Ella's Belly
This is my sister Ella. She is very beautiful. Soon she will have another very beautiful baby... whom i cannot wait to meet!
Dirty Pretty Places (and Machotaildrop)
A year ago, my beau James went to Budapest to shoot a movie called MACHOTAILDROP – a film James describes as a surrealist adventure comedy. I’ll say it’s a quirky skateboarding movie with not a lot of actual skateboarding, but a fun film nonetheless... displaying great style, production design and featuring a fantastic soundtrack. It’s a weird little film that I highly recommend checking it out if you get the chance. For those out east, I hope you were able to catch it earlier this month when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
For more info visit here.
I traveled to Budapest, not just to visit James but to shoot some still photographs for the film… mostly behind the scenes stuff. When I arrived the crew were shooting nights, so my 2 weeks in Budapest were spent sleeping all day and working all night. I guess it’s not surprising then that my feeling of this city is that of a dark, moody, creepy and beautiful place… dirty and pretty. I’d love to go back one day to experience it during the daytime, but I'll always love its first impression on me:
And some behind the scene photos from the film MACHOTAILDROP:
MACHOTAILDROP is written & directed by Corey Adams & Alex Craig
producers: Oliver Linsley & Jared Valentine
dp: James Liston, Craig Trudeau and Peter Hagge
production designer: Jeffro Halliday
beyond barcelona - one
After hardly venturing past the 5 block radius from our flat for almost 5 weeks, we finally decided to rent a car and travel through some of barcelona's surrounding villages. Here's what we found:
my mom:
me+james:
barcelona six - more gaudi
This is the Balto. A few of the suites are still private residence, but you can rent the main areas for your wedding reception...(and then you can hire me to photograph your wedding there;)
Views from the Batlo's rooftop:
Supermodels...and good friends, Camille and Chadwick:
Mom at Parc Guell:
barcelona five - wanderings 2
Wow! I really am a terrible blogger!
With another wedding season well underway, i'm racing to finish all of my personal projects before July comes....and quickly goes. i'm excitedly working away at a new website…but really have no idea at this point when it will be up and running.
Stay tuned…I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I thought I’d finally post images from the last portion of our trip to Spain. Ahhhh, Spain.....i love you.
There they are again (Camille+Chadwick)....being all romantic and in love and stuff:
Our good friends Chrissy with son Yedne:
This is my beautiful mom. She came to visit us during our last week in Barcalona, where James + I helped her to celebrate her 70th birthday!:
barcelona four - dali the weirdo
Clearly an odd and incredibly creative individual. These are a few of my favorites from the Dali exhibit:
This was painted on the ceiling above us:
These little guys followed us out:
And this guy never took his eyes off us:
barcelona three - a gaudi picnic and football
Easter weekend we hiked up to the Gaudi Park (Parc Guell) for a picnic of bread, cheese, tomatoes and sangria!
A romantic shot of Camille + Chadwick at sunset...with barclona glowing in the background:
Camille Chadwick making out on the train on the way home:
On the Sunday of the Easter weekend, we headed to the stadium for a football match. I can't even remember the team we played, but Barcelona won 4-1! Our seats (second row from the back) allowed us a great view of the 90 000 other people who were there:
The view of the city over the wall behind us:
After the game:
barcelona two - segrada familia
The Sagrada Familia is a church desined by Gaudi in the late 1800's. With over 100 years in the making, it's not expected to be finished until 2050!
Camille + Chadwick:
barcelona one...wanderings
I feel it’s about time to blog a bit about what I’ve been up to these last few weeks.
First off….James and I arrived safely in Barcelona after 24 solid hours of travel time in and out of airports, airplanes and taxi
cabs. We’ve settled nicely into our quiet 5th floor flat in the Barri Gotic district (my favorite area of Barcelona)… suffering
from only 1 (or maybe it was 2) weeks of jetlag;)
Our goal during this trip was to spend 6 weeks living, working, relaxing, filming, photographing and experiencing a new city …
to attempt to truly get to know this place as best we can: the streets, the people, the food, the culture, the ways, the language,
etc….. instead of bouncing around ; two days here, 1 week there (as we normally do every time we visit Europe).
So far….great success!
We’ve mostly just been exploring. Actually, we’ve mostly been walking….and walking and walking and walking.
We’ve experienced and discovered amazing food, design, architecture, new and old art, new and old friends….and pick
pocketers. We started yoga classes in spanish and took a cooking class (in English) where we learned how to make sangria
and paiella. Yummy! I had a birthday, caught a cold…. and learned the Spanish word for ‘wallet thief’ (amongst a few others;).
Our good friends Camille and Chadwick have come and gone. (They stayed with us for a fun-filled week at the end of their one
month long journey through Europe). Now they’re back in Vancouver and we miss them already.
Our days are spent visiting markets and galleries, watching wild street performers and gazing at beautiful buildings and people.
Truly lovely.
at the beach with my new campers:
James took these next two:
Our street:
Our balcony:
Our view:
Our square:
Illuminate 2008.....tech talk
A few people/photographers have asked me about the huge ball of light I used in the image on my Illuminate 2008 posting on Dec23. Yes, this is a real light source! The helium filled balloon is 6 feet in diameter and houses 4 tungsten bulbs that we were able to manipulate individually to help balance with the available light. I started shooting around 4pm catching the start of a beautiful sunset on Spanish Banks. The shoot was over fast (by 4:30pm), for a couple of reasons...
1) It was Dec 9th and -5 C....and as you can see, the model Samantha wasn't wearing much. She didn't complain once, but she was freezing cold and turned an ugly shade of greyish blue soon after her jacket came off.
2) I was shooting without a permit. While normally, this wouldn't really concern me....this gigantic ball of light in the sky on a Sunday afternoon at the beach was hardly discreet. And if that wasn't enough, we ran the light from a 900lb generator running in the back of our cargo van in the parking lot. Like i said...we were hardly discreet. I had to work fast!
In the end, we did attract a crowd of curious spectators, but thankfully no police. I still managed to fire off 200+ frames and ended up with several gems! It was great fun!!
Here are a few more images from this shoot:
And one facing in the other direction...towards the city:
Here are some of the images we shot earlier that day in the studio. Samantha's look was inspired by Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette and was created by Sam herself with the help of her mother June Jocelyn. The two of them work together as a mother/daughter makeup artist/styling team.
Let them eat cake! ;)
Illuminate 2008
Season's Greetings Everyone!!
I photographed this image at Spanish Banks on December 9th. It was freezing cold out, but a beautiful day! This was a personal project that myself, along with the makup + hair + styling team (Sam and June Jocelyn), produced for the purpose of using the images on our Christmas cards this year. We're all a little late getting them out in the mail, so here's a sneak peak!
I'll post a few more from this series in the new year.....
Makeup, Hair and Wardrobe Styling by Samantha Jocelyn and June Jocelyn
Model: Samantha Jocelyn