Lisa, Toronto actor 

Tonight's shoot, really great to work with, great face, Lisa. 

P.C. Richard Cooper looking cold, riding police horse Sabre 

Same pair again. P.C. Bullock and Elvis. 

I'm not 100% sure but I think this is P.C. Larry Bullock on police horse Elvis, named for one of the mounted officers who was killed two years ago. 

This is P.C. James Flett on police horse Lady, one of two female horses at the unit, Dorothy being the other one. Today there was an anti-Bush demo at the U.S. Consulate on University Avenue and the mounted unit were called out in case crowd control was needed. 

Staff Sgt David Bowen saying hello to new horse on the block Thor. That's P.C. Mark DaCosta riding out on him today. When's Thor getting his hair cut, that's what I want to know. 

Henry and his mom 

Last night's shoot, really cute family 

Jennifer, great smile. 

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the blogger-earth. I've been shooting for a week straight. Some Secret Sam stuff and some I can show you. Here's Jennifer who I shot last year, back again for more tortuous studio time ... ;-) 

mounted pics 

mounted pics 

Wayne and Kent 

Mary and Wayne 

Today's location shoot, the Kooys, great family! 

sisters 

Nina, looking angelic 

Tim, looking devilish 

..finishing the post processing on my backlog. This is Nina and Tim. 

view from over here 

oot and aboot today, with time to put my feet up and take some shots just for fun. 

ice cold water 

working the ferry 

rusted bolt 

cropped version of Sgt Jim Patterson at the Santa Claus parade, potential trading card? 

And for anyone who's ever sat for me and wondered why I say "no stripes or checks" ... 

Let's get an opinion poll going here. Is it any wonder children are terrified of clowns? ;-) 

P.C. Peter Cullingford and police horse Boot. Boot's a real character. 

oh my gosh, look what just arrived in my mailbox. I love this shot, thanks so much Derrick! That's Justice, posing for me down at the lakeshore. 

DJ Alpha Juliet 

I knew all those graffitti walls would come in handy one day 

flashback 

Deydra's hands 

Too strange? I can't decide. It's for a DJ portfolio, remember. 

such a cutie 

wow. 

Last night's shoot. Sweet family for Christmas photos. 

Harold was right, Honest Ed is just a blur when he gets moving on the lunge line! 

Sgt Jim Patterson with Honest Ed in the training ring at mounted headquarters last week. 

Ed on the lunge line. What a great face. 

P.C. Dennis Rowbotham and new kid on the block "Honest Ed". Of all the new horses Ed really strikes me as having a lot of potential. He's so beautiful and very sweet. Notice he still has his forelock and mane. That means he's still in training. When he graduates he gets a buzz cut. 

P.C. Hildor Pickran and Stuart 

P.C. Hildor Pickran with police horse Stuart, I think? 

P.C. Rod Jones and his old friend Champ 

detail 

stairway to heaven 

A few more shots from yesterday. After we left the parade we went for pizza on College St and then drove down to the portlands. Ricardo took this shot of his favourite bubble building. 

This morning we set out early and went down to the mounted unit to catch a few horse shots before the Santa Claus parade.  

PC Beth Blaser and Viscount 

PC Kristine Brubacher and police mount Dorothy 

PC Deb Heughan and Toby 

PC Lenny Kotsopolous and Dorothy 

PC Jay Korman-Moore and Stuart 

Auxiliary Laura Ball and Duke 

Then over to Trinity Bellwoods park for a group shot 

Dream filter  

Mission accomplished 

Then race over to the parade, marshalling at Christie Pits. Jim will have to ask Harold about his talent agent, I hear he was on Global TV too. ;-)
Nice shot of Sgt. Jim Patterson on Thor, waving to his fans. 

Here they come! There they go! ;-) 

Trying to take photos of swiftly moving horses while you're being tripped and kicked by moms and kids who don't want you crouching in front of them is not conducive to great shots. ;-( 

After the horses zoomed past I nearly got run down by Mother Goose 

A school of fish waiting for their cue. Richard and I got separated in the crowd and I wandered around forever looking for him, but while I was at it, I shot these behind the scenes photos of the parade marshalling area. 

Lemony, furry yellow things 

I said "no stripes or checks"! 

A convention of clowns. Richard, where are you?? He just blended in with all of Santa's elves.. it took me forever to find him. 

The King waiting for a bus. 

Um, a Christmas ape? 

Last Wednesday shoot, Su Laine Varkey, organizer extraordinaire.  

