Toronto Wedding Photographers, Wedding Photography Toronto

It’s always fun being published. 5 years back I photographed a charity fund raising events for the Canadian Liver Foundation called “Boxing in the Ballroom” down at the Liberty Grand. Fast forward five years and one of the main boxers of the night, Mary Spencer, then the junior female world champion, is now in the running for Canadian Gold at the 2012 Olympics. Read the full story here.

While Dave’s off having a fun time shooting Alison and Jason’s engagement shoot today in Liberty Village. I’m here in my office working like a busy bee getting caught up on the office work. We’re happy we could get their session in just in time for their wedding this month at Graydon Hall, here in Toronto. With the unpredictable weather we’ve been having we’ve had to reschedule due to thunderstorms, but today was the perfect day for a fun city engagement session.

This post is from a few months back but I’d love to share it with you all. Dave and I are very passionate about working with local Toronto Charities and Camp Oochigeas is definitely one of our faves. Camp Oochigeas is a amazing camp for kids with cancer, where they can go to play and have fun with other kids and still continue to undergo their chemotherapy treatments. Camp Ooch also provides kids with 680 year round programs at no cost to the families. It’s such an important, life changing experience for the kids that’s why this charity is so close to our hearts!

We were so honoured to be asked this year to cover the gala and auction at The ROM, Royal Ontario Museum. The lavish gala raised over half a million dollars in one evening and had over 700 of Toronto’s most generous in attendance. The evening hosted a very special spokesperson, child actress and cancer survivor, Heidi Hayes. Heidi spoke about how Camp Ooch changed her life and helped her through the really tough times while she battled cancer. She also spoke about all of the great friends she made while along the way. You may recognize her from her hit movies History of Violence with Viggo Mortensen. There were a lot of tears, laughter love at the gala and we were so happy to be a part of it all. If you’d like to donate to Camp Ooch and help a local child’s  fight please do so here DONATE.

Thanks to our friend and amazing wedding planner Currie Ross for contacting us to help support Camp Ooch.

Imagine A Cure for Leukemia was born in 2006 with the purpose of providing hope, strength and courage for people with Leukemia. Since 2007, Charlotte and I have proudly been photographing this important charity fund raising event.

As with every year, this event proved to be a blast! The silent auction is always a highlight, as well as the great food that’s served throughout the evening. If I was a bigger hockey fan, the signed jerseys may have meant more to me! Charlotte and I were honoured to be able to donate one of our pieces (Scrub Fires Are Coming) from our recent Contact Exhibition.

The Capitol Theatre is an awesome location for a charity fund raiser like this one – plenty of floor space, a very cool bar and an awesome stage for the musical perfomance of Anna Cyzon. Speaking of which, we were blown away by Anna’s awesome vocal skills… check out Anna’s site if you get a moment.

I’m not sure if you’ll notice, but the photo above with the balloons is packed with our events cards… very cool little bit of cross promotion I thought Thanks for that Nara.

It was also nice to catch up with a friend of ours, Keith, who was running his very cool Snapshot Photobooth. Keith’s in the picture on the bottom right of the next four photos, along with his lovely wife.

As you can see, the energy in the room was buzzing and everybody had an awesome night! Thanks to Nara for organizing this wonderful and worthwhile event – and to everybody who came out in support of this important cause.

Well, it’s been a long time between posts… We’ve had a fantastic trip and I wanted to share some of our experiences with you all! The body of this post will be short and sweet, but at least you’ll get a feel for the second half of our trip

After Rodanthe, we headed south, necessitating two ferry rides. It’s was a trippy experience to pull our RV onto the ferry, park and proceed to have a relaxed time sitting on the couch, looking out the window at the ocean pass by!! Not something you get to experience everyday.

This shot was done using our tilt and shift lens – enabling it to shift the focal plane so only to bird closest to the back of the ferry is in focus. Pretty sweet lens.

Arriving at Ocracoke, a cozy little port town on a sand barrier island, we decided to settle in for the day and enjoy the beach. The winds picked up and we were forced to stay a couple of days (the ferries don’t run when the wind is too strong).

Here’s a shot of Greta, doing her favourite things, wrestling Fritzi to the ground! Fritty’s such a good sport about it though – he lets her get away with it even though she’s half his size. She gets away with a lot because of those adorable eyes!

These little guys (Sanderlings) are the cutest things. As the waves washed in and out, they would run away from them, then chase them back out and proceed to dig up as many shells as they could.

When we did hit dry land in North Carolina, we were amazed at the vast number of military bases as we drove south. We continued to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. At one spot in particular, there was an airfield with fighter jets landing and taking off every 2 or 3 minutes! It was very cool to get out and stand underneath them as they flew over top. You can see how close were were to them in this shot.

