I am based out of London, Ontario, but I love to travel. I specialize in wedding and portrait photography because, well, I love people, I love telling their stories. When you hire me, you are inviting me into your life to have a little look-see into your world, so I guess it's only fair that you get a look into mine.
If you don't feel like scanning through all my ramblings and just want to see my work, you can check out my portfolio here.
There is one personality trait I have yet to figure out if it’s good or bad, I guess it all depends on who you ask, this little addiction of mine is I love to give.
Maybe it has something to do with my natural impatience, I don’t know, but if I buy someone a gift I can’t wait for what ever special occasion to hand it over. This trait shines when it comes to my sons. I love nothing more then finding that perfect gift, to pull it out and watch their eyes just light up with joy. This often leads to unplanned trips to Toy’R'us and that is what happened today.
I was heading to BestBuy to pick up some stuff and I brought Logan along for the ride. He was being so well behaved (an extreme rarity for him) that I thought we would jump over to Toy’R'us, he had been bugging us for a dinosaur he had seen on a YouTube video and I thought we may be able to find something similar.
We enter the store and start looking. Not finding anything of interest, I grab a salesman and ask him where I could find an animatronic dinosaur. He points us over to the Fisher Price aisle to check out the Kota & Pals series. When we rounded the corner my face dropped and I thought Logan was going to explode with excitement…Right there before us was a 2 foot T-Rex that roared, walked and a whole bunch of other stuff. I looked at it, then Logan’s face, then the price tag. I knew I was gonna have a fight on my hands.
I had to do some quick thinking to avoid a scene (read yelling, screaming, hitting, so on and so on). I grabbed the first small dino I could find and shoved it in front of Logan. It took a bit of talking, but I was able to get him to forget about the monster T-Rex and he walked out of the store with a new best friend.
That was at 11:30 this morning and since then he has done nothing but play with his new triceratops. When he is not playing with it, he is talking about it. I have heard “The triceratops has ‘free’ horns and a frill because T-Rex tries to bit him” more time then I can count this afternoon.
Yes the noise gets annoying and Nathan (my youngest) is terrified of it the poor little guy, but I think it’s worth it. I got to see that look of joy that every father just loves and my little addiction to giving has been satiated for a little while. Now if only Nathan was so easy to please. That boy is so hard to buy for…..
Last night after sitting in the house all day watching two kids with colds, I decided to hit downtown to do a little street work. Despite the cold and the wind, I actually really enjoyed myself. I just bundled up, throw some killer tunes on the iPhone and walked around to see what I can see.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am still shedding tears over the images and news coverage coming out of Haiti. One thing that does make me proud to be a human being in this dark times is the outpouring of money and help coming from all corners of the earth.
One great example of this is Switch Cities. Switch Cites is a collection of wedding photographer from all over the world that regularly show the best of their non-wedding work. These fine folks have come together along with other photographers to auction off their prints with all proceeds going to help out in Haiti.
They are actually on round two of the auction. The first round earned a impressive $2633 US dollars, so I’m excited to see what they can raise this time around.
So if you are looking to help or you’re just looking to spruce up a wall with a killer new print, head on over to the auction and bid on your favorite print.
For my family 2009 was a year of firsts. First bike, first day at school, first hockey stick, first word (we think…). For the business, 2009 has been a year of maturity. It has also been my first full year with the blog. I have gotten to point my camera at some truly amazing people and I can say that I have the best clients on the face of the earth.
How will I remember 2009? With a huge grin on my face
I spent my new years long weekend combing through all the memories of 2009 and I’ve gathers 61 images that I think express the feeling of the last year of this decade for me. Lots of smiles, lots of emotion and a copious amount of lip locking. Some images you have seen, some never made it to the blog for one reason or another, but all would be lining my walls if I had a much bigger house.
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did capturing them.
One thing I find really annoying about being part-time in this photography thing is that the day job gets in the way of actually taking pictures. If you look all over the internet for advice on improving your photography, the number one response is shoot and shoot a lot…Well that’s kinda hard when you work 70 hours a week in another profession.
