Welcome to New York

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Wow wow wow what a crazy/busy/exciting trip this was!! It took me FOREVER to sort through the 1700 photos I took (that’s not an exaggeration), so here's a little recap!

DAY ONE

exploring

Grand Central Station

more exploring

The Empire State Building

 

DAY TWO aka: Taylor Day

Phoebe Bridgers!!

<3 <3 <3

I also took 50 million videos that are really bad bc I wasn’t watching the screen at all and they’re mostly 5 second clips lol

 

DAY THREE

The Met

Central Park

Greenwich

 

DAY FOUR

New York Public Library (closed)

soho

 

DAY FIVE

New York Public Library (round 2) and Bryant Park

Rockefeller Center

5th Ave

 

DAY SIX (the end)

MoMA

Hadestown

London

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Okay, this is a lonnngggg time coming, but I’m finally sharing my photos from my trip last spring! In May 2019 I travelled to Europe to visit my friend Danika (she’s a super talented potter btw), and we travelled to London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Paris. If you follow my personal Instagram account you might have seen a small handful photos that I’ve posted, but I took A LOT of photos and there’s no way I’ll ever get around to posting all of them on Insta. So here’s the first of four blog posts dedicated to my trip!

This post is a little different for me; it isn’t all going to be “artsy travel photos” so much as a way for me to document the memories of an unforgettable trip.

Day 1

I landed in London at 9:30am after getting (maybe) 2 hours of sleep on the plane. We checked into our hostel and then immediately began sightseeing! We went to a place called Boxpark which is basically a bunch of shipping containers that have been turned into stores and restaurants (we got donuts). Then we got tons of pastries from Beigel Bake, we didn’t get bagels but that’s the only picture I got from there.

And then, the fire! It was midnight, I was fast asleep, and then the fire alarm started. We were on the fourth floor and everyone was super confused, but we quickly grabbed the bag with our passports and wallets. On the way out we heard someone say “the alarm went off last night too and it was nothing!” LOL we could smell smoke, definitely not “nothing.” By 2am we found a new hostel (one that didn’t catch fire!). We found out the next day that it was the building next door that had the fire and the smoke just traveled through.


Day 2

Day 2 started with emails and phone calls to see when we could pick up our stuff from the hostel. And since we didn’t want to waste the day waiting around, we went out for breakfast in our pjs and then walked to the closest mall we could find so that we could change. We found the cutest little chocolate shop (everything was pink!). After we picked up our garbage bags of clothes that smelled of smoke, we went to see Tower Bridge and The Tower of London.

Up next: Notting Hill! Any one else a fan of the movie?? I’ve probably seen it a hundred times, so there was no way I could go to London and not go to Notting Hill! And it was just like the movie. On our way back to the bus we too a little detour to walk through Kensington Gardens and caught a glimpse of Kensington Palace (no, William and Kate weren't home)

Danika had her heart set on seeing the domino wall in Paul Smith - the room is literally floor to ceiling dominos. We waked past a ton of designer store (Alexander McQueen, Tiffany and Co, Givenchy, Dior, the list goes on and on…). We ended the day at Sketch, an incredible restaurant that we were totally not dressed for; I can still hear Danika saying “it’s fine, just act like you’re the best dressed one in here!” I wasn’t able to take a ton of photos but do yourself a favour and Google Sketch London. We sat at the bar in “The Gallery” which is also know as the pink room. SO. NICE.

 

Day 3

Another jam packed day! On our way to The London Eye we stopped at a bakery called Gail’s, which we only went into because that’s my mom’s name, but it was so good! From the Eye we had an amazing view of the city. It was overcast and drizzling, the photos didn't really turn out great, but it was still so fun.

Next up: Van Gogh exhibit at Tate Britain! I saw so many paintings I hadn’t seen before and also a lot of paintings from artists who were inspired by Van Gogh. We didn’t stay to look around the whole gallery, but we stopped to see the abstract art and the JMW Turner collection. And the photos totally do not do justice!