More posts VERY soon

Last week we finally hit coastline at Virginia Beach. We spent a day cruising around and had a great time. With everyone back at school and work it was a little like a ghost town though. The beach was nice, and this King Neptune sculpture was pretty impressive. It stands about 6 metres high and is made of bronze.

The next day we cruised south… passing through some pretty amazing towns along the Outer Banks… for example, Kitty Hawk was the location for the Wright brother’s first flight. We also passed Nags Head – a town I’ve heard about many times over the years – known to be a great location to kite surf, drive dune buggies, do some beach combing or check out a ship wreck. We drove a little further south and crossed a massive bridge, to arrive at Rodanthe. FYI, here’s a map of our road trip so far.

We took an early morning walk up the beach to see if we could find the house used in the Richard Gere film, Nights in Rodanthe. [If you're interested, this is where Seredipity is] Along the way though we came across something pretty crazy….

This house seemed to have fallen off it’s stilts during a storm! I can only imagine the sound it would have made as it went! After asking a few of the locals what happened, we discovered that two weeks ago during a storm, the waves crashed against the house and brought it down. All the locals were going on about the fact that they built it on 8 foot stilts instead of 18 foot. Makes sense but apparently it costs a lot of money to bring in really long stilts… would have been money well spent in hind sight I guess! Thank goodness insurance covers the damage and nobody was hurt.

How often do you get a chance to lift a house???

The Rodanthe Pier also featured in the film a few times I hear.. for a seafood feast as well as being the convenience store they used. We chatted to the owner of the pier as we took a walk out on it and asked him whether it was always this wobbly. He tells us that it’s designed with a lot of give to withstand the storms. It totally makes sense but doesn’t reassure us much as we stand at the end, shifting left and right about a foot with each wave passing underneath. You wouldn’t find me out there during a storm though!

It gave me opportunity to grab some pretty cool angles on the waves below. This one above reminds me of the feeling as you’re paddling out for a surf and you crest the wave and look back over your shoulder.

Needless to say, my reptile hunt continues… I finally found a snake – I think – it may be a species of legless lizard, but Charlotte wasn’t too keen on me trying to identify it. If anyone out there knows what species it is, can you let us know? Thanks

We spent three days in Rodanthe, with our RV parked about 10 metres behind the first dune – we were all in heaven. It turns out the dogs love the beach.

When it finally came time to leave, we headed south again (searching for that elusive warmer weather). Cape Hatteras is another famous historic location along the outer banks. The lighthouse there has an awesome barber’s pole swirl painted around it.

As we drove out of the lighthouse parking area there was a big swamp area next to the road and I caught a glimpse of what I thought was one or two turtles… We pulled over and after rustling through some bushes we found that there were literally dozens of turtles hanging out, sunbathing and generally just being turtly. How cute is the little guy in the front row!?

Upcoming posts… Myrtle Beach, Hilton Head Island & Savannah.

2008 marks the third year in a row for a really really great charity fund raiser that both Dave and I love to support. Imagine a Cure for Leukemia is an event to raise awareness and funds for Leukemia research and one day find a cure. Nara Abrams developed and organizes this event as Co-Chair and had us along to document this important occasion. With the recent loss of Nara’s Mother to Leukemia it was an emotional night for all involved. This being such an serious message we were so honoured for the third year in a row, to be the official Photographers of this cause.

If you would like to see more photos from the event, please log into the events page

We arrived outside of the Capitol Theatre on Yonge st. and saw the crowd of people already milling both inside and out. Arriving so early in the evening, we knew there was going to be a large crowd if so many were already here. Dave and I waited in line for our press passes. Dave commented that he was so happy that every year the event gets bigger and bigger. The word is out there and the awareness is growing. Events like these help so much, more then we know. I pulled out our shot list and Dave was pumped to start right away. That was fine with me, there was just so much to photograph. So many vendors were on board…We had Starbucks Coffee, NYF New York Fries (I resisted…but don’t know how), Dairy Queen, (ok… I couldn’t resist) Cupcakes…Bite Catering had a gorgeous cupcake display set up, pink frosting as far as the eye could see. Did I mention all the wonderful hors d’oeuvres? My goodness…the food was seriously delectable!

We met so many generous, kind people they were all just there to support the cause make a difference. It was getting really busy now as the crowd moved toward the stage of the Capitol Theatre, there were sooo many supporters. We made our way to the front to get some shots of the singer Daphne entertaining us all in the crowd. Daphne has a beautiful voice and captivated us all with her music. It was a really well put together and well organized event. There were so many wonderful prizes like autographed NHL Hockey Jerseys and Spa Getaways, oh and WestJet gave away a round trip for two anywhere in Canada to one lucky winner!! All in all it was a great night, a great event for a great cause and we can’t wait to be part of it all next year.

If you would like to see more photos from the event, please log into the events page