So I spent the week-end with Laura and Jeff a while back (and yes, we did go for drinks and poutine after that, so I’m not THAT lame!). Anyways, we had this big awesome plan to do golden hour/sunset shots…. but like most of this spring the weather had something else entirely in mind, and brought back winter. The sky was gloomy, the wind was blustery, and it was COLD! Anyways, like always we make due! Laura and Jeff were awesome to spend the evening with….. showing us all of their little special places in and around their neighbourhood. We ended up at their rooftop terrace, and witnessed a couple of hooligans set the BBQ on fire. Not just a little smoke, but HUGE flame and thick black smoke. Instead of grabbing the nearby fire extinguisher, or calling building security, they just left. Yup thats right, they left a BBQ with a huge blazing fire and took off. We considered some fire extinguisher photos, but we didn’t want to risk explosion, blindness, or death.

Mel and Alex will be getting married in Old Montreal on Sept 1st. Me and Gray are soooo excited to join you to watch you say your vows!

Thank you again for being troopers! We had tons of fun during this session! I hope you enjoy!

We decided to head to one of my favourite spots in Toronto to watch the sunset. Alex brought his guitar, and it was seriously the most romantic thing ever!!! A warm night, soft guitar music, and a beautiful sunset over the water, the skyline twinkling in the distance! I hope you enjoy these shots as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Venue: Sonja’s party room
Dress: BCBG
Shoes: Steve Madden
Catering: Gray, Andrea, Carrie, Debbie, Phee, Sonja, Candice and Pauline from Cookie Cornocopia
Decor: Yours truly
Flowers: Myself and Andrea
Marmalade queen: Alex Howard
Photography: Myself and Haydn Liang, HTL photography

So my first DIY project was the flowers. Because the shower theme was “tea in the peonies”, I figured that some peonies were in order. However, peonies are NOT in season in March (little did Gray know when he themed the shower)…. but Garden Roses are kind of close enough. So I ordered 72 pink “peony” garden roses from Whole Blossoms. I don’t know what I was thinking! I didn’t realize how LARGE roses are…… they were literally all over my condo! And prickly! I don’t know how many times I pricked myself!! Note to self: next time I want to take on a DIY project, buy gloves. And flower stem cutters (I also broke 2 pairs of sizzors).

Carrie and Candice were nice enough to join me on Saturday to help assemble some of the crafts. I am soo thankful for their input and their help!!! Carrie hand wrote all of the little sheep labels, AND all of the food labels! She has amazingly neat writing, something that I certainly do not!

I must admit, I was sooo excited for all of the DIY crafts that I had a little mini-prep photoshoot the night before!

Here is some of the amazing culinary skills of my amazing bridesmaids! And it tasted just as good as it looked!

Home made marmalade by our fantastic friend Alex Howard!! It was a huge hit!

Yes, I couldn’t help but shoot some images at my own shower!

PS. to future brides out there…. Daryl is also an amazing make-up artist AND wedding planner! I can get you in touch with her if you’d like to chat with her about her services!

This session was a personal favourite, not only because we got to spend the week-end in Ottawa eating delicious food and shooting in a new place…. but because it was for a very special couple. My new brother and sister-in-law!!! Arya is my fiance’s older brother and Candice will be my new sister!!! So yes, I may have helped in the shopping and outfit planning for this session!! (YAY BCBG and Anthropogolie!).

I am more then a little excited for Arya and Candice’s upcoming destination wedding in DOMINICAN REPUBLIC this July!! Whoooohoooooo!!!

Congrats guys, and thanks again for trusting us to capture such a special time in your lives!

XOXO

Court and Gray

I am flying my wedding photographer in from Florida for the wedding…. but cost-wise it just didn’t make sense to bring her down twice for the wedding and engagement photos. I’m not gonna lie, I thought about a week-end trip to Orlando on a few occasions…. but the budget wasn’t on my side. So instead we opted to do a day after trash-the-dress with her, and I thought I’d just find some local talent to do the engagement photos!

After getting turned down by many of the larger studios (as they only shoot engagement photos with a wedding package), or being told a crazy quote (that is 4x what I charge for an engagement session) I decided to just keep it in the family (literally).

So a HUGE thanks to my brother, partner in crime, and second shooter, Gray McIntosh for helping us out!!! We managed to do 2 SESSIONS, since I wanted a variety of locations, lighting, and outfits. Additional thanks to Joseph Mayers from Creative Captures, and Haydn Liang from HTL Photography for tagging along to the second session!! New ideas and techniques are always appreciated!!!

