Executive Portrait of a BC Lawyer.

We photograph a lot of Judges and Lawyers. I photographed the wedding of Chief Justice
Barbara Mc Lachlin and the family portraits of hundreds of local Judges and Lawyers.
The way I see it..if a lawyer writes you a testimonial it should give you double bonus points...lol

Check it out... (scroll about half way down...)


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Some well known faces...

This is my portrait of a number of Canada`s Prime Ministers and Alex Trebek, which I shot for Magna and the CBC to promote the Next Great Canadian Prime Minister TV show that airs
today. I have photographed portraits of every Prime Minister from Trudeau to Harper and this
assignment is one I have carried out for 4 years on location in Toronto.
Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I realize that I am having a glass of wine with Kim Campbell or hearing John Turner describe me as his favorite photographer. Its always nice to
get together with them and this year meeting game show legend Alex Trebek was an added bonus.Behind the scenes...he`s funnier than on TV.

Now if I can get these guys to all smile on cue...imagine what we can do for YOU!

Drive through window???

Just when I finally had three days off...this morning the icy conditions resulted in a car driving
right through the front window of our studio. Luckily, no one was injured and hey...I got great coverage from the Citizen and the Sun...Check it out!
Yes...we are open for business tomorrow as the front of the building has been repaired and its all safe. Perhaps we need to offer drive through portraits!

Yousuf Karsh and I, Ottawa Citizen.

I am honored that the Ottawa Citizen has chosen to feature me in their story on Yousuf Karsh of Ottawa on the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Yousef and I met many times and I expressed my gratitude for the influence he had on my career. My one regret is never having had him take my own portrait or never having taken his, thought I did have the pleasure of taking a portrait of his brother Malak Karsh. As well, I wisely purchased an original print by Yousuf that he signed for me. The image is, in my opinion his finest work, a portrait of Pablo Casals. It is also one of the best investments I ever made.
My Karsh stories are many and I will save them for my own eventual book, but suffice to say I
was honored when he referred a number of clients to me upon closing his studio and equally honored when a number of corporate clients considered me as his replacement. Karsh was an artist, a businessman and one of the most refined gentlemen I have ever met...he truly possessed an old world charm that is rarely seen today. Without Karsh, I doubt my career would have developed technically and artistically as it did.

Click on this link to the Citizen page and if you click on my self portrait you can hear me speak on Karsh. The series is extremely well done...Yousuf would approve.

Digital files and making your own albums.

Digital files, a thorny issue indeed. Having the experience of a few decades in this industry I am often asked to speak to groups of photographers at Conventions across Canada regarding our business and this topic keeps coming up.

There are two schools of thought...photographers that simply shoot a wedding and let the clients print their own...and photographers who insist on total control.

We actually don`t fall into either camp...since our policies allow for both.

What do I think about the idea of having clients create their own prints and albums?...My opinion is that in 90% of all cases it is a bad choice for the client to try to make their own wedding albums unless they have top level skills and lots of free time. I can`t tell you how many people walk up to me at weddings and bemoan the fact they have no wedding prints...its really sad.

The image above shows what a great Photoshop artist can do in half an hour with retouching, skin tone and effects. What you see on this screen is exactly what our printer actually prints and what our client actually recieves. This is called a color managed system, which has taken us years to perfect and a lot of coordination with our lab. The combined experience at my studio is roughly 60 years in total time that my staff and I have been dealing with photography and digital. We have won over 100 awards for our work. Yes, there is a difference.

Occasionally we find one of our clients is a digital whiz kid and hey....we are open to discuss rates for including the files. As well, some of our clients simply want to make up some 4 by 6's for the inlaws and are not as concerned about these as their final album.

One thing I do caution against is selecting a photographer who will not make you prints. This is no bargain...I get emails all the time from brides asking if we will correct these "bargain" photographers digital files and make them prints. Sometimes I feel like Mike Holmes (you know,the guy from Holmes on Homes), but not quite as cranky. Yes, we have provided this service...but as they say..you can pay me now...or pay me a lot more later.

One final thought..... woe be the groom, who promises to make up a wedding album for his new bride and not deliver on that promise. Its a formidable task and to my mind, best left to a professional.

Ottawa Dog Portrait

Dogs are great in photos...give me dogs any day rather than cats...and I have three of the
felines at home. The shoot took a grand total of five minutes with such a cooperative model.
To date we have photographed cats, dogs,birds, rabbits and horses....and a range of smaller pets.
No snakes please...although perhaps my current assistant might be ok with them....

Don`t be shy, bring that animal in when you book your family...we are all animal lovers.

Wanna see more......click away...

Ottawa Glamour Boudoir Makeover

Soooo...we posted a Makeover on Youtube a few months back and so far we are up to around 800 hits. Take a look, but if you do, make sure to push the button indicating view in high quality. Thanks to Youtube`s new higher quality it looks great....here is the link.

Ottawa Photographers

An Ottawa U student, Hamed Tinafer decided to make me his school project and created this
Wikipedia entry.....Wow. I am honored....and hey, its nice to think back on all I have done in my
career to date. Ok, enough resting on my laurels...thanks Hamed.

Ottawa Wedding Portraits

Looking for light is what we do...and this is what we make of it....

Wedding at Cordon Bleu

Coming down the "aisle" outside the Cordon Bleu on Laurier Avenue

Photojournalism / Ottawa Wedding Photographers

This "leaving the house"shot was one of my favorites from a Lebanese wedding. We also photographed her sisters wedding a couple of years before this one and it was nice the see
the whole gang again. I posted this shot because it really is true photojournalism. It really happened this way and we did not stop them three times to pose it. I see a lot of photographers calling themselves photojournalists but when I go to their sites I see images that will be the cliches of the future.
Much of what I see as "photojournalism" is just a series of badly lit shots passing for "art".

What do I see..

=Photoshop filters thrown on to rescue technically bad portraits in which the brides dress is a white explosion and the bridesmaids skin tone is something from a horror flick.
= Images that someone tries to pass for art but don`t even have even basic technical qualities
like proper color or lighting of the subtle colors of the dresses.
=The ones that will really be dated fast are those wide angle shots from below that people think are cool now, but are just the cliches of this era. Why someone would want to make themselves look twisted up on their wedding day..who knows. Then again, I never did the double expose the music sheet on the brides head..lol.

We are both portraitists and photojournalists and have been doing so all along....To see some recent editorial and photojournalism...go here. For a few examples of our photojournalistic wedding images go here. Great images never go out of style! We have been shooting candids
throughout the studio's history...I am just glad that now people are actually putting them into
their albums.

Are there good wedding photojournalists in town...yes, a handful. For most, its just the latest label to try to make a sale.

OK...Rant Off.

Ottawa Italian Wedding

An overcast fall day didn`t stop the girls from having a bit of fun.

Ottawa Wedding Photographer

Sooo....I dug back and started thinking about some of my faves over the last couple of

years. This is a page from the digital album of an Italian wedding at Sala San Marco.

Yes...the food was amazing.

Upper Canada village is such a great location...

Sala San Marco... all decked out.

Ok... we went a little wild here... infrared and filters.

One of our photojournalism snaps by my assistant....and yes, the rain did clear.

Just kicking back at the Museum of Civilization... some guys know how to have fun.

These are two noted musicians... I won't drop names... and yes, these

are their stage outfits. The shot was done in our studio on Gladstone Street.