Conversations with Chapin Bouffard

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chapin Bouffard. 

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started my freelance photography career almost 10 years ago. After graduating from CU Boulder with a degree in Film Studies in 2012, I was looking for any way to get my hands on a camera. To no avail, I wasn’t really able to find any professional work and had to settle for a menial day job and prepare for any opportunities that could pop up.

My first major gigs came up in 2013 where I helped and developed music blogs while photographing and reviewing concerts. After my first year of shooting, I helped photograph shows at Beta Nightclub in Denver in 2014 and would stay with the original and best version of the nightclub until it closed down in 2019. In 2014, I became a contributing photographer for The Rooster magazine, where I would build an even wider portfolio over the course of the next two years.

With the number of shows that I photographed between 2013 and 2016, I developed friendships and relationships with a lot of the people within the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene of Colorado. I felt right at home with the energy all of the concertgoers gave off and made it a point to become part of the dance music community and give back to the people that helped build my career. In 2016, I began to help photograph concerts and music festivals for the Global Dance Music team and have absolutely loved working with them since then.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It seems as though it’s been a smooth road. With my freelance photography career mainly being with the music industry, the Colorado music scene has been very supportive and has grown at an exponential rate over the past decade. Musicians, DJs, artists, and creatives in general, have all been hungry for exposure. My willingness to help a lot of people stand up on their feet with some press coverage never really put me in a bad position.

If anything, during my 2014-2016 years where I was working with multiple outlets at the same time, I had too much work to do for too many people and often would exhaust myself trying to keep up with everything while still working another day job.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As a freelance photographer, the sky is pretty much the limit with what I can create or capture. However, what I specialize in and what people usually come to me for is concert or event photography. The entirety of my freelance photography career has been rooted in Colorado’s music scene. While I haven’t shot every single venue within the state, I’ve regularly photographed concerts in Boulder and Denver and of course everyone’s favorite, Red Rocks.

Something that I am immensely proud of is shooting 101 concerts during 2016. During the beginning of the year, I had it in the back of my mind that shooting 100 shows in a year would be a pretty cool feat to accomplish. I began the year picking up a fair amount of shows, even though it was a little slower with the cold weather. With this, I tried to spread my press coverage across three different outlets to get the maximum number of concerts per week. I ended up shooting shows for Beta Nightclub, The Rooster Magazine, and one of my old defunct music websites. Halfway through that summer, I realized I was on pace to make 100 if I shot at least three to four concerts per week, every week, for the rest of the year. Fast forward many grueling nights later, shows number 100 and 101 were the New Year’s Eve dance music festival Decadence in Denver.

There are a couple of things people usually bring up to me when talking to me about my pictures. One of the things that people always say to me is that they feel like they can be at shows through my photos. For whatever reason, the way I frame shots captures people’s emotions and focus on the music in a very particular way. Something else that couples with this particular value of my photos is the colors I tend to capture within given scenes. Everyone obviously sees colors in their own unique ways, but people tell me that they love how vivid my photos look.

Right now my focus is to refine my style and experiment with everything that I’ve learned. There’s definitely plenty left for me to discover within photography itself, so I’m always looking out for new shooting and editing techniques to learn. Even though I’ve spent almost a decade photographing various things, I feel as though I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
One of my favorite childhood memories was all of the summer vacations during elementary school. Growing up in a suburban town in California, I was best friends with both of my neighbors. Our families all got along and threw parties together for all of the major holidays and birthdays. At one point my family had to rebuild the fence on both sides of our house and we were located in between both of my neighbors’ houses. For some time while our parents worked on the fences, my friends and I would run from one house to another jumping through each of our own backyards making pit stops for games, watching movies, or pool time. Those summers reminded me of the kind of bonding and friendships characterized in the movie The Sandlot, which I only realized years later. I miss those times.

Contact Info:

• Email: chapin@bechiefb.com
• Website: bechiefb.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bechiefb
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bechiefb