I have found ways to work around this problem though. One way is my 18 Wheels and a Camera project, this allows me to shoot and exercises the ol’ noggin in spotting those images even while I’m driving my rig down the 402 highway. Another way is my regular photo outings, today’s outing was kind of a road trip. I wasn’t sure where to go, so I put up a vote on Twitter asking for which direction to go…They said south, so I went south and ended up at Port Stanley.
I couldn’t believe the weather for a mid December day and it was quite nice out, the light was amazing. Anyways, here are some of my favorites from today….
As I was heading out of Port Stanley with the intention of swinging east and north to hit up some of the smaller towns past London, the clouds came rolling in and killed my light. I was totally bummed, I was having such a great time. I ended up just packing it in and heading home. As I was driving along I saw this last image. The mix of light, clouds and the framing of the trees just grabbed me and I slammed on the breaks. If the guy in the blue and white late model Ford Pickup up is reading this….Sorry dude! But I think it was totally worth it
My first year of doing Cans for Comments was a pretty good success if I do say so myself. Thanks to all the kind peeps out there, I collected 70 cans for the London Food Bank.
Today I headed out and picked up those cans. Now I’m no math wizard or anything and counting can be a little tough for me sometimes, so I think I may have gotten a wee bit more the 70 cans from Costco…But whats a few more cans really? Just a little warning though, I’ll be looking to double my can count for next year, so all of you have 12 whole months to warm up those comments. In the mean time I’ll try my damnedest to have some killer posts for you to comment on.
Again I want to send out a HUGE thank you to Chris+Lynn for birthing this awesome idea, you two are the best! Also don’t forget that there are still tons of photographers and bloggers doing their part for Cans for Comments. For a list of those said participants you can head on over to the Cans for Comments website and start commenting away to help get some food on to the tables of those in need.
It has been a while since my last (Music to Inspire) post, so I thought I would feature one of my favorite bands The Civil Wars. I’m not exactly sure how I came across this duo, but I’m sure happy I did.
The Civil Wars are the combined talent of Joy Williams and John Paul White. Apart, they are both amazing artists with some of the best vocal cords I have heard in a long time, together they are absolutely f-in amazing. One of my go to songs is The Girl with the Red Balloon off of their album Live at Eddie’s Attic. This song is kind of a contradiction for me. If you listen to the lyrics it is a rather sad story of a girl that has lost the love of her life (or something along those lines), but the guitar and vocals just lift my spirits out of even the darkest of moods. I find that when I get depressed or if I’m in an irritated state of mind it really hurts my work, so all I have to do is boot up iTune, throw on this song and I’m up and running again in the perfect frame of mind to create.
I really think you’re gonna dig this song. If I’m right, you will want to head on over to their MySpace page where you can watch some videos, listen to more of their work and download the above mentioned album Live at Eddie’s Attic. Also, don’t forget to follow them on Twitter(@joywilliams@johnpaulwhite and @thecivilwars) and hit up their Facebook page.
I guess I’ll just shut my yap and let you listen to The Civil Wars with their song The Girl with the Red Balloon
It’s been a while since I have posted anything about my family, but after the news we just got I thought I would share a bit.
If you have been following this blog for a while, you will know that my youngest son Nathan has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive development disorder-not otherwise specified). PDD-NOS falls under the autism spectrum. He is 3 years old, but at the level of a child half his age.
As it turns out, after a visit to a developmental pediatrician, our eldest son Logan may fall under the autism spectrum as well. We have been concerned with his social skills for a while, but having a diagnoses of autism was kinda hard to hear. You start to blame yourself and a feeling of failing your child does tend to happen. It is to early to tell anything yet with more tests to follow, so all we can do is wait.
All I can ask for as a father is to ensure my boys are happy, whether or not Logan turns out to have autism is a mute point. Of coarse I have moments where I feel like I have failed my boys, like I have neglected to protect them. Then I have to tell myself that I have done my job, Logan is a happy child and as long as I do everything in my power to keep him a happy child, I have not failed.
Be them doctors, lawyers or the guy behind the counter at the gas station… As long as my boys are happy I will be proud of them.
Just a little warning though, I’ll be looking to double my can count for next year, so all of you have 12 whole months to warm up those comments. In the mean time I’ll try my damnedest to have some killer posts for you to comment on.