Some Images From This Year’s Doors – and Gangways – Open Toronto

This year we spent the Doors Open weekend down at the Waterfront shooting images from this area of the city for use in marketing material promoting all the area has to offer.  The waterfront has undergone a lot of changes and redevelopment over the past two years.  If you haven’t had a chance to spend time in the neighbourhood since it underwent construction, now might be a good time to visit.

These people – and pirates – all seemed to think so.

Scenes From Toronto’s Waterfront

Well summer is finally on its way.

After the winter that we all just endured the weather has finally warmed up and people are out and determined to enjoy it. One of the best places in Toronto to enjoy the summer weather – complete with cool lake breezes – is the waterfront.

During the Doors Open festival in May we shot some material for the Waterfront BIA, capturing images of people enjoying the first warm weekend we’d had in a long time. People were out running, biking, walking all shapes and sizes of dogs, and generally partaking in all the waterfront has to offer.

Some of those fun-loving people (and their dogs) even made it into our blog.

 

Pirates Invade Toronto’s Waterfront. Sort Of.

Last weekend all across the city, the doors to architecturally, historically, culturally, and socially significant buildings usually closed to the public were thrown open for the 15th annual Doors Open Toronto. Down on the waterfront Doors Open turned into Gangways Open as ships usually not accessible to curious by-passers welcomed crowds of happy locals and tourists alike onboard to discover these ships.

Over the course of the weekend plenty of pirates – presumably drawn to the area by the lovely new boardwalk, the numerous restaurants and retail outlets (including the amazing new Amsterdam Brewhouse), or by the sandy beach at H2O Park complete with cozy muskoka chairs – were found roaming the area. After all, what pirate wouldn’t want to take some time out from their busy plundering to relax in the cool breeze of the waterfront?

At the end of the day we had a few minutes to grab a few of these pirates, quickly set up lighting onboard the Empire Sandy tall ship, and in between the mild chaos of setting up the shot, corralling those happy locals and tourists into areas of the ship NOT in the shot, and managing the breeze that threatened the shooting umbrellas, were able to capture this photo above. It tells the story of the day: blue sky, puffy clouds, a tall ship… and some rogue pirates.

In the end, what else would you want from a weekend on the water?

ScotiaBank BuskerFest in Support of Epilepsy Toronto 2013 – A Recap

As you may know, each year we cover the ScotiaBank BuskerFest in Support of Epilepsy Toronto. This year the festival moved to the Downtown Yonge neighbourhood and spanned the area from Queen St. to College/Carlton. Above you will find scenes from the festival and some of the talented performers who provided Toronto with four days of world class street performance.

In its new home on Yonge Street the festival drew enough people (over 2 million) be be officially recognized as the world’s biggest busker street festival. That’s no small accomplishment, and all of the dedicated and talented people that we’ve had the pleasure of working with on and off the pitch over the past 10 years (this is the festival’s 14th year) have all had a part in making it the biggest, and – we think – the best street festival in the world.  Congratulations BuskerFest!

To those performers (and readers of this blog) who asked us about the staged portraits we usually do, we apologize but weren’t able to do them this year… we hadn’t realized that they were quite so popular, so maybe we will arrange something different next year.  Who knows…?

For now, enjoy reliving the fun of the festival’s best moments – above.

Last Week Was -22 Degrees Celsius. So This Week, Why Not Talk About Running Outdoors?

As mentioned in our 2012 year end blog post, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some terrific people over the past few years – people who we’ve come to realize have inspired us in one way or another. Some have inspired us with their creativity, challenging us to think in new ways or to develop our own techniques in creating images that we have collaborated on together – still others have gone further, inspiring us because they do some things that are really pretty awesome. One of those people is Idea Workshop director Jo-anne Sheffield.

Last year Jo-anne ran her first marathon. She RAN a MARATHON.  That’s a big deal. And not only did she finish in a very respectable time, but she posted consistent split times all the way to 35K before pushing through the final distance, strides that I can only imagine (and maybe entirely inaccurately) must have been simultaneously the most gruelling and exhilarating (and gruelling!) of the race. I followed her entire race on my iPhone, refreshing the feed as she crossed the finish line.  Jo-anne RAN a MARATHON.  That really is a big deal.

What was inspiring was not just the fact that after years of building up her distance, from five to thirty kilometre races, she accepted a challenge that would push her running to the most elite level – but also what her consistency and her results tell us about the way that she approached that challenge, both during the months of hard training and during the race itself.

So now, how does that relate to us (?) you might ask.

Well, I can’t explain it precisely – it’s more a process of thought than a phrase, but it relates to the long term goals that Mark and I have for our artistic development within the realm of commercial photography.  As we work our way through projects that will, in the end, comprise our life’s work – we realize that as they say, it is very much a marathon – it isn’t a sprint. We have mastered new skills over time and in the application of those skills we are proud to say that we have become consistent – our clients know what they are going to get when they hire us – we have found our pace.

Increasingly though, we have also found ourselves hungry for new challenges and developing a strong desire to take our craft to the next level. We want to create more, collaborate with others, and produce new work that pushes our limits. Our goals for this year may not be as easy to define as 42.2 kilometres on any given Sunday – but we know what they are and we are pushing ourselves to meet them.

Our first priority this year is to assemble some work that fully demonstrates what we can do and the direction in which we would like to go. Of course we will also continue to actively seek new people to collaborate with; people who will inspire us to do our best work yet.

If you are here and reading this we hope it is because you have liked some of our past work and you’re interested in seeing what we do next. Indeed if that is the case then we thank you and we encourage you to keep visiting this blog, we will continue to excitedly show you what we have been working on.

For now, you will find some of our older work above – marathons and road races that we  shot over this past year.  We are including those photos with this post because I have the feeling that if we included a portrait of Jo-anne without asking, we might get in a lot of trouble.

A LOT of trouble.      🙂

ScotiaBank BuskerFest People’s Choice Award Winners, Dream State Circus

The winners of this year’s People’s Choice Award at the ScotiaBank BuskerFest in Support of Epilepsy Toronto was Dream State Circus – the multitalented duo made up of  Sophie and Jacob McGrath.  We have shot several of Dream State Circus’ performances in past years – they were also People’s Choice Award winners in 2009 – and this year when they approached us to do a full on promo shoot for them in the week following the festival we jumped at the opportunity.

Apart from being a world renowned acrobalance, fire juggling, and highly synchronized circus act Sophie and Jacob are really wonderfully fun and honest people, they are very open minded and our shoot was a complete collaboration of creative ideas – the best kind of situation that we can hope for when shooting promo.  We shot using a few different locations and were enjoying ourselves so much that it seemed the time just flew by (well, it flew by for US – we’re not sure about Sophie and Jacob who were responsible for doing all the acrobatics required and still had to make the trip to Niagara that night in preparation for another festival that weekend)!

At the end of the afternoon we felt we’d created some material worthy of these power performers –  a couple of samples can be seen above.

We also should take a minute to thank Julie Pilkington and the staff at the Novotel Toronto Centre.  We are becoming known for our fire photography and as I’ve mentioned before, when we shoot fire the fire is real – there is no photoshopping or post production to make it bigger, brighter, or more ‘fiery’ – it comes out of the camera just as you see it in the photos and Dream State Circus does BIG fire. With our assurance that all of the necessary precautions and safety measures were in place (Dream State is also very safety conscious) Julie allowed us a perfect location to shoot uninterrupted, so again – our thanks to Julie and of course to Sophie and Jacob of Dream State Circus. We had such a lot of fun.

Peter Rabbit and Snap Boogie as 2 on 1

One of the most popular performance duos at ScotiaBank BuskerFest this year was 2 on 1, made up of Peter Rabbit an established drummer and all around entertainer (who we last shot in 2005) and Snap Boogie (aka Cjaiilon Andrade) a blindingly talented dancer who some might have recognized as a semi-finalist from Season 6 of America’s Got Talent.   As 2 on 1, Peter drums on buckets demonstrating his incredible skill in percussion while Snap Boogie displays his talent and passion for dance in a routine that ends with him front flipping over a line of audience members – inevitably to wild applause.

While this duo puts on an energetic and masterful show for the audience, a part of their obvious fan appeal is in the way that they approach everyone who has come to see them perform. Peter Rabbit and Snap Boogie are two very open, friendly, and accommodating professionals and we can tell you first hand they are a real pleasure – and a lot of fun – to work with.

We grabbed each of them individually for a series of portraits in an alley on the grounds of BuskerFest – as you can see we also grabbed a few helpful chefs who came during a break from a nearby restaurant to see what we were up to and ended up standing in for some lighting tests. Both Peter and Snap collaborated fully with us bringing their own ideas, and though their schedules were busy and they had been performing all day they gave us as much time as we needed to bring the ideas to life.

Above a portrait of each.

After seeing the proofs Snap mentioned that he’d like to work with us again because we made him look ‘ripped’ and ‘sexy’… but that’s no trick. The talent, charisma, the positive attitude through adversity that he shares with Peter, and of course – the 8 pack abs – are very real, and combine to assure us that this young performer has a serious future.

And we would never turn down the opportunity to play a part in promoting it.

Final Set of Greenroom Portraits From ScotiaBank BuskerFest 2012

 

Above, the final set of portraits from the greenroom of the ScotiaBank BuskerFest in Support of Epilepsy Toronto. We would once again like to thank everyone who stood in front of our camera, allowing to create a collective picture of  all those who are so important in making this festival the success that it is.

Next week we will post some of the portraits that we took outside of the greenroom as well as some photos from a private  shoot that we did with the festival’s People’s Choice Award winners, Dream State Circus earlier this week.

More Performers, Crew, and Volunteers of the 2012 ScotiaBank BuskerFest

Another set of portraits from our roughed together greenroom studio set up.

Some Portraits From the 2012 ScotiaBank BuskerFest Greenroom

Above, a series of portraits featuring some of the performers, crew, and volunteers who made this year’s ScotiaBank BuskerFest in Support of Epilepsy Toronto what it was.