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Two More of Em

vtography — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:16:57 +0000

Em(ily)

vtography — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 05:24:23 +0000

Em hates being called Emily. I do it anyway because I like it.

My first encounter with Em was in January 2010. I’d just taken on a new job as photographer at a club in Oshawa called Junction. That’s when I ran into this group of young ladies…

Beautiful gals, all of them, but of all the people I photographed that evening, Em stood out for some reason.

Fast forward a month to February 2010. Junction again.

Well look who it is! Em again. I recognized her from the first time I shot her but didn’t say anything. Running into her twice in two months was more than my tiny brain could handle.

“I must photograph this girl,” I muttered.

Fast forward to November 2010. The Facebook app on my BlackBerry lights up. Friend request from Em… what?!

How did she find me? How does she know who I am? Let’s fire up Facebook Chat and find out.

Turns out we had a mutual friend who was singing my praises as a photographer, and Em wanted to check out my photos, hence the friend request. She had no clue that I photographed her at Junction twice.

After a few months of back and forth communication, we got ourselves together for a little photoshoot in February 2011, exactly one year and one day after our second “meeting”.

Em is an avid viewer of America’s Next Top Model, so she was ready to pose up a storm for me despite not having the unrealistic body proportions on display on that show. Em looks like a real woman, which makes me happy.

It’s so nice sometimes to just hit up the studio with a willing model, a casual wardrobe, and windows streaming with daylight. All of these were shot without any artificial light sources. The tried and true 50mm f/1.8 lens was used for each of the non-club shots. It’s a lens I hadn’t pulled out of my bag in a while — I started out the shoot using my disappointing 70-200mm f/2.8 but quickly switched to the 50mm for something different.

Justine

vtography — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 07:56:20 +0000

One night last July, I was working as a club photographer in Oshawa at a place called Karma, which I’ve blogged about before. Clubs being what they are, there was no shortage of young, beautiful people. This girl caught my eye:

I snapped a few photos of her and then went about my business around the rest of the club, later posting them on Facebook. As I was posting them and had a closer look, I thought to myself, “I need to photograph this girl.” But how?

Patience and luck, that’s how.

Some 10 months later, the guy on the right side of the photo somehow found it on Facebook and made it his profile picture. The lovely young lady, who I now know to be Justine, saw it and commented on it. What a stroke of luck! I sent her a message right away and when she replied, I was surprised to find out that she had already previously lurked my photos on Model Mayhem and expressed admiration for them.

We immediately tried to set up a photo shoot, but life got in the way. After an excruciating five month wait, Justine texted me last week to see if we could squeeze in a sunrise shoot on the beach before the weather really started going downhill. Mere days later, we found ourselves on the beach at 7am, shivering in the 14 degree cold. And while it’s not the coldest bikini shoot I’ve ever done, it’s certainly the latest in the season.

Justine was a trooper for sure. Just look at how little she’s wearing in such cold weather, all with a big smile on her face. I don’t know about you, but getting up at 4am and driving an hour from Port Perry to Toronto sure makes her happy. This was shot with just natural light.

With a background in figure skating, she can handle the cold a bit better than most. She didn’t even complain once! This too was natural light.

Yes, that sky is totally real! The sunrise was amazing, but I needed an Alien Bees 1600 unit to overpower the sun and light up Justine sufficiently.

Karma

vtography — Thu, 13 May 2010 18:24:15 +0000

I’ve shot for some clubs in Oshawa, off and on, since last year. A few weeks ago I showed off some shots from Junction, and now here’s some of my favourites from Karma. Karma has some strangely fantastic lighting — big diffused square panels filled with pink and blue lights that line the booths. It wreaks havoc on my white balance, but it makes for some amazing photos.

Another Photographer: Heather Windsor

vtography — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:02:20 +0000

Meet Heather.

Heather is a friend of mine who takes pictures and today she opened her brand new studio space in Bowmanville, Ontario.

But before we talk about that, you need to know more about her!

Heather friended me on Facebook about a year ago, after realizing that we had each shot two of the same models. We hit it off right away, sharing our best photographic stories and insights. With Heather based a fair distance away from me in Oshawa, our first real-life meeting didn’t happen til many months later… at Hooters. Yes, Hooters. We had fried pickles and they were delicious. Hush.

She doesn’t like talking about herself on her website, but she’s a bit more chatty on her blog. And if you like what you see there, join the Facebook fan page.

Heather is a hardworking mom and fabulous photographer, so when she asked me to drive the 70km or so to Bowmanville and photograph her grand opening, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

There were tasty treats from Custom Cakeworks:

Check out this crazy nice wallpaper:

The size of these windows makes me very excited:

Mayor of the Municipality of Clarington, Jim Abernethy, even came out for the ribbon cutting:

I’ve been bugging Heather a lot about when I can start using the space to shoot in, and I’m glad the answer is… now! I hope to get in there before the end of February and have a whole bunch of brand new content for everyone to see.