If you’re not an art fan, you might just want to skip down to day 4 lol

This was a very art-filled day! After Tate, we stopped at Danika’s favourite juice place, did a little more wandering, and then went to The British Museum to see the Edvard Munch exhibit, Love and Angst. Any of my art school friends can tell you that I love The Scream (it inspired many of my projects at NBCCD). They didn’t have the original on display, but they did have the lithograph, as well as earlier versions of the painting and a photo of the place that inspired it. I learned a ton about Munch’s life and how greatly his work varied (paintings, lithographs, woodblocks, etchings). Here’s a few of my favs!

Day 4

Which was actually day 16 of my trip, aka the last day of my trip. After Scotland and France, we came back to London for one day before heading back home.

We stopped at Kate Spade and Ladurée in St Pancras Station, we did a ton of wandering around the city which included King’s Cross Station to see Platform 9¾, Camden Market, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and finally walking down streets that had shops that were covered in flowers.

And that’s all for London! I hope you enjoyed the scroll through my camera roll :)
Next week. Edinburgh!

It's Been a Little While

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One of my favourite things about photography is coming home from a long shoot, grabbing my laptop, and scrolling through the images. Sometimes its 50 photos, sometimes it's 2000. It's so incredible to put so much time into planning, and shooting, and then to have the final images. 

Film is a little (a lot) different though. 35mm film only has 24 exposures so you really have make each one count. And you can't just go home and check out what you shot - you have to send the film away and wait and wait and wait and hope that you got a something good (and honestly, I usually forget what I shot by the time the film comes back!). 

Okay, it's been a little while, this is my first roll of 2018! In fact, the last roll I got developed was in August(!) SO, here are a few shots from Halifax and Cow Bay, Februsary '18.

#tbt: Kelsey

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I challenged myself to write a blog post every week, and let me tell you: it's not easy! I don't always have new work to show, or some times the photos I'm working on aren't 100% ready to share within a week. So it's super fun going through old photos and giving them a fresh, new edit. Sometimes I forget the things I've shot in the past, and sometimes I find photos that I overlooked the first time around. 

I shared a few of these photos of Kelsey (from January 2017) on Instagram last year, but when we shot that day I was mainly focused on shooting film. I was working on a project for school about expired film and mostly brought my dslr along just in case the roll of film had gone bad or was completely unusable. 

The photos are super fun though, and so completely different from the film I shot that day!

Cali '11 (pt ii)

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As promised: The second half of my California photos!

In this post you will find: 

  • A tour of Warner Bro. Studios (the set of Friends!)
  • The Academy of Television Arts and Science
  • One photo of a palm tree at La Brea Tar Pits
  • The view from Griffith Observatory

Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane xo

#tbt Cali '11

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August 2011

I was 17, about to start my last year of high school, and had no idea that I would be pursuing a career in photography. 

A couple of my best friends and I signed up for a 5 day tour of Los Angeles through our school, and it was all we could think about for the year leading up to it. We bused around the city seeing sights like the Hollywood sign, Hollywood Boulevard, the Santa Monica Pier, drove down Rodeo Drive, and toured the Warner Bros. Studios. 

Flash forward 7 years: I stumble across a memory card in my sister's old point and shoot and find photos that I hadn't seen since the year I took them. Yeah, a lot of them were super touristy with people standing in the way and not so great compositions, and it was before my first dslr, but I had so much fun going through them all and editing them and reliving this trip. 

Enjoy a few of my favouites!

Check back next week for Cali part II!

Martinique Swim

Okay, first of all, I am so excited to finally be sharing these photos!! 

Martinique Swim is a swimwear company based in Cow Bay, Nova Scotia and each of the suits are made locally. I met with Martinique Swim owner Simone back in November and we immediately had so many ideas and were so eager to start! We decided to use these backdrops (built by Simone!) so that we could have the simplicity of the studio while also having the ocean as a backdrop. We found these gorgeous models, Irfana Hameed and Assa Doukoure, who are absolute pros! It was freezing cold (middle of December!) and they both acted as though it was a totally normal thing to wear bikinis in the snow... yeah, it actually snowed (and rained, and was super windy). 

Visit Martinique Swim here

Here are a few of my favourite photos from the shoot!

