of kids in just the right spot. It was really an exercise in anticipation and patience.

Wait for the light to be low enough to back light the water and silhouette the kids – Wait for just a couple of kids doing something interesting – Make sure no one is walking through the background – Anticipate the moment when the water is shooting to its highest point – CLICK! One shot, one good frame is all I was able to get. In the next frame, the bright sunlight was gone and the kids had moved together to make one black blob instead of two distinct silhouettes.

I guess this was one of those times when a snap-shot wasn’t really a snap-shot.

You can click on the image to see it larger. Enjoy…

Kids playing in a fountain

Tech Info:
Nikon F3
Nikon 50mm f1.4
Ilford HP5 Plus
Ilford Ilfotec DD-X (9min @ 20C)

Camera Scan
Sigma SD9
Sigma 50mm f2.8 Macro
Photosolve Xtend-a-Slide

About Jason

Welcome to Jason Noffsinger Photography

Hello,

Welcome to my new website and blog. Here is some information about me. This will also be posted over in the about section, but I thought it would be some good information to get the ball rolling. Let me know what you think about the new site…

I have been living and breathing photography for the past 18 years.

It all started with the photography program at Westminster High School. I caught the bug, and proceeded through the Professional Photography program at Colorado Mountain College. After graduating, my (very understanding) new wife, Julie, and I picked up everything and moved to New York so I could take a job as a Studio Manager for a commercial photographer. After four years of working on lots of exciting shoots and meeting lots of great people, we decided it was time to move home and start thinking about starting a family. Shortly after returning, I started learning web design and looking for jobs where I could apply my knowledge in both photography and web technology. Before long, I started working for a large corporation, managing all of the images for their website. This role evolved to the point where I became the corporate photographer – shooting products, catalog covers, marketing pieces, events, executive portraits, etc. This role provided experience in a broad range of photographic specialties, and also provided the stability that we needed to start our family. We now have two beautiful daughters, Emma-6 & Molly-3, and a great life in Colorado.

Of course, the economy finally caught up with my employer, and we were purchased by an even larger corporation. This effectively ended my role as corporate photographer and over 18 months I helped the new corporation take over all of my imaging duties.

This put me in the strange position of being sad to leave a great company and great co-workers, but excited to get back to photography full-time.

So that is where I am now… Excited to be working with real people, documenting real moments, creating images that will be appreciated for generations to come.