Moody BW Portraiture of an Artist
Congratulations Nick Kreider, Opera Colorado’s 2019 Norblom Award winner. Receiving this award prompted Nick and I to collaborate on a portrait session. We created a few more traditional, conservative head-shots and some beautiful color portraits from this setting, of course. But what I enjoy most are these black and white portraits we created both in the studio and outside.
Portrait of an Author
Portraits of authors and artists are among my favorite to create. In these situations I often find myself asking and listening, thinking and adjusting my visual efforts to better capture the artist before me. Photographing Denver based author, Bart Schaneman, to coincide with the release of his short novel, The Silence is the Noise, was one of these wonderful collaborations. I had known and worked with Bart before, but not until our portrait session did we ever chat about art, inspiration or life on a farm. His book is wonderful, and here are a few portraits of the author from that evening.
New gallery of portraits on my website!
It’s been a long time since I did a major website overhaul. Always overdue, actually because a good portfolio is a constantly morphing, changing entity. However – I did recently add a new gallery of portraiture that I’m proud of. Mostly recent work for magazine and commercial clients. Take a look, let me know what you think!
http://www.matthewstaver.com/#/portraits-1/
Moody, Powerful Athlete Portraits
Troy Isley just won a bronze medal at the AIBA world championships in Hamburg. I was commissioned to photograph him before he left Colorado. He is a great human; someone to watch and root for all the way (think Tokyo 2020). Congratulations Troy!
Portrait Photography in Colorado
I always love meeting new people and it was a joy to spend time with Angela and her family. We made these portraits at her home on assignment for a healthcare publication.
Angela at her home in Aurora, Colorado.
Portraits of an Olympic Silver Medalist
I had a fantastic assignment recently to spend the day with Ethiopian marathoner and Olympic silver medalist, Feyisa Lilesa. He now lives in Arizona, not returning to his homeland after finishing second in Rio and displaying a protest gesture as he crossed the finish line, for fear of what might happen to him upon his return.
Colorado Mountain Portrait
I had the wonderful opportunity to meet and photograph actress Katie Barberi this fall here in Colorado. She was willing to head to a location I had scouted earlier in the day and even traipse through the woods a bit to stand in what looked like an odd choice for a portrait. However, I’m glad she trusted me and was willing, because that location and her cooperation made the best photographs of the afternoon.
Black and White executive portraits in Denver
3 black and white portraits from an executive portrait shoot here in Denver recently. We wanted the portraits to convey his personality, style and commanding presence while still being approachable.
©2015 Matthew Staver all rights reserved
Denver, CO September 15, 2015
Ari Pelto stands for a photograph near The Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver, Colorado, U.S., on Tuesday, September 15, 2015.
Photograph by: Matthew Staver
http://www.matthewstaver.com
©2015 Matthew Staver all rights reserved
Denver, CO September 15, 2015
Ari Pelto stands for a photograph near The Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver, Colorado, U.S., on Tuesday, September 15, 2015.
Photograph by: Matthew Staver
http://www.matthewstaver.com
©2015 Matthew Staver all rights reserved
Denver, CO September 15, 2015
Ari Pelto stands for a photograph near The Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver, Colorado, U.S., on Tuesday, September 15, 2015.
Photograph by: Matthew Staver
http://www.matthewstaver.com
Portrait of Olympic figure skater, Jason Brown
After a full day of training and just days before he left Colorado for his Olympic debut in Sochi, U.S. figure skater Jason Brown agreed to go outside in below freezing temperatures and some serious snow to pose for a few portraits for me. We made a several wonderful photographs, the best two are below, and through the entire day of training and freezing outside Jason was generous with his time and energy, friendly and helpful, and a true pleasure to meet and work with.
A cute shark photograph
To ease into the weekend I thought I’d post 2 cute portraits I shot last week. 
Portrait Photography of a chief justice, in the middle of the street
South Dakota’s Chief Justice, poses for a portrait with a sign he had made in the middle of a road near Pierre. My picture editor was open to the idea, the Chief Justice was willing, and the result was a photograph that tells the story of a lack of lawyers in rural areas of the state in a visually interesting way.
New Portrait Commission: DAM Director
A wonderful recent commission to photograph the Denver Art Museum (DAM) Director, Christoph Heinrich, allowed for creative composition, less conservative lighting and the opportunity to craft some visually interesting portraits of an executive in one of my favorite buildings in Denver. The biggest challenge during this shoot ended up a tie between the snow that began falling the moment we went outside for that portion of the shoot and the difficulty distilling such a complex and striking building into one or two portrait locations.
Black and White Portraits of Artists
I couldn’t hope for better subjects to capture in moody black and white portraits than talented artists. Below are portraits of 3 of Opera Colorado’s Young Artists.
Fun shoot made the magazine cover
I am pleased to share the August 2012 cover of Golf Business magazine with my photograph on the cover. Yep – this is a real portrait made during an actual fireworks display on July 3rd. And moving that huge buffalo head on a golf cart to the location for the photograph they used as a spread inside sure did get me some interesting looks. Happy August!
A nice surprise! – It made the cover
The magazine hired me to create an environmental portrait of Larry Gold at their Boulder, Colorado headquarters. I knew there was the potential for this story -and a photograph from the shoot- to appear on the cover. Because of that, I created 3 different lighting + location setups to give the magazine a variety of options to work from. So, with some advanced planning, (I was able to read a draft of the article beforehand which allowed me to better integrate elements of the story into the photographs) Larry’s cooperation and a little luck, we made the cover.
The story behind the photograph
I am in the process of sending out a new promo piece. This photograph is the dominant picture, and I want to share a bit of the story behind the picture.
Bob Cain, Forest Entomologist with the USFS, is standing in a section of forest about 40 miles west of Denver, Colorado, that was hit particularly hard by the mountain pine beetle. The mountain pine beetle, a species of bark beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is native to the forests here in the western United States.
If you look down by his feet, a young tree is still green, unharmed and growing. This picture shows destruction at first glance, but also reveals a glimpse into the future.
Barnes Dance in Denver no longer
The Barns Dance is no longer in Denver. I raced downtown just in time to photograph a city worker covering the very last of these diagonal pedestrian crossing signals. My task was to show the end of this diagonal crossing era, and maybe what these Barnes Dance intersection crossings, that originated here in Denver, actually are.
Basically, interesting pictures of people crossing the street.
This is an ideal story to illustrate with reportage style photography. I looked for different angles, made arrangements to go back with a crew later in the evening and spent some time walking the streets of downtown Denver enjoying the occasion to do some traditional street photography.
matthew staver 