All of the images below were taken by either Gray, Joe or Haydn, and edited by me. Enjoy!

So to put everything into perspective, I got the wedding inquiry from Maria at the beginning of Jan. I had just gotten back from my whirlwind trip to Austria over Christmas, and Maria was asking me if I wanted to come to New York to photograph her wedding at the end of the month! Thinking that it was probably never going to happen, I shot a quick e-mail to my brother (and second shooter), asking if he’d be up for going to New York in a few weeks for a wedding. Being a busy guy, I figured it was a long shot. “HELL YA!” was his quick response. So it was settled….. a few e-mails back and fourth and we were going to New York!

One thing that I ALWAYS like to do before I wedding is get to know the couple. I find it helps TREMENDOUSLY if we already have built a friendship…so that I know how they interact, I know what cute things they do together, and of course we have some inside jokes so I can make them laugh (hopefully). I generally build this relationship through the consult, the engagement session, and all of the wedding planning leading up to the big day, so we tend to be pretty well acquainted come the wedding. Not this time. I had an idea of what Maria and Peter looked like after a short period of facebook stalking (well, they were my OWN photos, as they’d both been in Val’s wedding and I was a guest there and took some pics). But one thing I noticed right away from Maria’s e-mails is that she was super nice and really easy going….. so that helped to ease my nerves!

So by all means check out my blog post about our actual trip into the big city, and check out the most INCREDIBLE wedding below!!! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH MARIA AND PETER!!! You are lovely people, a lovely couple, and had an incredible wedding, and we are sooo honored to have been a part of it all! We wish you all the best in the future!

Melissa Samborski from One Fine Day event planning and design did all of the wedding planning aspects of the day, and made sure that all of the details were gorgeous, and the day ran perfectly smooth.

I suppose my only complaint the entire day was that mother nature decided to play an evil trick on us. This entire winter so far was been unseasonably warm. I’m talking like above zero almost every day! So I was shocked when I left my house the morning of the wedding…it was sooooo cold you could hardly breath. I don’t even know how I survived pumping my gas.

I don’t know how cold it ended up being….. it certainly felt like -35 degrees… so we’re just going to go with that. So the entire wedding party were troopers for going outside for even a few minutes in their dresses. And there are no words to describe Michelle’s bravery and determination to get “the shot”….. she was outside the longest of anyone……!!! My feet were like blocks of ice when I got back to the car, so I can’t even imagine how she felt!!!

And surprise surprise, it was like +10 again the day after the wedding. Soo not fair!

Venue: Liberty Grand
DJ: Del Vinyl Entertainment
Event Planning: One Fine Day event planning and design
Dress: The Brides’ Project
Shoes: Badgley Mischka
Make-up: Courtney Nevins
Hair: Lisa Herbert from Dolce Divas
Flowers: Rainflower Company
Cake: Irresistible Cakes

I am not sure if you recognize Sarah from previous weddings I’ve shot (Aysha & Paul or Caroline & Matt), but this was my THIRD wedding where Sarah was a bridesmaid!!! So we have a running joke about her being a professional bridesmaid. So if anyone is looking for not only a photographer, but a pro bridesmaid? Sarah is your girl. Not only can she throw a KILLER bachelorette party (with a pink karaoke bus!) but she can also bring the sass to any of your bridal party photos!

Then over to the guys to see what kind of trouble they were getting into!

The ceremony was held at John’s local church, the Transfiguration of Our Lord Roman Catholic Perish in Etobicoke. The church was adorned in beautiful stained glass windows, shedding patches of coloured light all over.

And 1…..2…….3… don’t look cold!!

We headed back to Liberty Grand to finish the pictures, as it was just too unbearably cold to do any more outside. I was totally ok with that….Liberty Grand is a gorgeous venue with a ton of places to shoot!

The hall was lit by the beautiful sunset glow when we first arrived. What a romantic setting for an incredible wedding celebration!

Our plan was to leave Friday night around 9:30pm, land in New York by 11pm. Have all of Saturday to see the city. Shoot the wedding on Sunday, and fly out Monday morning at 6:45am, in time for me to be at work in Toronto by 10am. Sounds like a perfect plan right? Except there was a light snow fall Friday morning and our flight was cancelled. Our hotel wouldn’t give us our money back for missing the Friday night, but they would let us transfer it to another day. So although I don’t have a lot of holiday time left, I decided to just suck it up and take Monday off…. at least it would give us an extra day to explore. So we were able to switch everything to allow us to come home on the Tuesday morning flight instead.

