Mimico - My Hood
Time for me to start posting my day to day creative work. It’s a total mixed bag but I figured i’d share the things I play with in studio and the things that catch my eye as I wander around through this life.
First up, some imagery from my neighbourhood Mimico in Toronto. Pure randomness but that’s the way I like it. No real reason to these images besides being things that I’ve come across and find visually interesting. I like pairing up images - so that’s the way i’ve presented them here.
Red Couch & Tail Light
Salt Splatter & Ethernet Cable
Campbell's Recipe Photography
Campbell's
Over the past 2 years I've had the opportunity to team up with Campbell's to shed a new light on their recipe photography. Most of the work i've done has focused on their broth and condensed soup recipes.
Here are a selection the recipes i've shot.
Apricot Quinoa Salad
Butternut Squash + Roasted Garlic Bisque
Classic Thai Chicken Soup
Chicken & Squash Coconut Curry
Thai Squash + Red Curry Soup
Curried Carrots with Cashew and Cilantro Dressing
Sesame Blistered Green Beans
Stone Soup
Vegetable Chili with Cilantro
Tofu Carrot and Spinach Soup
Smokey Corn Chowder
Hearty Beef and Barley
Rosen's Cinnamon Buns
The most talked about buns in the city - Rosen's Cinnamon Buns.
Our pal Amy Rosen recently brought her famous cinnamon buns to the studio for a shoot.
These buns are amazing - sweet and simple.
Props by Madeleine Johari.
The Colour of Shadow
At the beginning of last year I set out to create a book of my personal landscape work. I’ve been working on this body of work for the past 12 years. I’ve always wanted to do a book, so I felt it was time to put something together. When i’m not shooting in the studio - my passion is to travel and shoot landscapes. From the beginning of my photography career I’ve always shot landscapes as part of my personal work. It’s actually been an integral part of the development of my commercial work.
Newfoundland, 2008
At the beginning of last year I set out to create a book of my personal landscape work. I’ve been working on this body of work for the past 12 years. I’ve always wanted to do a book, so I felt it was time to put something together. When i’m not shooting in the studio - my passion is to travel and shoot landscapes. From the beginning of my photography career I’ve always shot landscapes as part of my personal work. It’s actually been an integral part of the development of my commercial work.
I’ve always loved the road trip and it’s my preferred way of shooting landscapes. It really just works for the type of shooting I do - passing through, getting lost, pulling over on a hunch - shooting and then moving on. I tend not to linger too long when I shoot this work. Working on feeling or intuition rather than analysis or thought. For me, traveling and exploring new places always awakens the senses. I think my most successful photographs, and certainly the ones I keep coming back to, are the ones that play with light and shadow, and evoke a subtle sense of mystery.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.
- Albert Einstein
As a collection of my work from the past, I wanted this to be a launching point for a new chapter in my personal work. Due to the success of my studio, I hadn’t had time to travel and shoot landscapes and I felt it was time to refocus my energy on my personal work. I wanted this to be more than a simple ‘greatest hits’ book and I knew that editing this work would be a huge challenge for me because of how close I am with it. So I teamed up with two incredibly talented and creative people. I hired David Taylor of Awake Studio to handle the overall design of the book and Anne Maureen McKeating to help to curate the book. My goal was a true collaboration so my direction was quite simple - let’s create something beautiful and let everything else flow from that.
As a starting point, we went through all of my work together. It was incredible to watch as certain themes were picked up on - some that I hadn’t ever noticed before, but were certainly there. In the end, I asked both David and Anne Maureen to live with the photographs for a few weeks each. For me it was important that they take this time to feel out the work and see what emerged.
It was difficult for me to relinquish control over the photo selection. At first there were several photographs that I felt should or shouldn’t be selected for the book, but I realized if I wanted to truly collaborate I needed to let go of my preconceived notions and to relinquish some control to allow for the creativity of my collaborators. What they came back with was amazing. 3 concepts were presented and in the end we decided to go with the colour story - The Colour of Shadow.
The finished book.
The Colour of Shadow is an inquiry into the landscape in half-light. An exploration of the nuanced intersections of light and dark - a place where new details emerge and different ways of seeing can be experienced. This book shows that place narratives are not necessary to have a tactile/visceral experience of ‘a place’.
I love to travel. To play with shadow and light. There is so much beauty in the shadows.
-Ryan Szulc
Instead of following any kind of chronological order or grouping by subject or location, we let the colour and tonal gradations tell the story. This meant photographs from vastly different locations and shot years apart were grouped together. This is a book that leaves a fair amount of mystery to the images. We intentionally omitted the location and date of each shot, in the main body of the book except for an index at the back.
Due to the nature of these landscapes, with their tonal gradations, we felt it was important the book be big enough to allow the colours and tones to sweep across the page. So we created this as a larger coffee table book. The book is 11 x 14 inches or 11 x 28 when spread open. Printed on a beautiful thick matte recycled stock. The book is 92 pages with a Debossed eco-friendly leather cover. I printed this as a limited edition run of 100. There are still a few left and they are available for purchase online here.
The book spread open is 11"x28" giving the landscapes room to breathe.
The thick matte stock handles the subtle tones and colour gradations beautifully.
What we ended up with was completely unexpected, certainly it was something I wouldn’t have been able to produce on my own. We set out to create something beautiful and I think we’ve succeeded, so let’s see where we take it from here.
Here are a few spreads from the book.
Appalachian Mountains, Virginia. 2007
Introduction by Anne Maureen McKeating
Cannon Beach, Oregon. 2010 & Labrador 2012
Catheys Valley, California. 2012
Washington State, 2010
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico. 2008
Skagen, Denmark. 2012 & Vangsa, Denmark 2012
Banff National Park, Alberta. 2010
Flin Flon, Manitoba. 2008 & Nevada 2011
Appalachian Mountains, North Carolina. 2007
Labrador, 2012
The image index at the back of the book.
Autumn Suppers
Here is some new work we shot for Best Health Magazine. I love the summer and never want it to end, but there is something about autumn food. This story is all about cozy fall comfort suppers,
Art Direction: Jackie Shipley
Food Stylist: Ashely Denton
Prop Stylist: Suzanne Campos
Recipes: Alison Kent
Biryani style chicken with apples and raisins.
Maple apple baked beans
Roast pork tenderloin with cider sauce and potato apple gratin
Sweet Goodness
Sweet Goodness is the fourth cookbook i’ve shot with powerhouse sisters Patricia Green & Carolyn Hemming. I love working with these girls - they always bring such a fun energy into the studio.
This time around the focus is on gluten-free baking recipes using ingredients such as millet, coconut, sorghum, oats, quinoa and chia seeds to name a few.
Here are some of my favourite shots and recipes from the shoot.
Food stylist: Noah Witenoff
Prop stylist: Madeleine Johari
Honey Ginger Carrot Cakes with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting
Wild Berry Pie
Old-Fashioned Cake Doughnuts
Roasted Red Pepper Loaf
Old-Fashioned Cake Doughnuts
Chocolate Whoopie Pies
Carrot Spice Pie
Yogurt Cut-Out Cookies
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Pecan Date pie
