Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
I have some editorial portrait photography stuff in the works, but while I wait on that to go to print I have another review out on Canonrumors.com. This one’s for the flashes, and if you know me, you know I *love* to flash people… ahem.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
The only thing better than return clients are ones who make you feel like part of the family. Lee and I hadn’t been back to see the Cole’s in a year, but that didn’t stop them from welcoming us into their home treating us like a member of the family (maybe that’s just because they […]
While I always try to shoot for the medium the images will be used in, sometimes I can’t help myself when a good portrait opportunity comes along. Ottawa Woman is newsprint, which means an excess of dark, or black, will smudge the paper (and fingers) around it. So it’s best to shoot lighter coloured, white, […]
I was excited to be contacted by Ottawa’s Great River Media to do some editorial photography work on the lead story for their brand new Hockey magazine “Centre Ice” with The Ottawa Senators latest draft Cody Ceci. It was a tight schedule, figuring out when to shoot Cody only a few days before deadline… he […]
My second cover assignment for Ottawa Woman, Carol Anne Chenard is a Fifa qualified referee on her way to the Olympics (marking my third Olympian photographed this year). Ottawa Woman prefers a more natural approach to the images they use, so I opt for soft light and locations on these editorial portraits with minimal post-processing […]
Actually, this was take one, but the previous image was the first to go to press – so I showed it first. Michael seems to be a natural model, along as a highly skilled athlete, he had no problem shooting off his own “blue steel” and rocking this shot. I would have loved to have […]
Featured on the cover the Kitchissippi Times today, is the young, Ottawa-based, Canadian, world champion (and soon to be Olympian) whitewater slalem kayaker Michael Tayler. It was a great morning on his home course at Ottawa’s pump station rapids. I brought in my two A-list assistants Lee & Chris knowing that, at some point, I […]
My good friend and fellow photographer Younes Bounhar recently acquired some new toys gear and we both had a free evening to put it to the test. Except. Except when I finally took out my camera from my tightly and carefully packed bag, I realized the only battery I was going to bring, was still […]
I photographed this family a few months back, but we kept going back and forth on which image we’d use as final (my clients get selects of how they look so they can pick and choose the image that individually works best for them) – that’s the great thing about shooting a composite – we […]
Today’s a good day, lots of new folks are coming to this site via Julie Cole’s blog post on YummyMummyClub and if you’re looking for *my* look at Julie’s family – I wrote about it here. It’s funny how some things lead to others. I was recommended to Julie by-way of a friend of hers […]
The Extreme family portrait series picks up back in Burlington Ontario, another family run business called that makes gummy vitamins, IRONKIDS & Adult Essentials. These things are delicious a great way to get your kids to take their vitamins, since they’re a candy that’s good for you; the only problem I’ve had with the boys […]
This isn’t new, but I realized I hadn’t put anything up on this blog about my cover-shoot for iRun magazine with Dragon & Shark (Dragon-Shark?)
Did a few portraits for George here. He’s been top of his game for this stage in life and has spent some good time working on his Harley. He lives out in the country(ish) with his wife (who you can see keeping the hog safe here), so asked for a more urban/grunge setting for this […]
In a world of potrable strobes, pocket wizards, and flash power units, the AA battery is, for me, the food that my gadgets feed on. 4 speedlights, 2 auxilary packs, & 4 PW’s means I bring at least 40 Double-A batteries with me for every shoot, and that’s just in the clip. Of course you […]
Tristan his son Phoenix are currently fundraising for “Ride the Rideau” in support of Cancer Research. You can donate to them here & look for their article in an upcoming issue of Kitchissippi Times. Lighting it There are plenty of natural light photographers, the good ones can work in any conditions, but even they are […]
Here’s V, the three year old member of the family I recently photographed. She took centre stage though, most cuties do, so I’m featuring her here solo. For my standard family portraits I travel to the locations a bit lighter, rarely with an assistant, which keeps the costs down for my clients and allows me […]
The monkey house has been of great support to this blog over the past few years, helping me customize the layout of my website and a lot of behind the scenes tinkering. I am grateful for the work, and it was only appropriate that, someday, they’d have a more extreme portrait taken for me to […]
Earlier today I tweeted that I had nearly 200 views on the above photo of Lisa Barker on Flickr but ZERO comments. That means 200 people looked at it, said “meh” and went on there way. A fair appraisal, I guess, it’s not a perfect portrait (no fault of Lisa’s) but I felt it sufficient […]
