Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
I don’t often show the events I photograph. Most often, the event photography consists of some important people grip-and-grinning and, near the end, tend to be drunken revellers at a private function, so there’s really not much to see, or not much anyone’s willing to show.
Another great interior project I photographed for my clients Turnbull Design Consultants Ltd.. It’s a new medical clinic above a Shoppers Drug Mart out in Manotick. I definitely appreciate a clinic that invests a bit in its design. How you enter something so… “clinical” certainly affects how you will experience it. It’s user interface in […]
A few portraits today. Typically, the new year starts of pretty slow for me, my clients rub off their hungover weary holiday eyes, realize they’ve spent all their money on egg-nog and iPads and need to hold off a bit until February to start booking me again. Thankfully, the Kitchissippi Times wanted the first issue […]
Working with Margot Johnston on an editorial photography shoot for Ottawa Magazine’s 2013 Interiors issue was a real treat. Mrs. Johnston’s father was the director of the National Gallery of Canada during a period that many consider an artistic Canadian renaissance. She had interactions with Prime Ministers, and many, now, famous artists. Apparently, having these […]
One of my best clients, Ottawa’s boutique media-management firm MediaStyle have been incredible clients and creative partners with me for the past two years. Last year, I came in and produced which were (and still are) some of my favourite business portraits for the team. While I certainly know how to re-create the images, it […]
There’s a few things going on for me outside of regular work and this here blog, so I figured I’d give my readers a quick update as to what’s going on. First off, the above portrait is of Tom, the father of a groom at a reception I recently shot. I don’t often shoot weddings, […]
Over the summer I was contracted to produce the portraits for a new Ottawa law firm McNally Gervan LLP. They knew their logo branding was going to have a simple red and white design – any hint of direction is helpful when creating commercial images – so we opted to work with a seamless white […]
My first work to go to print in the new year is an Ottawa Woman feature with Kristin Shannon, a pharmaceuticals sales rep, who also happens to be an accomplished fundraiser and outspoken advocate for woman’s mental health. Essentially a traveling sales-woman, there weren’t a lot of location choices for our shoot. She works from […]
With us firmly into the holiday season, a lot of my corporate clients have shut-down for the holidays and editorial photography is mostly due out in the new year. It’s an interesting lull, where I find myself with time I didn’t have before. Obviously the end of the year provides us with a time to […]
I photographed Sarah to help showcase her new play, one she’s co-written and staring in, based on the lives of civil servants. There’s few better representations of the brutalist architecture our indentured servants than Tunney’s Pasture – the place should have a perimeter fence. You can now read full Kitchissippi Times articles online, which isn’t […]
Some of my interior photography clients aren’t builders, but designers. Not to take away from them, designers are involved from the ground up, before the ground is even there. Layout, materials, aesthetics flow, they pick materials and colours and accessories. A good sense of design will end up photographing itself, in a way, they’ve accounted […]
Harriet is was the Chef du Cuisine at Navarra Ottawa, a lovely restaurant in the market I personally had never been to before this assignment. Harriet is a hard worker, and while she wasn’t reluctant to have her photo taken, she’s certainly more used to operating behind the scenes. I took this image before opening, […]
I received an incredible editorial portrait assigment with these two incredible young athletes for Centre Ice a few weeks ago. We worked out of the busy “Sens Sportsplex” which houses 4 rinks, 8 teams at a time, and several hundred hockey parents chatting it up. It was hard to find any out-of-the-way spots to make […]
When you’re assigned to photograph someone who is to be addressed as “His Excellency” you expect a certain level of regency and pomp to come along with that individual. Of course none of that turned out to be true, as His Excellency was incredibly friendly, down to earth, regaling us with tales of his youth, […]
I was tapped by iRun magazine to do an editorial lifestyle photography spread on some new running gear for the fall, winter, and spring season – basically stuff to keep runners warm when it’s cool. The assignment didn’t call for much more than some headshots with the hats, which I accommodated, but I felt they […]
The NiceJewishGadgetFamily is a blended family, a single mom isn’t so single anymore thanks to her superman (he’s Jewish, quite nice, and she likes gadgets). As always, the style of my Extreme family portraits lends itself more to my commercial photography, than a traditional family portrait. You might recognize GadgetGirl from the shoots I did […]
Sometimes you take on some commercial photography work just because it’s fun. I was approached by the Rideau Valley Roller Girls to do one of the pages of their fundraising calendar. It was the new girls in the league photo, and befitting the “Fresh Meat” they are, the location of a local butcher was used. […]
Ottawa Magazine brought me on to photograph the Zellers Family Diner or, at least, what was left of it. Zellers (a Canadian national retail chain) has had some turbulent times lately, and it’s final resting place seems to be a corporate takeover by U.S. big-box retailer Target. But, as you can see, not much has […]
It’s funny how everything in your life is connected, and how old contacts become new ones, and colleagues become clients and friends and hire you to be their commercial photographer when they’re ramping up their business. I wasn’t always a notoriously extroverted commercial and editorial photographer. There was a time when I worked in the […]
Dr. Haykal isn’t my doctor, but she was awesome to work with on her day off a few weeks ago on my latest editorial portrait for Ottawa Woman. I went really simple with these portraits, I’ve been trying to get my location kit down to something very manageable, which forces me to be a bit […]
If you’re a hockey fan, you probably have mixed feelings about Ron Tugnutt’s career performance. Despite some incredible games and seasons, he had a rough go at others. That said, he’s a hell of a guy, and was great to shoot on this editorial photography assignment for Centre Ice. He’s taken on some vested interest […]
While the bulk of my photography encompass’ people in places, sometimes I just photograph the places. Interior photography is a great change from my editorial work, and helps keep my eye sharp for compositions in unique backgrounds and spaces. One of the builders I work with, RND Construction, recently won a series of awards at […]
David Whellans Part 6 of 6 David was how I introduced the series, and I’ll finish it off with him too. David was one of the few I shot for this editorial series who, when I walked into the location (his home), I had two spots to use. The first you saw last week, his […]
Part 5 of 6 Dave and I went to see Peggy on a particularly rainy day. I hadn’t been to her expansive barn in Manotick before, but I did have an idea in my head of how I wanted a light and airy image taken from a high vantage showing the depth of the location. […]
