Chris and Angel

We did some photos for my friend Chris and his girlfriend Angel a few weeks back. We found a cool roof top to get some interesting lighting and angles. Chris is one of my teammates on my hockey team. If you have trouble finding him just look in the penalty box. He has his mail forwarded there during the winter. :)

Going Green

One of our goals for this year is to convert the studio over to a more environmentally friendly business, and what better day to announce this than Earth Day. The photographic industry for years has revolved around chemicals to process and print our products. While some of this is still happening, the transition of the industry to digital has reduced this significantly. We are always looking for new ways to be more environmentally conscious by doing small things, like recycling our ink jet cartridges and using energy saving fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent. Now we are taking it a step further and taking a look at our packaging as well as the packaging coming from the suppliers we use. We are using recycled paper for our packaging and reusing any shipping supplies possible. We are also encouraging our clients and perspective clients to pass along our cards and brochures instead of throwing them out when they are done with them. There are literally hundreds of things we can do or change to help preserve our planet for future generations, but we have to do it one step at a time. We invite you to take the journey with us by sharing ways you have successfully implemented an environmentally conscious process to your home or business.

Happy Earth Day.

Justin and Melanie

Rich's First Blog Post

Here is a copy of Rich's first blog post on our Chesler Photography New England page. I'm so proud to call him my brother:

Sometimes it seems as though we are inexplicably drawn like
magnets toward the very things to which we least want to be
drawn.

Case in point. No wait....first an analogy. It is my
modus operandus to wax metaphorically via analogy. Though
sometimes esoteric, analogy is the Brett Favre of language
devices for conveying a simple idea in 12 different ways,
each one further and further from the original idea, usually
punctuated by an apology, and an attempt to get back on
topic, usually via anecdote or another analogy.

If there was a road through the desert (any desert...it
doesn't matter which) and there was a single tree, more
than 100 feet from the side of this road (either side, it
doesn't matter which, though it will in the next part of
this story) somehow, seemingly unrelated events would
transpire, and circumstances would align, to cause a single
car (mine of course), to somehow, find this tree, and
attempt to merge with it.

Ok...forget the whole desert thing....and the tree. Just
the car. Keep the car. I was driving along the Merritt
Parkway in southern central Connecticut last Sunday,
keeping with the flow of traffic at about (will my students
be reading this piece?).....highway speed. As we entered
the Fairfield, CT theoretical dome of unusual circumstances
(which actually exists (I have encountered multiple strange
events in this area)), the hood of the car inexplicably
popped open. Ghosts? Gremlins? You decide. With
hurricane force winds attempting to lift my hood and fold it
back over my windshield, I quickly stood on the brakes, and
moved the 6 foot-wide car immediately into the 5 foot-wide
breakdown lane to get out of the way of the rest of the pack
of cars traveling at (er...) highway speed. Naturally, in
the middle of the narrow breakdown lane was a 40 lb animal
carcass. I could neither stop in time, nor turn the car at
all given the guardrail to my right, and the speeding cars
to my left. I had to straddle it and hope to clear it. One
out of two ain't good. I successfully straddled the
animal, but the car was just about an inch too low. Bang!

Now what are the odds that I would find a reason to hit the
only animal on this 65 mile stretch of highway? Actually,
this animal wasn't on the highway. He was off to the
side. The odds of my encountering a reason or set of
reasons to savagely challenge this dead animal lying
peacefully on the side of the road, with my 3,000 lb car,
are approximately 1. Or 1:1 or 100%. I stay out of deserts
for this reason. Hitting this animal was an inevitability.
A certainty.

Fortunately, he missed the front air damn and hit something
very sturdy under the car. Nothing a wire brush and some
liquid hair remover couldn't fix. I still don't
know why the hood popped open. In 25 years of driving, this
has never happened before, and probably never will
again...unless there's another dead animal on the side
of the road needing a shave.

PS. So what else has happened in this dome of unusual
circumstances? I've encountered a 100 foot-wide
hailstorm (over my car of course), I've had a llama run
between my car and the car in front of me while traveling at
60mph only 10 car lengths apart. (Revisionist history now
calls it a deer. I was sure it was a llama at the time.)
I've gotten off the highway onto Black Rock Turnpike,
traveled 4 miles in a straight line and gotten back on the
highway at the same exit I got off. I could swear I'd
even passed myself going the other way. I didn't wave
at myself, but there was a llama in the passenger seat.
Strange place.

Caren and Bruce

It's been quite a weekend with the wedding of my sister Caren and my new brother Bruce. I haven't had much time or access to the internet to do my usual posting. Obviously with three photographers in the family there are literally thousands of images to go through. Today we walked around Asbury Park along the Jersey Shore and did some really cool romantic photos of Caren and Bruce. Here is just a sampling of some of the shots we got this weekend. There will be many more to come when I return home tomorrow.

Big Sis Gets Married

I know these posts are a little out of order, I just wanted to get some of yesterday's photos posted while I had limited Internet access.

Caren and Bruce tied the knot Saturday after a courtship that lasted for, well lets just say a while. They are so perfect for each other. I'm so happy for them, and selfishly for me too since I now have a new brother. I needed a new brother, my old one was getting moldy. I had the honor of walking Caren down the aisle along with my moldy brother Rich. It was an honor to be chosen by Caren to do this, not just to give her away, but to fill the shoes of one of the greatest men who ever lived, our Dad. I very much felt his presence this weekend, more so than I've felt in a long time and it was very comforting. I had a dream about him and his father (my grandfather) the night before the wedding. I was mostly talking with my grandfather, going over old photos and he was telling me the stories behind them. I wish I could remember more details now.

It was very odd to be in the wedding and be one of the photographers at the same time. There was no shortage of photographers there. I was shooting along with my sister Ellen, and my brother Rich, both of whom shoot for Chesler Photography. Sarah also grabbed the camera often which was critical when we couldn't shoot like when we were walking down the aisle. She did a great job, especially during my toast when she not only shot the toast, but had the awareness to get reaction shots as well around the room. That's extremely impressive for an 11-year-old.

I'm glad we got to do the outdoor photos on Sunday along the shore. Saturday turned out to be a nice sunny day, but the wind was insane. The plan was to have the ceremony on the boardwalk or on the beach itself, but mother nature "blew" those plans. The ceremony ended up being inside at The Berkley Hotel in Asbury Park. Very cool place. Asbury Park is neat. It was once one of the prime hot spots on the Jersey shore and some where along the line fell in to disrepair and urban decay. It is now in a revival that is bringing it back to it's former glory. Some of the cool photos from yesterday though focused on the former icons of this sea side town.

Here are some of the photos from the wedding, along with photos of the obscene amount of photographers.

Even Cade got in on the action...

and now, the wedding...