Spotted, In Real Life!

In this digital age of instant gratification, I find it thoroughly frustrating that we can produce, shoot, and post-produce a project so quickly but still have to wait and wait for months or even a year (ahem.. cookbooks) to be able to share the work we've been doing. That being said, I've got a handful of fun projects on the go that I have to keep my lips zipped about, so I'm pretty excited to finally be able to share some new work with you!

Lately I've had the pleasure of working with a super rad team over at Ariad, headed by the talented and oh so cool Art Director Marianne Lau. We've been shooting a campaign for Knorr called "What's for Dinner" and our first ad has started to find it's way into stores. We've got three more coming so keep your eyes peeled over the next year!

Marianne recently spotted our work at Lowblaws

Thank you to:

Client: Unilever Canada

Marketing Manager: Gina Kiroff

Sr. Assistant Brand Building Manager: Eva Kyleman

Agency: Ariad Communications

Sr. Account Director: Josh MacKinnon

Sr. Account Manager: Carolyn O’Grady

Account Manager: Kate Warnock

Head of Design: Marianne Lau

Production: Sparks Photographers 

Food Styling: Michael Elliot

Prop Styling: Christina Yan

Producer: Aarin MacKay

Exec Producer: Pamela Hamilton

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3.

Now that we've established that dreams do come true, I'm excited to announce that my dream seems to be a reoccurring one. I'm going to be shooting ANOTHER cookbook! I am super stoked to have been brought onto the Well Preserved cookbook team by Dana Harrison and Joel MacCharles. You can follow Dana and Joel on Instagram to watch the book come together over the next few months. I can't tell you much right now, but I can tell you that this book is going to be epic.

Dana and I thought we'd do some pre-cookbook-shoot-day-tests and made some lovely pictures. Some that we can share and some that you'll have to wait for. Enjoy!

Dreams Do Come True!!

I have forever been obsessed with books. Since the day I could lift my head they have been a love of mine. Whether I'm opening a book for the first time or the millionth, the feel of the pages and the weight in my hands always takes me to a special happy place. Over the years I've figured out how to combine three of my passions into one tidy package. COOKBOOKS!!! Beautifully designed, well written, stunningly photographed cookbooks. How could a girl who loves to bake, eat, make photographs and sit reading for hours on end not fall head over heels madly in love with cookbooks??! Every time I sit surrounded by my stacks of books I can't help but dream about shooting one someday, about one day walking into a bookstore and seeing my photograph on the cover amongst the cookbook greats. Well, that day has come!!! I shot a cookbook!

Rob Firing, Ivy Knight and Kerry Knight's The Everyday Squash Cook.
Food styling by the lovely Chantal Payette.

Here's a peak at what we did:

RIP The Grid

Today is a sad day in publishing. The Grid, is no more.

I'm grateful to have had the pleasure of working with one of the hardest working, most talented and dedicated teams in publishing. Thank you to our fearless leaders - Photo Editor, Shelbie Vermette-Grant and Creative Director, Vanessa Wyse. You hit it out of the park.

Here's a little stroll down memory lane, starting with the first and last assignments I shot for The Grid. Oddly enough, they were both chef challenges. Funny how things just sort of wrap themselves up.

Eat all of Italy!

I've had to keep this project all hush hush for the longest time so I'm very excited to share it with you! I've been working on an app, called Product of Italy, with the most awesome-tastic team a girl could ever dream of! Chef Massimo Bruno, Shawn Bailey of Orangepaperclip, Art Director Dana Harrison and I took on the task of capturing the unique feel of 20 different Italian regions in still and animated images for the most amazing cooking app you'll ever get your hands on. I had a blast shooting a little stop motion for the app's opening page as well as a cover for each delicious region of Italy. Product of Italy is an interactive food series and cooking app all in one. This app will chaange the way you think about recipes and revolutionize the way you cook.

I can't thank this team enough for bringing me in on what has turned out to be one of my all time favourite projects. Thanks you guys!!

Massimo is the real deal and so is this app. Now go get cooking!!
http://productofitaly.ca/

All Hail The Internets!

A funny thing happened the other day, and then it happend again. I found it so amusing that I thought I should share. Here's a photograph I made for this week's issue of Maclean's Magazine:

In order to keep what I was working on all top secret like, I created an instagram alias for the purposes of our shoot. Thus, cakegirl89 was born. The day Maclean's hit newsstands "cakegirl89" started receiving likes and comments. Which of course, is the part that I find to be quite hy-sterical.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank "pinkcutiepie13" for having my back and letting me know that my instagram shot was being used in Maclean's, and of course to "theclappingwalrus" who hit the nail on the head.

Keep it coming social media!  You never cease to amuse me.

A Little Creativity and Some Lessons Learned.

Beer and cake and notes scrawled on napkins. Who's best ideas HAVEN'T come to them right before last call??! If you recently picked up a copy of Coupe Magazine, you may have noticed a big ol' cake covered with words of wisdom. Well my friends, I'm proud to say that that cake was the product of another super-fun collaboration between myself and the uber-talented Dana Harrison. We decided to take up some ad space in this year's annual and use it as a promo-piece designed to congratulate all of this year's winners.

Here's a little peak into where our inspiration came from and a couple lessons we learned along the way:

After we fuelled up on Sweet Tea and Brisket Sandwiches, we ate A LOT of fortune cookies, all in the name of inspiring our copy of course.

We realized that in order to pipe our copy onto the cake (YES, Dana did that by hand!), we would have to create some kind of template.  Here comes lesson #1 - It's never a good idea to use cinnamon to create a guide for text on a white cake. That results in a whole lot of retouching.

How could this icing colour not inspire something awesome?!

Here comes lesson # 2: No matter how well Dana's dog is behaving while there is food on set, he is always, always waiting for his moment to pounce. We stupidly let our guard down for all of thirty seconds, and very nearly lost hours of work to a sneaky dog. Through some stroke of luck, he was feeling particularly generous and only ate the discard plate I was using to style the cake with. OY! Lesson learned.

As always, Dana and I had a blast. Who knows, maybe someday we'll open an online store where we sell snarky yet inspirational cakes. Someday.....