Cooks Who Feed

My last photoshoot of 2019 was kind of unexpected and last minute. I received an email from a woman that needed some photos for her marketing and promotion of her website. I’m always curious to know how new clients managed to find me but this one was surprising as she is related to my friend and colleague Deepak.

Deepak is also a photographer and the co-founder of Pledgeshots, a company that I have worked with a couple of times myself. Pledgeshots is a company that does headshots and donates 25% of the proceeds to either, Sick Kids Hospital, Covenant House or WWF Canada.

My initial thoughts to this email were, “Why didn’t she just call Deepak? He’s a photographer and he’s in your family.” But, he was out of town on a business trip and she was pressed for time and he referred me. So I am humbled that he would trust me to get the job done.

Cooks Who Feed is a not for profit organization dedicated to supporting women in India that live in poverty by giving them employment and the opportunity to feed their families. The purchase of one apron provides 100 meals. It’s such a great initiative. Please check out the Cooks Who Feed website for more information and support the cause.

Breaking Bread

Sprinkle Sprinkle

Job Well Done

The day of our shoot, it was snowing pretty heavily and to make matters worse, I live on the opposite side of town. Seema, who was the main subject of the shoot had a meeting to attend so I knew that time was limited and she had kids that she had to get ready for school.  She told me some of her ideas and concepts and we did everything in about 45 minutes. I think what made it more impressive was maintaining composure while her husband was getting the kids ready for school. They got an A+ in Parenting 101 class.

First Weekend of a New Decade

Happy New Year everyone!!

The last 3 years, I’ve started off my year shooting on behalf of RyMedia, a party called Elite at The Vue with DJ’s Marxman and Fresh Cut De Mayor. I always have a great time and cherish their hospitality.

Happy New Year

The first weekend of the year was going to be really busy for me. It was busy despite having an unfortunate cancellation, but you have to be able to adapt to different situations.

So, with the cancellation of the shoot scheduled for Saturday, I ended up setting up a studio session at Shvrk Studio with my friend Tarik. I met him at his surprise birthday party in which I was the photographer and we’ve kept in contact ever since. He’s a Kinesiology student at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, ON. He’s also an aspiring model so we met up and did a photoshoot and I’m hoping to get him into the annual Men at Large competition which is taking place in a few weeks. This was my 3rd time shooting at Shvrk Studio and they always take care of me, so I have no problem endorsing their space so fellow photographers and creatives, please check them out. I also had my friend Azi come along and she helped me set up my equipment and record some behind the scenes video footage.

Hesitation Dribble

Ball is Life

Chillin’

Since I had Saturday free, I uploaded the footage into Adobe Premiere for future video content. It’s my first time using Premiere as I used to use Final Cut Pro X for my video content. So at the time of me writing this, I don’t know what I’m doing with Premier but I am learning slowly but surely. Stay tuned to my Instagram page for some new IGTV content.

Just before Christmas, a friend of mine contacted me about doing a family photo shoot with her father and extended family for the new year. I was more than happy to do the photos, the only problem was there was going to be about 17 people to shoot. I usually do family shoots in my basement studio but I didn’t have space to shoot that many people at once so I suggested that we went to Shvrk and it was the best location because it was close to her dad’s home.

This was definitely a challenge for me. One, to shoot 17 people at once and two, to do it all within the hour allocated at the studio. As I was setting up, I noticed that the plug to one of my lights was missing. I intended on having a two light set up but that wasn’t possible without a plug so, like I said before, I had to adapt. I used one light and an umbrella to spread the light out. Being that I was on a time crunch, I started with the big group shot first. I wanted to make sure that they had the family photo done, just in case I ran out of time in the end. The beginning of the session was probably the time where I’d have the little ones attention the most as young children’s attention fades quickly for photographs. Fortunately, I got through all the pictures that they wanted with time to clean up. I also had my friend Cedric come and help me with some more behind the scenes footage.

Family Ties

Grandchildren

Tickle Tickle

Overall, it was quite a productive weekend to start the year and hopefully, this is the start of a trend of new clients and new opportunities.