President-Elect, Morgan Hoffarth, for the RNAO

AFTER ALL OF THESE YEARS OF SHOOTING FOR THE RNAO WE FINALLY GOT TO MEET THEIR TEAM IN PERSON!

We normally shoot for their in house magazine, Registered Nurse Journal, and are sent out on assignments with other nurses so, we recently realized that we haven’t actually met their team in person yet! When they gave us a call to shoot their new president-elect, Morgan, at their office no less we were so excited to finally meet everyone!

To no surprise their team is as wonderful as we’ve always known them to be, and Morgan more specifically was so personable and easy to photograph (despite how weird it feels, we know that feeling!) Morgan needed new headshots to accompany her new position and we were aiming for 4 final images meaning we shot a lot of different set ups and outfits for her to select!

Before our shoot we spent a bit of time around the office location scouting and testing; we lucked on having a good weather day so it was easy for us to hang outside and get some environmental portraits. We took over a small portion of an upstairs foyer and set up a couple of backdrop options for the classic, clean, portrait look as well, all shot with natural light (our favourite)!

In our world a good problem to have is having too many good options so after we sent this gallery out and heard those words back we were thrilled!

See more from this session below…

Hatel Patel for Registered Nurse Journal

EVEN THOUGH THIS SHOOT WAS A WHILE AGO, I ALWAYS THINK BACK ON HATEL AS BEING ONE OF THE KINDEST PEOPLE WE’VE EVER MET

We met him at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa early one winter morning to photograph him for a feature for the RNAO about Registered Practical Nurses’ (RPNs) going back to school to become Registered Nurse (RN).

Hatel was so honoured to be featured he told us all about himself- his life, working 3 jobs (on top of being a student) to support himself and his family, how excited he was to graduate soon- and even showed us around his school, taking us into his classrooms and demonstrating a few moves for us, and he even booked out his “favourite lecture hall” for us to shoot in!

We don’t usually have an inside man/producer to help us with these kind of logistics, especially when the locations we’re shooting at are outside of the city, so generally we’ll arrive an hour or so before we begin to shooting to walk around, scout things out, and test shoot in a few different spots but Hatel had it all figured out for us!

It was a bright and sunny day when we shot (one of those blindingly bright days actually) so we ended up shooting all natural light. The lecture hall had this beautiful streak of light that was shining through the windows and there were floor to ceiling windows in the little stairwell that we shot that was too bright and beautiful to pass up.

See some photos from this shoot (+a couple behind the scenes phone snaps) down below

Registered Nurse Journal November/December 2018

IN LIGHT OF BELL LET’S TALK WE THOUGHT THERE’S NO BETTER DAY LIKE TODAY TO SHARE THE MOST RECENT STORY WE SHOT FOR THE RNAO…

Lhamo Dolkar is a full time nurse in Toronto and a mother of 4 young boys, and about 10 months after having her youngest son, she began to feel depressed. She came forward to share her story in October after the RNAO announced the release of it’s second edition “Assessment and Interventions for Perinatal Depression Best Practice Guideline” in hopes that she can share her story and “help others avoid an illness that can sometimes consume the lives of mothers and children.”

Something Lhamo said to writer, Jonathan Sher, for this feature really stood out: “People expect (me) to be strong, (I’ve) always been strong… Mothers are the foundation of families.”

This could not ring more true. When we went to Lhamo’s home in Whitby to shoot last month, she was calm, friendly, warm, and incredibly inviting… all while having 4 kids running around her. She was enthusiastic when we talked about her work and even more happy and proud when she talked about her children.

We set up a small backdrop in her kitchen with a single light to shoot Lhamo and her family. The kids were a bit antsy and before we could even turn the light off to take a few naturally lit photos of everyone, they were already (somehow?) eating chocolate ice cream from the freezer haha. We then moved onto shooting a few different set ups of just Lhamo and her youngest, as that’s the main focus of the feature.

See the spread and some outtakes down below…

Registered Nurse Journal July/August 2018

THIS ISSUE OF RNJ FEATURED TWO FEMALE POWERHOUSES…

Anne-Marie Malek (shown first) is President and CEO of West Park Healthcare and Shirlee Sharkee (shown second) is President and CEO of SE Health. Both of these women were originally slated to be photographed together but with their (understandably) busy schedules we couldn’t make the magic happened and shot them individually instead. Anne-Marie was photographed at West Park in their lush and beautiful gardens, and Shirlee was photographed at SE Health’s head office in Markham, in their newly rennovated PR room.

Both women, though short on time, were incredibly kind, warm, and open to quickly chatting with us about the work that they do!

It was such a beautiful day when we shot Anne-Marie so the first few photos were taken with natural light. We wanted to create more of a separation between her and the background in the second set of photos so we added in an umbrella with a low powered flash to create some soft dimension (a darker background and lighter foreground).

The room that we shot Shirlee in had an interesting layout in so much that there was a small walk way with different coloured boards, some with text and some with patterns. Then around the corner there was a long wall full of windows with informational panels in front of them. For some reason the lights back in the walk way were on off or on low, so we used it to our advantage; we set up 1 umbrella close to Shirlee but off centre to light her for some simple head to shoulder portraits, and then we pulled back and shot wide for the second set of photos playing up the darkness of the walk way and creating a dramatic but soft spotlight.

View a few photos from these shoots below + a couple of behind the scenes snaps!