It’s always a pleasure shooting the Pickards (and super busy with little Jayden!) The girls look so adorable in their red holiday outfits, all dressed up and ready for Santa Clause!
Off to the Dominican on Friday to shoot Laura and Sal’s wedding… it’s going to be an awesome time! Plus, we could really use some rest and relaxation! Have a wonderful week. – J
Today, I had a photo session at Crystal’s fabulous new studio, Exhale Pilates, located in downtown Burlington. I had a great time shooting here today, the space was so light and airy it really made my job easy! It definitely helped that everyone (the instructors and clients) were all very charismatic and positive (and flexible!).
Here are 3 of the 5 instructors, Crystal (owner & instructor), Rachel and Doug (and they are all in the most AMAZING SHAPE!! – kinda makes you want to work out doesn’t it?).
Exhale Pilates new space is gorgeous, spacious and very zen.
Ummm… now that I’m completely pooped (by watching the instructors at work) time to rest! Enjoy the rest of your weekend everyone! – J
Last Friday, I donated my photography services to the Osteoporosis Bone Appetite Chef Challenge, a popular fundraiser held at the beautiful and historic Old Mill Inn and Spa in Toronto.
This event was hosted by the gorgeous and charismatic Dr. Marla Shapiro and featured four celebrated local chefs – Lynn Crawford, Christian Pritchard, Anthony Rose, and Donna Dooher – each competing to be crowned the Bone Appetite Chef Challenge Champion! All chefs prepared masterful “bone friendly” dishes with the help of audience members. After the dishes were completed, the audience was invited to judge these delicious delights at one of the tasting stations.
The chefs and featured guests were very dynamic and engaging which really added to the success of the event! I thank you for letting me be a part of it.
At one point Lynn stole my camera and ran on stage with Anthony (photo on the left courtesy of Luca, photo on the right courtesy of Lynn!).
Hope the week brings you happy happy joy joy! – J
Sometimes it really is all about timing. Actually, isn’t most of life about timing? Finding the opportunity and seizing the moment? I was sitting in my office working and once in a while I tease myself and glance outside (just to see what I was missing). It started off really beautiful, sunny… then the clouds started to roll in. 60% chance of precipitation the weather network claimed. What does that mean anyway? I mean, I know what precipitation means… but can they really calculate that down to the percentage? and how accurate is this? K, getting off topic. Back to my office, yadda yadda yadda – I look outside and the clouds are rolling in, forming this really cool bubbly sculptured effect over the Niagara escarpment. I think to myself here’s the moment you have been waiting for!
I text my friend Wayne, who conveniently lives only 10 mins from us and thankfully was available at that exact moment, “come meet me for an hour I want to take your picture… oh and bring your running shoes!!!”
About a half hour later we found ourselves treking up to the top of Glen Eden ski hill (with gear in hand) all in the pursuit of clouds!
…it all came together and I am so happy we chased the clouds into the escarpment that day!
I couldn’t decide which picture to include in this post for the simple fact that I love the rockstar fierceness of Wayne here but love the clouds better in the next, so I am posting both!
Then we just shot a few other fun ones.
Thank you Wayne for being awesome and agreeing to be my guinea pig on such short notice!!
Happy happy joy joy!
My very talented photographer friend Luca asked me to help him out with a maternity shoot he was doing at Adam’s studio (yay Adam for having such a wicked space!!!). We had about 45 minutes of time to kill before his clients got to the studio and I took full advantage (of the space and Luca’s knowledge).
I was anxious to try to apply some of what I learned at the Flashbus tour, more specifically, there was this portrait lighting set up that Dave Hobby showed us that I thought would be perfect to try out on Luca (who has now become my guinea pig – Muhahahahaha!).
The lighting on the next two images weren’t quite right (I was still setting up my lights) but I thought Luca’s expressions were too good to pass up – ya he’s quirky like that!
Then the serious side of Luca… who knew??
Who are we kidding? We’re not serious!!! (I’m still trying to perfect that Dave Hill affect!)
Moving forward with working on my photoshopping skills, I wanted to focus more on the lips. Typically, when editing I tend to focus most of my energy on the eyes and rarely touch the lips (eeeek!! it’s true). I used an old photo from a shoot I did a couple of months ago (I was just looking for the ‘best set of lips I had’ and they certainly were NOT mine! – boo!). Here’s the original image I decided to work with.
I started with a quick fix to the skin around the lips (when I say quick I mean quick so please don’t comment on the skin edit!).
Next, I cleaned up the lips a bit, removing the little red blotches and imperfections (oh being human is so much fun!). I also made the shape of the lips a bit more symmetrical – only because I was focusing just on the lips, I figured why not try to make them look as perfect as possible (I am NOT saying they were not perfect before but for the purpose of this exercise I wanted to make them look… well, unrealistically perfect!).
Once I was happy with the look and shape of the lips I needed to clean up the edges a bit (below, the right side is the ‘cleaned’ up look – it’s hard to see, maybe I shouldn’t have posted this pic?).
Lastly, let’s get these lips ready to go out!
AHHHH, perfect (unrealistically perfect!!) Don’t we all wish we can walk around with photoshop glasses? LOL! Just one more photo (a complete before and after) just so you can see the difference.
That was fun! Not something I would do to every photo but there are a few techniques I learned here that I could use to enhance the puckers just a bit! hmmm… what facial feature should I try to tackle next???
Family portraits are not only an excellent keepsake but a wonderful gift idea for the holidays! Perfect timing for the Pickards! I had the opportunity to shoot this very photogenic family last weekend and already the requests are coming in from their family for prints! We got some amazing pictures from our session, here are just a few.
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