I wasn’t disappointed. An aspiring actor, Elora will be heading off to Vancouver this fall to pursue her passion, with some new headshots in hand to hopefully help her out on her journey. Beautiful, poised, and confident, Elora’s sure to succeed.

Here’s a couple of images from our 90-minute session. I hope you like.

In between my current quest to circumnavigate North America by air in  60 days, purely by coincidence of assignments, (which will see me within shouting distance of the most north, south, west, and east points of land on this continent), I continue to remain busy with portraits here in Yellowknife, whether they be business or personal, family or individual, maternity or newborn, studio or outdoors.

It remains a part of my shooting that I continue to love doing, and I always love the challenge of it.  Believe it or not, I find portraits a greater technical and emotional challenge than photographing subjects like the aurora borealis, which is a “nice” challenge that I look forward too.  The aurora – they’re constant in the sense that once you learn to shoot them the technical process is almost entirely the same, with small variations (when I shoot the aurora I tend to look more for unique compositions and shapes in “The Light” than worry too much about the technical aspects; after shooting hundreds of displays that becomes easy, despite the ever-awesome change in display).

Outdoor portraits are definitely more challenging.  You have to juggle the “setting” (in this case City Hall, an always-popular Yellowknife location) with the quality of the natural light, which you can’t control.

Wow, look, it’s a beautiful blue sky day.

Well, the beautiful sun is going to make you squint and throw harsh shadows.

Well, what are you going to do about it Mr. Photographer?

…..just follow me.

Once you have your “light” figured out (the best place to position people relative to that harsh old sun), you still have to figure out where and how they’re to be positioned.  Okay, now you’ve done that.  And you’ve snapped a couple of test exposures and adjusted so that your display doesn’t show crap; everything is technically perfect.  But now the challenging part, or at least it can be, especially when you’re first starting out in photography:  making a connection with your subject, and getting them to give you more than a pained smile.  This is the challenge I most enjoy, and I love the banter.  The questions.  The sincere want to know about the other person.  And when you suceed, and watch them relax, the portraits always flow easy.

Enough blather.  The pictures.

Here’s a tiny sampling of some on-location corporate portraits done for Sean Ivens, President and CEO of Medic North and Med. Ex. Inc. here in Yellowknife. Sean’s a very successful entrepreneur and a really interesting guy, and as always when I get all geeked up with lights and airplanes (it was a reminder of my Bikers At Buffalo Air photoshoot), I had a blast. It helped, of course, that Sean’s pretty passionate about photography himself.

Here’s a few of my favourites from the session. I threw in a behind-the-scenes shot taken by my trusty assistant for the day, Andrea Nilson. As you can see I once again get to totally style out in a photoshoot – in the last few months I have rocked a reflective vest, military cammo, underground mining gear, and more. Thankfully for all of your sake, I have no shoots planned in the foreseeable future at a nudist colony.

I’m really enjoying the trend over the past year of more and more people opening up to the idea of environmental portraits – that is, taking portraits of people in their own environment, where they’re most comfortable, which leads, of course, to a greater natural feeling in the images.

That may contradict part of my business:  I own a studio.  You would think it would make greater sense for me, a studio photographer, to encourage all my clients to photograph in studio.  It means less running around for me, less packing up and wear on my gear, and greater control over my own shooting environment.  Despite the obvious advantages to me shooting in studio, my primary goal is quality.  And quality, to me, means taking images for clients in the environment that will translate to the greatest likelihood of them looking at the completed images and saying, without hesitation, “that’s us – you captured us“.  For some people this means studio portraits.  For other people, that means hauling lights, battery packs, and soft boxes across town – without complaint from me – to try to capture their particular essence.

Just before this shoot I had received my much-wanted new “baby” lens in the mail, a Canon L-Series 24-70MM F/2.8, which I knew from reading reviews was a great lens. Super sharp. But the sharpness still blew me away. When you’re photographing children, a lot of photographers (myself included) tend to focus on the eyes. A child’s eyes can be an amazing playground. The more you can see their eyes, I think, sometimes the greater the emotional connection to the photo.

When I loaded this batch of images on my computer after the shoot, I was really taken aback at just how sharp the lens is. I included a 300% zoom on one of baby Lauren’s eyes in the gallery above. That is a 100% “un-Photoshopped” eye, with no trickery (sharpening or lightening) other than a close crop. You can not only see me in it, but three pictures on the wall above. Crazy.

This was a fun session, and I always enjoy it when clients have me come into their homes, their “real” lifes, to create images. They have a realness to them that you just can’t get with studio photography – as much as a dearly love studio photography.

Annie Leibovitz wrote in her recent book, At Work, that an important part of her process when photographing portraits of people, especially artists, was to get to know them a little before a shoot.  She wrote, “when you first meet someone you’re just trying to be nice and picking up clues for a picture.  You get ideas when you’re with them that you wouldn’t get simply by reading about them or studying their work”.  Or ideas that you wouldn’t get just by showing up for a shoot, for that matter.

As I met with and sat in Pat Braden’s house in Yellowknife’s “Old Town” – which he affectionately refers to as “The Shack” – and took in the wealth of character that his place contained, Annie’s book ran through my mind.  I had never met Pat before, and only knew of him as a sort of local legend.  Everyone, it seems, knows of Pat Braden, and he’s got to be one of the North’s most highly regarded musician/songwriters.  I’ve photographed him before, probably 4 or 5 five different times, but only as a piece of a bigger puzzle:  he was at events I was hired to cover, and was an “incidental” photo for me, not the key subject.

When he contacted me about photographing the art for his upcoming album, and we initially discussed ideas via email, I knew I had to meet him, first, and take in the location…it’s character….and see how that would translate to a concept.  Pat wanted to stay away from posed, and wanted an intimacy in his images that would tell potential audiences a little more about him as a performer than simply a man with an instrument.  I loved the sentiment, and loved the challenge.   The first images that came to my mind when I saw the location, and started to know a little more about Pat, were those of southern blues musicians.  Old black and white images of, well,  characters.  I wanted to try to get some of the “old time feel” into my portraits of Pat.

These images below represent many “real” moments; for example, I clicked away as Pat started looking through old images that mean a great deal to him, including ones of his mother.  The expressions on his face, and the shine in his eyes, couldn’t come from me saying “now Pat…smile at the camera”.  And when Pat plays his instrument, he doesn’t try to strike rockstar poses.  He simply feels it.  It’s evident.

I loved this assignment, and I’m happy to share a few portraits….

For those interested in more of the technical details of the photos, the location was perfect, and had a beautiful natural light feel to it that I didn’t want to lose.  But at the same time, a really cloudy day just didn’t provide the light I needed to be able to shoot these at a low ISO (and increase the detail and quality of the shots).  What to do?  Set up a portable sun.  I brought down one of my studio lights with a softbox and positioned it outside his house, shining down into the window.  The diffusion provided by the softbox, filtered through the window, allowed it to still feel completely like natural light in his house – while still providing the lighting power I needed to get crisp, non-blurry shots.

That’s right, prom dresses.  And I now feel that prom dresses should be mandatory wear for anyone wanting a winter portrait in Yellowknife.

It was a really fun project, and I have to say I enjoyed the challenge of getting some fairly reserved (not all of them, mind you) medical professionals to let loose and show their personalities.  Now, a Fireman calendar this was not – there’s no three-quarter nude shots of any of these guys…it would be a bit tought to look your doctor in the face after you’ve seen him in his birthday suit, but I loved the concept of highlighting each individual’s hobbies, or “likes” – what makes them tick.

Here’s a few of my favourites from the various shoots, and watch in the coming week for a larger series that I’ll post to my Facebook page (stop by and become a fan if you’re not already).

Looking for a copy of the calendar?  To the best of my knowledge they go on sale today, Monday, December 7th in the lobby of Stanton Hospital.  Buy one and support a really good bursary program!