Wedding Flower Crowns AKA My First Ottawa Outdoor Shoot in 2015!

My friend Ylimay makes stuff. For Christmas, she once made me a Fallout Munny Figurine, and for my birthday, a retro Mario bros! So I was not surprised when she told me that she had rented a booth at the Tie the Knot Urban Wedding Show right here in Ottawa. She will be making flower crowns for weddings and events, and I told her I’d love to photograph some for her!

We headed out to Gatineau park to find a good place to take some pictures of her crowns. It’s winter here in Ottawa, so to say that it was cold is an understatement, though the wind was not particularly blowing hard that day, so it was bearable. My wife Heather also came along to help with the shoot and pose for a few pictures as well!

For photographers reading this, I used my 70-200 mm at between f4 and f6, and upped the exposure by about half a stop, to try and get a more dreamy effect.

A few days later, we were at it again, this time with our friend Shannon! Shannon claimed to not have done this a lot, but modelled like a pro! The shoot was done in the courtyard on York st. which has beautiful brick and stone walls to work with. The day was pretty cold as well, and Shannon was a trooper, even offering the idea of sitting on the ground to get some better pictures!

To cap off the week, we asked another friend, Justine, to help with modelling some earmuffs Yli had created. This was probably the hardest shoot to do because our work schedules didn’t allow us to do the shoot until sunset, where we didn’t have a lot of time to do test shots or set up, and also because the windchill was causing our eyes to water and skin to freeze and burn in minutes!

 

Justine was a little nervous to do the shoot because she’d only done it once before, but I’m pretty sure the nerves were quickly forgotten by the winter chill! She was amazing though, and braved through the bitter cold for the entire shoot (it’s not easy to not have a coat when outside during winter)!

The shoot went by quickly, and before we knew it, we had enough pictures for Yli to showcase her work! I’m excited to go to the event and see how she sets up her booth, and to see what other vendors are showcasing.

All in all, it was a very fun week for shooting, and it got me back into the groove of photographing and editing. Winter is a hard time for photographers because the cold is quite effective at convincing us to stay inside and watch Netflix instead of going out and exploring, but projects like this are great to kick you in gear.

It also helps immensely when you have such amazing subjects, so thanks again to Yli, Heather, Shannon and Justine for posing in the Ottawa cold for these pictures!