Models: Irfana Hameed & Assa Doukoure

Chavah Designs

A few weeks ago I teamed up with fellow NBCCD Alumna Chavah Lindsay of Chavah Designs, and we had the best day creating and collaborating and I'm so happy to finally share the photos! I fell in love with Chavah's work when I saw her collection It Girl at the 19th Annual NBCCD Fashion Show, and instantly started dreaming of photoshoot possibilities. 

I met up with Chavah in Saint John where she came prepared with a ton of outfit choices including some items from It Girl and some new pieces as well. We had such a blast shooting in uptown Saint John! Here's a look at some of my favourites!

 

A big thank you to the best team ever!!

Photoshoot Coordinator + Hairstylist: Danika Vautour

Models: Alexandra Van Rijn + Erica Taylor

Makeup Artist: Jessica Roy

Designer + Stylist: Chavah Designs

Expired: Places

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Last month Kelsey, Michaella, and I took a road trip to St Andrews. When we went last April I took a million photos on my DSLR, but then didn't really do anything with them. So, this time I only took my film camera, and a roll of expired film (because, honestly, what else do I shoot on?). Here are my 24 exposures!

 

When we arrived in the morning, we went straight to Water St where we could do a little shopping and take photos on the dock. It was super foggy out and a little creepy, but mostly just beautiful

It didn't take long for the sun to come out though, so we went to a cute little pizza place for lunch, stopped by our favourite candy store, and headed for the beach! 

Our last stop was the beautiful Algonquin Resort, where we got stuck in a short downpour

And with our day coming to an end, my last three exposures were through the windshield on our way home

Expired: Mia

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I don't think it's any secret that Mia Jay is one of my fave new models to work with, I mean, one glance I my Instagram and you see her face a thousand times. So who would be better to have my third Expired shoot with!

Mia and I went to four locations across Fredericton, each one with it's own unique look. We had such an amazing day exploring new (to me) parts of the city, including a couple of Mia's secret hideaways. 

Expired is a series I've been working on for a few months now, where I'm shooting on expired 35mm film. I just love film's unpredictability. Now, unlike the last two times (found here & here) I didn't opening up my camera to create intentional light leaks, which was kind of a nice change. 

Here are a few of my favourites from our shoot! Click here to see the full Expired gallery

Model: Mia Hay

Nicole Daigle

A few weeks ago I got the chance to shoot with some of my favourite people: the insanely talented Nicole Daigle, and the beautiful Danika Vautour. NBCCD Fashion alumna Nicole re-created a dress from a Rococo painting of Madame de Pompadour. I was so excited to get to photograph such a gorgeous dress with such amazingly talented people. 

Take a look a few of my favourite photos!

Instant Experiments

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WEEK 1

I'm working on this new project where I'm taking instant photos, and experimenting with them to get different looks. I've always been in love with instant photography and got my very own Polaroid camera a couple of years ago. Polaroid stoped making film a while ago, but Impossible Project picked up where Polaroid left off and is continuing to make film for the classic cameras. 

 

Unfortunately, the film can be a little pricey, and can't be bought locally, so instead, I used this FUJIFILM Instax 210 camera. There are only a few different settings, so it's super easy to use. 

The photos are wide, horizontal images, that, although they aren't square, still have the classic Polaroid look. 

Even though OutKast famously sings "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" in Hey Ya!, you're not actually supposed to shake instant photos, so, of course, I decided to shake it. I also rubbed my thumbs across the images which turned in these yellow spots.  

Kelsey, Michaella, Margie

Kelsey, Michaella, Margie

This is a photo of my lovely school, NBCCD. To create the yellow in the corners of the image, all I did was roll the paper into a cylinder over and over again.  

Love my school &lt;3&nbsp;

Love my school <3 

This photo is my least favourite of this bunch. I was attempting to peel off the top layer of the film, but instead I cut through the photo completely. Where I had cut, ink spilled through. It started as just a pretty turquoise with a bit of yellow, but then there were blobs of the gross brown ink. Even though the front of the image doesn't look great, the back of the photo could have potential for a future attempt.  

I'm not trying this method again...

