Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
Knowing your subjects always helps.
Often getting to know your subjects means doing some research, google, a bit of social media stalking, to get a feel for who they are, what they’ve accomplished, so that you have a familiarity going into the shoot. Of course, actually previously knowing your subject makes it all that much easier.
I met Trevor a few years ago when he was writing for OpenFile, and seeing as he lives two blocks away from me, it was easy to keep up with him and just say “whattup” as we passed each other in wanderings. Lucky me, when I was called to shoot the cover of Kitchissippi times I knew enough about Trevor, and our home neighbourhood he was going to be blogging about for CBC’s “Hyperlocal” site. 1. I knew we were doing the shoot after work, so he was going to be hungry, 2. I’ve been wanting to smack people in the face using the “Hintonburg” park gate sign for a while, yes it’s obvious, but I just wanted to use it okay? 3. Hintonburger was a few minutes away from that.
I went into this shoot with a shot list, Park, Burgers, Beer. These three elements are pretty much how I experience my home-turf, and I don’t think Trevor Objected. Originally I wanted to be at one of Hintonburg’s busy restaurants, but they were literally *too* busy for us to get in there and shoot. So we hopped over to a new micro-brew startup to grab a few growlers and finish up our shoot.