Developing Creativity and Consistency.

Every once in a while I do personal shoots. I come up with an idea and a look I want to create, and only then I start to search for a model, who will complete my vision.  

I find that in photography, like in every other form of art,  it's extremely hard to be creative at all times.  But in business of photography we (photographers) can compensate it by being CONSISTENT.  We can train our selfs to deliver highest quality imagery and exceed client's expectations even when we are having an OFF day. 

Shoots like this help me keep my skills sharp. Preparing for shoots like this - develops my vision. Shooting and postproduction - develops my style. 

I was contacted by make-up artist Sylvie Mazerolle, who recently moved back to Moncton from Toronto. After checking out her work, I was thrilled and really looked forward to working with her. 

After bouncing off few ideas of each other, one thing was clear - it had to be a portfolio moneymaking beauty image.  We started with very clean and super natural make-up and spiced it up a bit towards the second half of the shoot by adding "smokey eyes" make-up and messy hair. 

Finding the right model for the look I have in mind takes me sometime too. After few cancelations from other models I found the one I was looking for, and she was perfect.  

Continue reading and see a video of how this image was created in postproduction.  

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Professional Photographers of Canada - Atlantic. Convention and Image Salon 2012 entries.

I think I should begin by saying that this is my 3rd year of being a member of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC). At this moment I hold 4 accreditations in the categories of: Portraiture, Environmental Portrait, Wedding Story and Wedding Formal.

This past weekend, February 4-5, atlantic division of PPOC had their convention in Saint John, NB, which I was able to attend.
It was busy 2 days convention, filled with interesting speakers and other non-formal, and formal events.
Our guests lecturers were:
Russell Caron from Portland, Maine, who spoke about wedding photography success;
Felice Boucher from Portland, Maine, who shared with us how she creates her amazing art pieces;
and keynote speaker Warne Noyce from Saskatchewan, who shared his approach to shooting school seniors and boudoir.

Back to the image competition. All my 5 entries were accepted, 3 images received award of "Merit", and 1 image received award of "Excellence".
Seeing your images being critiqued by a panel of 5 international judges is a very unique, heart stopping, and beneficial for future career, experience.  Although I was thrilled with my results, I was betting on my wedding portrait "Happy Time" to receive highest score.

No matter what, it's тоо soon to celebrate. National Convention will be held in Halifax April 20-25 this year, and it's time to analyze and reevaluate my work, and prepare my new entries for the national judging.  

Last year 2 out of 4 of my entries were accepted, and 1 of the images received award of Merit. You can see the winning images HERE. 

P.S. Congratulations to Portrait Photographer of the Year - Buffie Boily,

and Commercial Photographer of the Year - John Ratchford. 

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Javier & Danizza. Engagement session during wedding.

I met Danizza and Javier during my trip to Venezuela this past summer, where I photographed Jennifer and Tony's wedding. 

They just got engaged and asked me to take a few shots of them together during reception, which I was happy to. And as it often happens to me, few shots turn into a major photo shoot, and I wish we had more time, but we had amazing wedding to enjoy (which we did by the way).

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My first Black and White Darkroom. Test prints.

 Last couple of months I spent putting my darkroom together. And thanks to few kind people I was able to get all essential items. 

 Being "digital born" photographer I was thrilled about this entirely new experience, and last night/morning I finally MADE my first black and white prints.  

Here are samples of two test prints.  

I'm just blown away by what B&W film has to offer...

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Jennifer & Tony. Destination Wedding - Caracas/Venezuela

This past summer I was presented an opportunity to travel to Venezuela to photograph my best friends' wedding. I was preparing myself for extraordinary experience and their wedding exceeded all my expectations. 

 I spent 1 week in Caracas. Most of it's time tagging along with the guys while they were pulling things together for the big day. 

 Check out my other blog post on when we went on spectacular mountain Avila HERE and our day trip to Caracolito beach HERE. 

I don't usually put a lot of photos of dancing, but this time it's different. This wedding was about having fun, partying and DANCING, DANCING, DANCING! 

Enjoy. 

P.S. This wedding wasn't with out celebrities as well.  Continue reading if you want to see that woman who "Los Del Rio" dedicated their hit song "MACARENA" to.

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Michelle & Jesse. Wedding.

Michelle and Jesse's wedding was very small and intimate. After the ceremony Michelle was so emotional that didn't really want to go out for any formal photos, but I'm glad I convinced her otherwise.