I'm not trying this method again...

The back is slightly less disgusting looking

The back is slightly less disgusting looking

I tried running this photo of Kelsey under cold tap water, but could see no effects, so I held it over a heater. Slowly I could see pale pink appearing on the top of this image, where the most heat was hitting it. 

PINK PINK PINK

PINK PINK PINK

I was thinking that if a bit of heat could turn a photo pink, what might a lot of heat at once do? So, I turned on the kettle, boiled water, and took my photo. Immediately after the photo came out of the camera I poured the boiling water over it and saw that the photo was turning dark blue. 

Title Credit: Noel Chenier, Model: Scooter

Title Credit: Noel Chenier, Model: Scooter

I always thought how cool it is when people write on their Polaroids, but I was always too nervous about messing up the photos. But since this projects is all about experiments, I figure this is the time to try it out! I love the idea of attaching a word or phrase (or lyric) to each image! 

 Stay tuned for more instant photos coming soon!!

Slide Film

After five rolls of lost film, I finally got results! I had practically given up on this double exposure project, but with one roll remaining, I figured I might as well shoot it. I was scared that I might not get results again, So I decided to shoot half of the roll as single exposures, and the other half as double exposures. And, guess what: they all worked!

This was my first experience successfully shooting on slide film, and it was so cool! Unlike other types of film where you develop negative, slide film give you positives, which are in full colour!

slide film in the scanner

Single exposures:

Double exposures:

Why Can't We Be Friends?

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Film has not been my friend lately.

Two weeks ago, I used bad chemicals to process my film so not a single image appeared on my roll. Ever since then, I've been extremely careful not to contaminate or over use the chemicals, but those weren't my problems this time.

I'm using my Holga camera to make double exposure images. Holgas are plastic medium format cameras that can create dreamlike images. They are super easy to use since they only have a few settings to choose from; there are two apertures: sunny and cloudy, and only one shutter speed.

For my double exposures, I wanted to layer photos of flowers over portraits. I bought some colourful flowers and spent yesterday afternoon in the studio with my BFF/model/super talented potter Danika. I was so excited today to process my film and see the results.

Unfortunately, things didn't exactly go as planned.

While attempting my multiple exposures, I accidentally overexposed my entire roll of film! All that was left was a spot that kind of looked like Nova Scotia. Not flowers. Not Danika. Nova Scotia.

Even though my film didn't work out, I did get a couple cool photos while experimenting with the multiple exposure feature on my DSLR. Here they are!

Expired Film (part ii)

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It's official: I'm in LOVE with expired film!

I'm so so so happy with the results from my expired film project! Even though I'm technically finished with my short experiment, I'm absolutely going to continue shooting on expired film. The results I get with this film create truly one of a kind photos that just can't be replicated digitally. 

For my shoot with Mel, I continued experimenting with light leaks which created some incredible colours. Check out my favourite shots! 

Roll #1: expired 2006

How amazing are these light leaks! 

Roll #2: expired '90s

Model: Mel McMichael

Expired Film (feat. expired chemicals)

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In my last post I said that one of my favourite things about film photography is its unpredictability. This time, however, it did not work in my favour.  

After braving the cold in three different locations, I excitedly started the development process. Because I couldn't wait to share the final results, I kept an Instagram Story to document my progress:

Here's how it looked:

Sadly, the chemicals I used to develop my film had gone bad, so not a single image came out. 

Stay tuned for Part ii (and some actual photos!)

Expired Film (part i)

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I've been doing some experimenting lately with expired film, and I'm so excited to share my first round of results! I've been wanting to try shooting with expired film for a while now, so I jumped at the opportunity to use it for one of my class projects. 

One of my favourite things about film is its unpredictability; you don't know if you'll get the results you wanted until after you process and print your film. Adding the fact that this film is expired makes it that much more exciting. I was most curious to see if the film's age would alter the colours.

I had accidentally opened the back of my camera, so I thought I was going to lose a few of my photos; instead, the fraction of a second where my film was exposed added amazing light leaks!

 I was thrilled to see that my first attempt was a success!

Behind the scenes on developing day!