Before I jump into this post, I just want to mention that the Heather Morton Fundraiser last week turned out to be a great time. Thanks and congrats to Jamie, Kristin and Lisa for organizing such a fun and successful evening. For more on the subject, from the guest of honour, check it out here. Also, big thanks to Derek Shapton for spending his hard earned money on my print, and a big no thanks to everyone who outbid Laura and myself on the print we wanted!

For this week’s first update from the backlog, let’s visit artist/comic book writer Jeff Lemire’s studio. Jeff is perhaps best known for being the first (and only?) graphic novelist to be nominated for the annual Canada Reads award with his Essex County trilogy. If you like anything Canadian, moody or visual you should probably check it out. I won’t lend it to you, but you can find it at any self-respecting bookstore. He also writes and draws a monthly series called Sweet Tooth, writes a couple DC Comics titles and is currently working on a completely new graphic novel. He’s a pretty busy guy.

I approached Jeff in the summer about shooting, half expecting to receive no reply. Thankfully, he liked my work and was also going to be in need of some images of himself for upcoming projects. Finally, we found a time where schedules aligned and went to work. Here are some shots of the man at work, as well as a couple portraits.

Yeah, I sorta fell off the wagon this week I guess. Back on it next week. In the meantime everyone in Toronto should come to this:

For those that don’t know who Heather is, check out her site. For those that do, you know how awesome she is and how supportive and amazingly helpful she is. A truly crucial piece to the Toronto photo industry in my opinion. Not to mention she started me on this whole blogging thing.

Heather is having some health issues (the low down is here), so a bunch of great people banded together to organize one hell of a fundraiser to help offset some costs. There will be a silent auction with prints from about 40(!) different photographers, as well as talks by the talented Daniel Ehrenworth, Naomi Harris and Brett Gundlock.

I’ve donated this photo of Lake Ontario for the auction, which is being printed at 24”x36” by the fine folks at Pikto. It’s really an honor to be included in the impressive list of photographers asked to donate an image.

Prints! Talks! Beer! (I think).

Moving along in my attempt to get caught up with 2011 before the end of 2012: a couple portrait shoots for The Grid.

First up I was tasked with shooting portraits of Krista Ford, now former Lingerie Football League player and niece of Toronto’s _______ Mayor. Given the Mayor’s general oddness and longstanding feud with certain Toronto publications, it was an interesting assignment to say the least. Maybe I’ll just leave it at that.

Next up were some early morning portraits with Kevin O’Leary, of “Dragon’s Den” fame, on what was potentially the busiest day of his life. In addition to being on at least two TV shows on CBC, Kevin was releasing a book that day and had just come from doing a radio show. At 5 in the morning. We were short for time but we tried to make the most of it in and around the CBC building. One of these images was also just picked up by the Financial Times in London, so that’s pretty neat.

Sooo… I wrote this a month ago (and yes, even at that point it was a couple months late) but then had a crazy pre-holiday rush. I’ll do better, I promise:


Holy shit, it’s been a while. Really though it’s not you, it’s me. I’m on (what I assume to be) the tail end of the absolute busiest stretch of my career thus far. What’s that mean? Constant shooting, editing, uploading, emailing and general ignoring of the blog. I feel a bit like an abusive boyfriend, but I swear I’ll change.

Since I’m like 20 jobs behind schedule now and things feel like they were shot ages ago, let’s just post a couple editorial updates from a few weeks ago to get the ball rolling.

First up, Steam Whistle for Benefits Canada magazine. I would say that Steam Whistle (a brewery here in Toronto) is one of my favourite hobbies, so I was excited to shoot Greg Taylor, one of the founders, at the actual brewery for Benefits. I had actually shot Cam Heaps (another founder) at the brewery for Report On Business magazine a couple years ago, so it was a comfortable return to a really nice space. This time around there were tours galore going on, but we still managed to find a couple quiet spots to shoot.

