Cars!

I will freely admit that I am just about the farthest thing from a car buff you can get. I usually tell cars apart by colour or size, and asking me to identify the make and model of any vehicle will be just about as successful as asking my cat to do basic math: I'll likely tilt my head to one side and look cute until you give up and give me a treat.

That being said, I'm not altogether insensitive to automotive aesthetic, a discovery I made recently during a visit to the Canada Science and Technology Museum.

A couple of cars caught my eye, so I made it my mission for the day to explore the limited angles allowed by the museum exhibition and get a few good shots out of it. This led to some awkward contortions around signs and fences, and I'm sure the museum floors are just a bit cleaner after my visit. I'll let you be the judge of the results:

Salsa

Dance photography holds a special place in my heart. It's not just because dancers are generally beautiful people. It's not just that dance gives them a grace and self-confidence that photographs beautifully. (Although these are both excellent reasons to get a dancer into your studio right now.) What keeps me coming back to dance photography is the ability to capture the feel and emotion of a dance.

We recently had two salsa dancers in our studio, France Trottier and Chris Feist, for a "just for fun" salsa shoot. Big thanks go out to both of them for being the inspiring, expressive and exceptionally patient models they were. Here are the results:







See the full set here.

Behind the scenes tidbit: music usually plays an important part in my shoots. People respond to music in amazing ways, and more often than not this alone will allow you to capture a drastically different side of them than you might expect. For a dance shoot, however, music is all the more important, so we were doubly grateful to Chris, who is also a fantastic (salsa) DJ. Check out his Facebook page here.

Yoga with Diana

Some people are blessed with exceptional talents. Others, like myself, are lucky enough to be surrounded by these people.

One of my ridiculously gifted friends is Diana, a many-faceted artist who, in addition to sharing her passion for dance and the arts with the world, also teaches some of the most inspiring (and butt-kicking, all truth be told) yoga classes in Ottawa.

Jeff and I were thrilled when she accepted to model for a yoga shoot. Since Jeff was the mastermind behind the shoot, you can see most of the highlights here.

However, I had one idea to explore as well. Rather than the omnipresent warrior/lotus/dancer pose on bright white background, I wanted to see whether a low-key, mostly black on black image might bring out what I love best about yoga, which is the opportunity for peace and introspection it allows into our hectic lives. To me, inner peace isn't the exuberance of a brightly lit white expanse, but the quiet comfort of a dim room in which we let our own light shine from within.

The result:



You can see the complete set here.

Behind the scenes tidbit: to get these shots, we had to improvise a platform for Diana to sit on, out of a step stool, a piece of hard plastic, and a sheet of black velvet. Probably not an ideal setting to meditate or pose, which is just one more reason why Diana is beyond awesome. We hope, in time, she forgives us :)