Evergreen Brickworks & Toronto Christmas Market Engagement Session
{Playful Winter Wonderland Engagement Photos}
I will be honest, I’m not a big fan of shooting in the winter. I get cold easily and I just don’t like the dryness and brittleness of winter. But once in a while, I make an exception to that! Claire and Sang wanted something a little different for their document love session, and they also wanted to be outdoors so they can bring their beloved dog Shiloh. Evergreen Brickworks and the Toronto Christmas Market seemed like the perfect backdrops!
We lucked out for the day of the session with snow on the ground and temperatures just around the freezing point.
We started the session at Evergreen Brickworks, where snow transformed the trails into a winter wonderland. We walked around played in the snow. Well, Shiloh did most of the playing. ;) Then we headed over to the Toronto Christmas Market at the Distillery District and played a bit more. Who said adults can’t go on carousels?? We finished the session at my favourite spot for Toronto skyline, completely iced over and all. The mood of the entire session was very playful and lighthearted, where Claire and Sang’s natural and easygoing connection really shone through.
This is how winter photo sessions should be right? Looking forward to capturing Claire and Sang’s special day next month!
{Playful Engagement Photos Downtown & by the Lake}
When it comes to engagement/document love sessions, I’m a huge proponent for couples to plan the session around who they are and what they love. That way years later when they look back at these mementoes, the photos can remind them of their life together at that point in time. For Rosanna and Alex’s Toronto waterfront engagement session, they wanted it to feel like they are just on a date or exploring like when they are travelling. The vibe is playful and modern.
We met up in Yorkville and got gelato – perfect for the warm summer day! Then we just ambled around the area before making our way to Cherry Beach. We ended the session with the Toronto skyline in our background as the evening sets in.
Rosanna & Alex are getting married next week, and I can’t wait to be a part of their special day to capture more precious memories!
Rosanna’s gorgeous tulle skirt is from Bluish (local Canadian talent!)
Jennie and Mike’s beautiful Credit Valley Golf and Country Club wedding took place on the tail end of a long fall season. We were lucky to have a long fall season last year so even at the end of October the leaves were still cooperatively yellow.
One of my favourite moments on a wedding day is when the couple gives each other a letter to read. It pretty much always result in some great moments. This was definitely the case on Jennie and Mike’s day. As Jennie read Mike’s letter, “I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly and then all at once”, tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Brides often worry about crying on their wedding day because they don’t want to ruin their makeup, but I think those real emotions are what make the day so special. Plus, holding back tears doesn’t look that great anyway. :)
Thanks Jennie and Mike, for being so great to work with, and for having me document your super special day! Here’s the story of Jennie and Mike’s beautiful day.
Bliss and Seb’s Toronto Island wedding at the RCYC took place on a beautiful summer day. The RCYC is definitely one of my favourite venues in Toronto. It’s technically in Toronto, and yet being on Toronto island makes it feel like it’s not even part of the city. Not to mention the amazing view of the Toronto skyline from the front lawn.
Bliss and Seb met through Bliss’ older brother, and even though on the outside, they seem like completely different people, they seem to fit so well together. People often say that a wedding is not just the joining of two individuals, but also of two families. This couldn’t be more true for Bliss and Seb’s wedding, as Bliss is of Guyanese background and Seb is Greek. I feel so honoured to be able to document so many multi-cultural weddings as a wedding photographer in Canada!
Thanks Bliss & Seb for having me document your heartwarming wedding day! Here’s the story of their big day.
I wrote the following post a couple of months ago and it’s sat in draft ever since. Something didn’t feel quite right and I was waiting to tweak it. But last week I read Spencer Lum’s (of Ground Glass) blog post about turning up the volume in the pictures vs. turning up the volume in people’s hearts. His idea is that there’s what you capture in a photo, then there’s how your photo makes someone feel. It reminded me of the post that I had written and I was inspired to finish it and publish it.
“If you feel it in your heart, it will show on the screen”
A few days ago I watched an interview of a Chinese actor who I have recently been following, and something he mentioned has stayed with me since. In the first movie he acted in, the director, Zhang Yimou (who is well known by Chinese audiences around the world) said to him, “If you feel it in your heart, it will show on the screen.”
A very simple sentence, but the idea behind it is not so simple.
Some time after, I realized why his words made me stop to think. Ever since I first decided to photograph weddings and people, it has been the burning question in the back of my mind somewhere: Is it possible to shoot what it feels like? Is it possible to show in a still photograph those feelings that words cannot convey? With motion picture, the sense of motion can help communicate the intangibles, but what about a photo?
Having shot weddings for six years now, I feel like I can finally say with a resounding “yes”, that photos truly can capture how it feels. But I think to that, the caveat is “if you feel it in your heart, it will show in the photograph”.
If you don’t believe me, well, then I can only say that perhaps you are not looking with the right tools. Like Antoine de St. Exupéry said: “what is essential is invisible to the eye”.
As a photographer, the highest level of compliment I receive is when I hear someone say something along the lines of “there is so much love in these photos!” But once in a while I meet potential clients that make me wonder if they had even looked at my work. They seem to care more about capturing only what it looks like.
One of my previous grooms had said to me before: anyone can take a pretty picture. If it was just pretty pictures I wanted, I can take them myself with my phone. But you seem to have a way of capturing those emotions from a wedding day in such a warm and authentic way.
Photographers that I respect often say, show people who you are so that you may attract like-minded people and repel those who don’t agree with you. For a long time I think I was really afraid to do that. I was too scared that if I did that, if I showed people who I really was as an artist, what if no one liked that?
But then I realized that this is what I’ve been doing all along, maybe I’ve never put it so clearly in words before, but my photos definitely showed that. Maybe some people miss that aspect of my work, but that’s ok, because the ones who didn’t get it usually don’t end up working with me anyway. So now I’m putting this out into the universe:
Dear potential client, if you are reading this, don’t hire me to just capture what it looks like, hire me because you want to capture what it feels like.
And to loop back with Spencer’s post, I think our photos can only make people feel something if we captured a feeling in the first place.
I’m excited to finally share Katie and Gordon’s eclectic and heartwarming Granite Brewery wedding today! From the moment Katie told me they wanted to go standup paddle boarding for their engagement photos, I knew their wedding was going to be very unique! And unique it was!
The moment I saw Katie’s wedding dress, I was blown away. I’ve never seen such a unique wedding dress before, mostly because it wasn’t white at all. Katie didn’t want to look like a “bride” on her wedding day, she just wanted to look like herself. Katie was certain about the fabric she wanted to use from the beginning – a beautiful sheer organza with floral print. Florals was definitely the theme. Katie’s dress designer Breeyn then hand sewed embellishments over the patterns on the back of the gown to create more vibrancy and added little insects. Then there was this incredible veil made by her friend and designer David, it was inspired by Cinderella’s veil (Katie & Gordon got engaged at Disney)! Katie completed her look with real dried flowers painted onto her nails, and a beautiful bouquet inspired by 1920’s wedding bouquets.
Then there is the wedding itself. The rain forced us to have the ceremony under the awning instead of in the garden but that didn’t dampen the joy of the occassion. Katie is the only bride I’ve photographed who walked down the aisle to the theme song of Star Wars. Gordon, and everyone were very pleasantly surprised! Wayde, their officiant, had one of the most touching ceremonies I’ve witnessed. And the evening festivities included one of the funniest Lip Sync Battles I’ve ever seen. So all in all, the day was a lot of fun.
Thank you so much for inviting me to the Granite Brewery to share in and document your special day Katie & Gordon! It was such a pleasure to be a part of it. Here’s the story of their wedding day.