Check out our engagement session HERE which we had in May in downtown Moncton.

Another great wedding by Design Studio & Co.

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Marie-Lyne & Jamie's Wedding.

This fall was kind of busy for me and few more wedding are on the way to the blog.

This post features images from Marie-Lyne and Jamie's wedding.

I did their engagement session earlier, in the past spring (see it HERE), so shooting the wedding felt easy for all of us, and for the most part of it they didn't even pay a lot of attention to me, and that's exactly how I like it.  Congratulations, Guys! 

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Katie & Jesse. Saint John Wedding.

I want to start this year by sharing one of my most favourite weddings of 2011. 

What does dream wedding mean to me? Can't tell you yet... but I'll tell you where it begins for me.

 I recently finished working on a wedding which was a pleasure to edit from very first, and most importantly, to very last image. This was my first wedding of the passed year, I only met the couple once before that, and what worried me is that I didn't have engagement session with them.  Few days before the wedding I went to Saint John, where they were gonna get married, to find locations for our photo shoots, and come up with ideal walking route since there was plenty of time assigned for pictures during the wedding day. Anyway...I was pretty nervous.  Everything changed after a phone conversation with the groom, Jesse, the day before the wedding, when I heard what every photographer wishes to hear, he said that they trust me.... and whatever I come up with will be fine with them. 

 So, great wedding for me begins with my clients' trust, which makes it very personal for me. 

Their family made us feel like we were a part of it the moment we arrived to Katie's home, which I didn't think was possible since, you know,... we got paid to do the job. I'm probably getting too sentimental... I sometimes get too attached to a couple after months of postproduction. 

But, now that it's over, I have something to look forward to - Katie's little sister's wedding this summer! 

I had hard time selecting my favourite images for this post, and it's not even half. We had 3 hours assigned for formal portraits. Some of them took place in Irving Park and some in downtown Saint John.  

 Anyway, I feel happy about the work I've done. What do you think? If you have any feedback or comments, you are more than welcome to post them here on my blog or Facebook, Twitter and now also on Google+!

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Marathon Photo shoot

Few months back (eight, to be exact) I and Denis Duquette had a photo shoot involving over 50 creative young people from Moncton, which eventually became known as the Marathon shoot.  

It was not easy to go through 5000+ images to select and edit only best ones, with this pretty busy wedding season that I had this year. But, the images are finally ready. 

During last two weeks of making final touch ups to the images, I was often thinking what an awesome day that was.  27 models were photographed in over 18 hours. Everyone was busy doing their thing. There was so much creativity flowing in the air that you could cut it with a knife. Why can't we do it every day...

Anyway, this is it. Make sure you read Denis's Blog post about that day, he's a great writer and his post will give you much better idea about what was going on. 

To view image in high resolution got my Website > "Models/Creative/Personal" folder. 

CREDITS: 

Thank you to my sweet fiance for her help and support during the day (well, always, actually)! :)  

Special Thanks to my team: 

Lead MUA: Sarah-Jane Bastarache 

MUA: Olivia Chandler

HAIR: Melanie Richard and Edgar Rojas 

Huge "Thank you" to David Corkum for providing his studio space.

Another "Thank you" goes to the guys covering behind the scenes: 

Dan MacDonald 

Joel Culligan 

Maurice Veniot 

Phil Dumas

Brad MacDonald 

Must say that the image was inspired by Philippe Kerlo. Watch his BTS video on FStoppers. 

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New Brunswick soprano - Wendy Nielsen.

Recently I had the pleasure of photographing New Brunswick soprano - Wendy Nielsen.  Wendy needed a new portrait for her agent. She found me through Google and was inspired by one of the black and white portraits on my website. 

I spent most part of my life in theatres too, so one thing we had in common was stage, and this made the shoot very easy and fun for me. 

We did 2 looks: one formal, and another one more casual. Wendy was absolutely great to shoot.  I think artists are easy to photograph because of their strong personalities.

The make up was done by Sarah-Jane Bastarache, and the Hair by Edgar Rojas. 

In this video I retouch one of Wendy's portraits. As you will see I try to preserve skin's texture and only remove very minor flows. In order to keep facial features I didn't remove any wrinkles and only lighten them up. 

This time I added subtitles to explain what I'm doing. 

Best viewed in HD. 

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