Next up let’s do a little marketing. I was tasked with shooting some portraits of Sophie Turner for a Marketing magazine cover story on higher up business types who left their positions to pursue careers in non-profit. Sophie left her job at American Express to become director of marketing for Habitat For Humanity. As such, I got to shoot Sophie on location in Scarborough at one of their build sites. Though it was tough to find a hard hat for my gigantic head, I do wish they let me keep the boots I got to wear.

Since it’s nice out again, let’s do another post from this summer featuring some summery images.

A couple months ago I was contacted by Stanley Sun and Ashley Rumsey, the nice folks behind a new design firm in Toronto called MASON. They were looking to get some portraits of themselves taken for use on their website, social media, promotional materials, etc. They wanted something somewhat casual but at the same time not too lifestyle-esque, which was right up my alley.

We more or less spent the day touring the city trying to find some fresh locations. We had a couple spots (sort of) pre-picked out, but I’d say at least 50% of the others we found whilst adventuring. It’s really not every shoot that I get the opportunity to do this, or spend this much time with my subjects. It was a great change of pace and I was really happy to get so much variety, again something that’s not always easy to get. Also, the BLT I had at lunch was delicious.

A new addition to the dudes in suits portfolio! I shot these portraits of Tim Penner, retiring President of P&G Canada for Marketing Magazine a few weeks back.

Unfortunately, their office building was being renovated at the time (well, probably still is) so we were confined to shooting in the lobby area. Thankfully it was a pretty big and open space with some good lines and no weird paintings on the walls, so things worked out pretty well and we didn’t even have to haul gear around very much.

Ok, next up let’s go with a shoot I did for last week’s issue of The Grid. Those of you in Canada most likely know that Lloyd Robertson was retiring (sort of) after 35 years on the air at CTV last week. As such there’s been lots of Lloyd-ing going on in all kinds of publications, and I was lucky enough to get a few minutes of his time and shoot a few portraits.
 
These were all shot in and around the CTV studios building one evening before one of Lloyd’s last broadcasts. His folks were really pushing for us to shoot in the “newsroom,” but the magazine and myself really, really didn’t want to have that dude-behind-news-desk shot. So with some persistence (friendly of course), and plenty of cooperation from Lloyd we at least got outdoors, and I got to watch him kick someone out of a picnic bench (friendly again, of course).

It seems like a pretty hefty chunk of the work I was doing this summer is all starting to filter out right about now. Lots of Jaime in print at the moment.

Let’s start off with one of my favourite commissions from this summer, a portrait of singer/songwriter Sarah Slean for Maclean’s magazine, out this week.

Sarah, her manager and myself met up in High Park one evening just in time for a nice golden sunset. The magazine had requested something very natural, warm and “romantic” so we all agreed this should do the trick.

After a few minutes of exploring the wilderness and foraging for a couple locations, we picked our spots and started shooting. The sun being as low as it was kinda limited our options and time a little bit, but I was still happy with what we managed before it disappeared completely. Once it set, we stumbled upon some sort of weird schoolhouse building and took a few shots on the steps before calling it a night.

Here’s the spread and some bonus features:

Hi blog. Sorry, busy summer has kept me busy. Let’s try to get caught up though, ok? Ok. I really have to update and possibly rearrange my website too. But first things first, an update! I’ve got like 8 of them queued up here so let’s get right to it.

Here’s a cover shoot I did for Benefits Canada magazine earlier in the summer with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan President and CEO, Jim Leech. We shot this at OTPP HQ in the far off land of North York, and even got to enjoy some sort of homemade strawberry cake while waiting for Jim since we were set up early.

I’m trying to play catch up here, I really am. Unfortunately there’s just still a good chunk of stuff that can’t be shown off just yet. Also, this blog combined with the sheer amount of shooting lately has made me lazy with my website. I think she needs some lovin’ soon too.

In the meantime though, I do have another portrait in the current issue of The Grid. This was shot on the hottest day of my life, literally (no, seriously it’s true), and I quickly discovered that while fire halls are air conditioned, the garages aren’t. Thankfully, since I was shooting a firefighter he didn’t really seem to mind the heat or my sweating all over everything.

Here are a couple of my portraits of Chris Burrell. Firefighter by day, singing reality TV star by night: