I had the extreme pleasure of shooting one of my favourite weddings to date on August 28th.  It was an amazing outdoor wedding northwest of Ancaster Ontario on a beautiful farm property.  The groom, Chris is a farmer along with several generations of his family.  One of the most amazing parts of the wedding was the fact that all of the fresh ingredients in the food being served were actually grown on one of the the family’s farms.  The food was amazing along with everything else that caught my attention at this wedding.  I’ll warn everyone now, this is a long post but I loved this wedding so much that I just wanted to share it all with you.

This was our lovely bride Charmaine as she was having her makeup done.

Look at the eye’s on this cutie, what a flower girl!

Charmaine was SUCH a pleasure to work with and was a big part of the reason that this wedding was so wonderful.  It’s great to work with someone that was having so much fun with the entire day.

A pre wedding drink to celebrate and calm the nerves:

The reception was an elegant and welcoming place to be, hosted in a large tent.  I love tent receptions like this.

The bride and groom provided homemade jam for each of their guests to take with them.  It was such a wonderful gesture.

The cake topper had Chris in stitches, at least in part because he farms potatoes.

And then it’s time to party:

Follow the leader leader leader, follow the leader:

Then they even had a fireworks display!

And then some outrageous partying ensued, what a great way to finish the night!

Well, it turns out that today was my plane’s final flight. I clipped a tree and the plane landed in a heap of broken styrofoam. The plane isn’t repairable, and although I salvaged some of the important bits and pieces like the radio controller and receiver and servos I’ve chosen not to replace it just yet. Since I was only able to fly it 3 times before completely destroying it, this intended hobby cost me more than $100 a flight. I’ve never been particularly good at being frugal, but I think I will pursue a cheaper hobby. I might even get a remote control car in the spring instead and I feel like I’ll probably get as much enjoyment with less destruction that way. With winter coming up I will stick to snowboarding and hockey for now, I’m sure I’ll get back into the planes eventually but probably many years from now.

One of the things I have been trying to accomplish with the regular updating of this blog is to let my readers know as much as possible about my personality and the things that make me ‘tick’.  Of course, first and foremost is photography, and especially photography of people but from time to time I feel the need (like anyone else I’m sure) to branch out and try something new.   This little video is about just that, check it out:

Sorry about the abrupt ending to that little clip. The camera cut out on my while I was talking to it and I didn’t notice until I was already home. I also broke the balsa wood cage that the motor mounts to but I’ve repaired that before too. It’s been a couple of days since I filmed this video, and I’m happy to announce that I have rebuilt the motor mount which was damaged in my nose dive landing, and fixed the bent mounting point for the front gear.  So I’ll be flying it again tomorrow, and hopefully with a little more success this time!  Wish me luck.

On August 21st I had the pleasure of shooting a beach wedding in Fort Erie Ontario.  John and Karen own a very old home on the beach which they are in the process of renovating.  I have seen the plans for the place and it is going to be nothing short of incredible.  The backyard at this property offered the perfect location to hold their very informal and comfortable reception.  The ceremony was help a few steps away on the beach.  To Karen’s credit she did an incredible job with all the details, everything looked great.

The receptions was set up in a series of cocktail area’s, which was so comfortable and informal.  It really encouraged the guests to mingle and converse more so than most receptions.

We were asked to shoot a lot of candids in a very informal style for this wedding, so we got some great group shots of people simply enjoying themselves:

Then we headed down to the beach for the ceremony:

After the ceremony and some more candids we took John and Karen for a quick portrait session around the house, and then out to the beach.

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Then we had more fun capturing hilarious moments and great details.

One of John’s long time friends gave a very emotional and moving speech about the way John had touched his life when he needed it the most.

The other particularly interesting speech was this one… I’ll leave the rest up to your imaginations.

I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to shoot Wakestock.  It is a little outside my normal type of shooting, but it was so much fun to stretch my talents outside of my normal comfort zone.  Wakestock is a huge Canadian wakeboarding competition held annually.  For several years it has been held in downtown Toronto, near the Toronto Island.  This year it was held in The Blue Mountains, Ontario, on Georgian Bay.  Unfortunately I was only able to make it up there for the final day, which offered the best wakeboarding but the worst weather.  Nonetheless, here are a few of my favourites:

On Friday I had the extreme pleasure of shooting a beautiful wedding at the McLean House in Toronto.  I assisted Amelia Thornton of Flirt Photography and once again had an absolute blast.  I started out my day out at the family home in Toronto which was absolutely gorgeous.  The boys spent the day hanging out, playing basketball, and enjoying the pool.   I say boys because between their previous marriages, Michael and Tamsen have 5 boys.  So I started off shooting the events of the day, which were a little more relaxed than most of the weddings I shoot.  Next I joined the guys while they got ready at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in downtown Toronto which was tons of fun except for finding a parking spot, that proved challenging.  After that I joined Amelia at the McLean House at the Estates of Sunnybrook.  The reception was warm and inviting and Tamsen had done a wonderful job attending to the details, everything went off without a hitch.  So on that note, here are my favourites from the day.

The night ended like this, but let me show you how it began.

Michael definitely had his hands full with 5 boys.  At this moment he wasn’t exactly winning the battle.

The little guy couldn’t help showing off his best jump.  What a cutie.

The house was decorated to perfection.  There were so many awesome little details, but I really liked this clock.

I can’t believe that I got all 5 guys to sit for head shots for me, but they were awesome.  Some of the best behaved kids I’ve run into at a wedding.

The Groom; what a catch. Michael was an awesome guy to work with.

Then I got to meet Tamsen.  What a wonderful woman.  She was confident and composed and just thrilled to be there.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Grenville Pinto!  He played some awesome violin to contemporary music, and he was unreal to watch.  Check out the video at the end of this post.

The whole reception was surrounded by candles which made for a beautiful atmosphere.

Michael’s brother Kevin had quite the speech prepared for the reception, and had Tamsen nearly in tears.  It was very moving.

Here’s a quick video of Grenville doing his thing.  I’m no videographer so please don’t critique that, but check out how cool this guy is!  To find out more about Grenville check out his website at www.gpinto.com

Hello again, today I want to share with you some pictures from a wedding I shot about a week and a half ago.  It was absolutely gorgeous.  The ceremony was held at Parkwood Estates in Oshawa, which happens to be where a good part of Billy Madison was filmed.  You know the huge pool that Billy was always hanging out in?  Yup, Parkwood Estates.  Then we went to the Liberty Grand in downtown Toronto which was a phenominal venue.  I shot this one with Jennifer Fahey and naturally she was wonderful to work with.  I always work with such awesome people, both in terms of the couples and the photographers.  I am a lucky guy in that respect.  But for now, here are the pics.

A few shots of the rings:

The guys getting ready.  A beer or two helps ease the tension of a stressful day:

It took the guys about half an hour to figure out how to pin on the flowers.  To be honest I was no help, I’m going to have to practice this!

The ceremony was small and quiant, but beautiful nonetheless on the outdoor grounds of the Parkwood Estates:

They are laughing so hard in this pictures because the guys had spent FOREVER trying to get those flowers to stay put, and sure enough, when he bent over to sign the marriage licence it fell off.

Such a stunning bridal party:

I loved the colours at the reception, so bright and vibrant.  The brown table clothes were a nice change from the standard white.

A group of my friends from high school have stayed extremely close as we get older, and have created an organization called the Lost Raccos.  As the Lost Raccos they put on several parties a year, one at Halloween, one at Christmas, and a Pirate Cruise in the summer months.  This year the Pirate Cruise fell last Friday, and I have a few pictures to share.

The party is held on the Empire Sandy, a large three masted sailing ship which departs from Spadina Peer in Toronto.  The tickets this year were $50 and included a buffet dinner, a great deal for such an awesome party if you ask me! The boat does a lap of Centre Island departing at 9:00 and returning around 1:00am.  In between there is a lot of dancing, drinking and good times.

Here are some shots of us getting ready for the party.  I didn’t bring my camera on board with us, so I will borrow some of my friend’s pics and update this post later.

View from the hotel:

Peter’s friend Kristie and myself before we all started getting ready.

I think Lisa’s eyes look amazing!  Gotta love north facing window light, so beautiful.

Peter:

Andrew and Urszula:

Me again, mostly in my costume:

Here’s the group, say Yarrr…!  Lisa is behind the camera for this one, and two of Andrew’s friends Charles and John were yet to arrive, and unfortunately didn’t make it into a group shot because there just wasn’t time.

Alright, so I ended up having no time at all to post later on in the evening, so here I am the next day sharing a few pictures with you.  The party was a HUGE success.  Total dollar figures haven’t been confirmed yet, but it looks like we raised more than $8K after expenses!  Everyone is thrilled with the results.  I have to extend my friend Andrew Davy and Stagevision a massive thank you.  Andrew brought a huge pro level audio system and although we definitely helped him with the heavy lifting, he did all the setup and audio control himself.  Dude, when you read this, know that we owe you huge for that effort!  Thanks man!

I know a lot of people would have loved to be here that just couldn’t make it.  Please, donate to the cause, its totally worth it.  You can do so online securely here: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=2649243

This is Alanna’s brother James starting the festivities off by burning the makeshift barn the boys had built the previous day.  A little diesel fuel and a roman candle seemed to do the trick in style.

Yup, we had a retired fire truck on hand.  Full of water too, just in case things got out of hand.  It also doubled up as the source of water for the wet T-shirt contest.

5 local bands / entertainers played over the course of about 6 hours.  It was an awesome lineup.

This shot was taken from stage right, to give you an idea of just how many people were there.  This is probably a little over half of the total attendees.

My friends John and Eric trying to look like they know what they’re doing.  My buddy Andrew was the only one of us who really knew what was going on with that sound board.

The guys enamoured by the wet T-shirt contest.  It always proves to be a big attraction.

At one point these next two guys were locked in an AWESOME drum duel.  Its sort of like duelling pianos, but way better.

Tiff, Ren and Jack hanging out.

Alanna’s father having his beard shaved off.  The man hasn’t been clean shaven since 1989.  He raised more than $1000 himself for pulling this stunt.

Another family friend having her head shaved.  That’s Alanna comforting her on the left.  Alanna shaved her head last year at this event and raised a lot of money.  This young lady did incredibly well to support the cause as well.  She got $100 out of me for the cause.

Yours truly taking a bit of a break.  Because I was involved with the sound setup, it was pretty much a non stop day from 9am, until 6:30am the following morning.  It was so worth it though to be a party of this amazing event.  I can’t wait to be part of it again next year.

So as I mentioned in my last post, I am at my friend Alanna’s huge party raising money for breast cancer awareness tonight.  Here’s a couple of pictures of the setup, and hopefully I’ll most some more pics later tonight, or if not then definitely tomorrow.

Yup, a fire truck.  How else are you supposed to have wet T-shirt contest?

Yes, the speakers are LOUD .  HUGE props go out to my friend Andrew Davy and Stagevision for making sure we have epic audio