Day 1: So our flight left at 7am from the Toronto Island airport. It was our first time flying Porter, so a few things were noteworthy. 1) the Ferry to take you across to the Island was hilarious. It is the shortest Ferry ride I think in the history of the world. As Gray would say, you might as well lay down a few planks and we could walk across. 2) The free snacks in the Porter lounge are AMAZING! It was like 6am, so no booze unfortunately, but I certainly had my fair share of cappuccinos and almonds!

The flight was uneventful. We landed in Newark around 8:15am…… at the exact same time as a GIANT flight from India. So the 15 or so Canadians had to wait in a gianourmous line up at Boarder Control…. while we watched countless people get finger printed, mug shots taken, or escorted into “back rooms”. Nervous and terrified for our turn, the guy didn’t even blink at us. Canadians? Have a good day! It was 10:30am by the time we got out of that mess.

Having no hotel until 3pm, we decided to try our luck and head for the city. We figured that being Torontonians, we could handle some city driving (and parking). About $20 later in New Jersey tolls, we found a sign to the Liberty State park. We decided to check it out and get our first view of the New York City skyline.

Trusting the GPS was probably our first mistake. We had read about an amazing pizza place under the Brooklyn Bridge. So we decided to head over that way and see where the day would take us. Well, the GPS would have none of that. She lead us to the Brooklyn Bridge, and then over it. Being stuck on the other side, we drove around until we found some parking and decided we’d just leave the car and walk in. MUCH easier (and cheaper) to just ditch the car as soon as possible. Tolls are everywhere (some upwards of $12 just to use a tunnel) so instead of crossing back into Manhattan we thought it would be cheaper to walk.

We found a place down a long street near the river…. so at least it would be easy to find again. It was a tad bit shady if you know what I mean, but some of the side streets were quite inviting. Jer-blah-blah-blah (we couldn’t pronounce it) had the cutest little brownstones with a cobble stone street. We dropped our bags for our first photoshoot. Lying in the street! Americans sure are nice…..a passerby stopped when she saw Gray lying on the road to make sure that he was ok (and clearly wondering why I was taking pictures).

This was the view on the road along the river. I kind of wished I lived here, as it’s an excellent photoshoot back drop! Clearly others felt the same, since there was a rapper getting his photos done by a clear “professional”

A view from the Brooklyn Bridge towards our favourite area, Jer-blah-blah-blah. I love how the roads are tired. Like a cake!

We didn’t find THE pizza joint we were looking for (apparently it was on the Brooklyn side of the bridge, but Gray INSISTED we cross first) but we found something else! The place was cute, the pizza was fresh and tasty, and the area was really trendy. The waiter also gave us some good tips on things to do and places to go for dinner in mid-town!

Light speaks to me, and when I see nice light we drop everything and break out into a photo shoot! This is “precious photography takes Manhattan by storm”!

I wish that I had pre-planned things better, and worn some make-up and not had 4am bags under my eyes and horrific airplane hair. Oh well.



I think we walked to Wall street from where we were. So Gray thought I should at least see the sights incase we didn’t make it back.


Our plan was to try and make it up either the Rockefeller Centre or the Empire State building for sunset. My vote was for the Rock. Not just because of Liz Lemon (ok maaybe), but a friend had said it was better and you actually could get the Empire State in the photos. Done and done.

There was a HILARIOUS sign at the front entrance to the “Top of the Rock”. It said $68 in big letters. Then in small letters it said “for 4 New York attractions”. Sooo many people were turning away because they thought it was $68 to get to the top. We almost did ourselves….. until we read the fine print. I can pay $25 for a nice view….. but certainly not $68! Unfortunately it didn’t deter enough people……….apparently we weren’t the only ones with the same sunset idea. If there is one thing I hate, it’s fighting for a spot to take a good picture. People bump you, they stand right in your way, and they hog all of the good spots. Oh well….. it is what it is. We had no tripod, so these shots were all hand-held. So they aren’t the amazing f22 HDR shots that I had imagined. But whatever.


I seriously loved my Canada mittens. LOL.





So another site that anyone new to New York has to experience is Times Square. I can totally see why the locals want nothing to do with it! While it is a spectacle, it is SWARMING with tourists….. and tourists aren’t our cup of tea.



Our waiter from lunch time had suggested we eat somewhere on 8th or 9th. So we walked down Broadway I think it was? Past a whole bunch of broadway shows….. until we found a whole bunch of restaurants. We ended up at a cute little Thai place……. really good and really cheap! Since Thai restaurants aren’t really known for their succulent deserts, we doubled back through Times Square and back in the direction of 30 Rock for the world famous bakery….Magnolia. I am not sure if it’s famous for real, or if Lonley Island just made it famous in their Lazy Sunday rap. Either way the cupcakes were fantastic!


We got back to our hotel room probably around midnight? After finding the subway, finding our car, and finding our hotel. We also made a quick pit-stop at Liberty State Park with the hopes to photograph some NYC skyline shots in the dark. Instead we were met with a giant CLOSED sign. BOO!

Day 2: Today was the day of Maria and Peter’s wedding. I’ll save this story for it’s own blog post.

However, we left the wedding around 10pm. It being “early” we decided to try our luck again at the Liberty State Park. There is something about photographing a wedding that makes me feel invincible. Adrenaline or something. Anyways, what’s a stupid sign going to do anyways? Do not enter is like waving candy in front of a child. Clearly I want to enter even more now!! So perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to carry thousands of dollars of camera equipment into a dark and sketchy area alone in the dark in New York….. but we had our flimsy plastic tripods to protect us from evil wrong-dooers right?

So sadly it was windy, and again my plans for a beautiful f22 long exposure didn’t work. Flimsy tripod + wind = epic fail. Oh well….. the excitement of the chase is sometimes more exciting then the prize? And we lived to tell about it! (shhhh don’t tell my dad!)

So we probably made it back to the hotel room past midnight again. And silly me can’t sleep until all my memory cards have been backed up. So that puts me at a 2am bedtime.

Day 3: Wedding hangovers are the worst. Not hangover from booze….. no no! Hangovers from weddings. Every part of my body hurts…. my legs from running around, my back from heavy lifting, my hand stuck in a claw formation from gripping the camera so tight, my brain from the amount of stress I go through. Generally I don’t leave my bed the day after a wedding if I can help it. That’s right…. I post my sneak peeks from the comfort of my bed. Gotta love laptops!

Anyways, we drag overselves out of bed. We are in NEW YORK for gods sake, we can’t just lay around in bed all day! So we slowly bring ourselves to make it out of the house, and head back to Jer-blah-blah-blah for parking. Might as well go where we know we can park and find our way around!

I’m not gonna lie. I wasn’t pleasant. I was just generally uncomfortable. Tired, hungry, cold, had to pee, hurt everywhere. And Gray somehow seemed peppy and eager. Damn you Gray for being 26!!

Anyways, after whining for a good period of time, we finally got to have lunch. I am always more pleasant after eating.

Central Park was nice….. but because I was tired I couldn’t get warm. Gray kept insisting that I take off my ridiculous hat/hood combo and pose for some nice pictures…..but it was seriously FREEZING (I know I know like +10 or something….but I was just cold).

Madison Ave puppies. Apparently everyone’s got one.

So instead of choosing to shop (what’s the point, I’m wedding poor and it just makes me sad to see nice stuff that I can’t have) we opted to take the free Ferry to Staten Island to get yet another skyline shot.


Again, these are all hand held and ON A BOAT, so movement was kind of an issue for long exposures!

I guess I should mention the dinner. We went out in Soho to a place called Balthazar. It was sort of a French Bistro with lots of fresh fish, lobster, and Oysters. We shared a fresh pumpkin ravioli with a hint of orange zest and OHMIGOD it was freaking AMAZING! Even Gordon Ramsey would be impressed I think! For dinner I had a lobster risotto and Gray had a pot belly pig. One half litre of wine turned into 2, and 3 hours and a mango cheesecake later…….. it was now like 11pm! Where did the time go!? We decided to get dinner around 7:30ish and now it’s LATE? We have to get up at 4AM!





So finally after getting the car from the Jer-blah-blah-blah area, we found a nice (and safe looking) vantage point of the city! Might as well… since we’re here.

Of course, we got back to the hotel room around 1:30am. Skyline shots, traffic…… anyways we had to be up at 4am to leave to the airport and of course had not even started to pack. Needless to say it was a whirlwind trip full of adventure, but sadly not full of sleep! Thanks for being my awesome travel pal Gray, as usual.