Jennifer Brouwer 

Last Wednesday's shoot, Jennifer Brouwer, Director, Renovation & Design at Organized Outcomes.com
 

Clive and Shola 

Here's Shola the black Lab explaining to Julia, her human, how to pose properly. 

Having some fun with Christmas lights and holly.  

Today's shoot, Tim and his lovely Nina, engaged to be married and vying for cutest couple in the universe with Jared and Uyen Chi, their friends. 

Lost in thought or doing a good imitation of being lost in thought... '-) 

Dancing 

Nina 

Against the blue screen. Brigadier and P.C.Jay Korman-Moore. 

Champ and P.C. Angela McKinnon. I should call this one "forgive and forget" 

Here's Champ with P.C.Angela McKinnon. 

P.C. Richard Chow Young with Trooper  

Richard, trapped in another dimension, trying to get back in. ;-) 

mystery horse

Ok, well, I guess people do notice when I don't post. I thought I could get away with a few days away from blogging but I got 2 emails today from people wondering if I'm dead or something. Well, not quite dead, but pretty darn sick. And up to my eyeballs in post-processing. Struggling with getting the school photos burned to CDs which is like drowning in molasses and here's the scoop about taking photos against the blue screen... it's not instant gratification. I have to extract the horse and rider from the background which is fiddly and insane-making and then I have to find the perfect backdrop which has the light source coming from the same direction as the lights on the subject which is also insane-making. So I burned them to a DVD and gave them to Ricardo who is much better at that sort of thing than I am and we'll have to wait to see what he cooks up. Meanwhile I can start posting again I think, having explained that.
This shot is last night, after taking some horse shots down at Ontario place we went for a drive to get some fresh air and I was talking about how much I want to capture some photos of the horses down on a beach along the lakeshore somewhere, at sunrise or sunset or something interesting like that.. and we're walking along the beach at Marie Curtis Park and what do I see? Horse tracks in the sand. Hm... but no horse. Drat.  

and then we stopped for groceries and I didn't want to leave the camera in the car so I carried it around my neck and decided to click without looking in the viewfinder. This is a photographer's idea of fun. 

P.C. Richard Cooper with police horse Sabre who is a lovely boy. Am I talking about the horse or the rider?  

ricardo choosing milk, scintillating stuff! 

This is Trooper, who really likes having his photo taken. He has a little chunk of his ear missing, but I think he's beautiful anyway. 

comp card I made for Rose Cerullo who is a professional organizer and in the running for auditions for a new TV show about people and their disorganized kitchens. She should come to my house! 

P.C. Greg Ladner with Blue Moon The team from the Toronto Police Mounted Unit won Blue Moon in Kentucky at the North American Mounted Police Competition two years ago. They had the highest score.
He was a donation to the competition from Dian Cecil of Kentucky whose company is Police Mounts of Camelot. Greg was part of the winning team. 

Staff Inspector Carl Davis on Spencer 

P.C. Richard Mamak with police mount Spencer at Sunnyside Pavillion. Just a mockup, testing out different backdrops/edge colours etc. 

Finally getting around to peeking at Monday's shoot down at the stables. Here's P.C. Dennis Rowbotham on police mount Trooper
 

Didn't pick up the camera at all yesterday, Sunday, just burned out. Spent most of today at the mounted unit headquarters shooting against the bluescreen. Really tired out so this is the only pic I'm posting today, it's Blue Moon and his best friend Charger. 

My last shoot of the day, two sweet and lovely sisters. 

and their mom and dad
And now, if I don't get to bed, I'm falling face down on the keyboard! More pics tomorrow.. 

who is that masked woman? 

Shola the wonder dog

My newest four legged friend, Shola. I think I'm shooting more four legged than two legged in the last two months. But isn't she beautiful?
Black dogs are notoriously hard to photograph. They're like "light-sinks".. the light goes in, but it doesn't reflect at all. Luckily Shola's coat had a really nice sheen and it helped a lot. She was very patient with the silly humans all around her and managed to not pee on the backdrop paper, which I consider a bonus in any session. ;-) 

Shola and her humans 

Shola, with her people, Julia and Clive. 

This is Shola, the black lab and Julia. Or should I write that the other way around? Well, Shola *was* the star. ;-) 

ashbridges boardwalk 

Fooling around in photoshop. (sorry Jim) 

O how he mocked my hat. And then the cold winds did blow. Not mocking now. ;-) 

First shoot of the day, at Toronto Police Headquarters. Here's P.C. Steve Noble just getting the joke Champ whispered in his ear. 

Look at Champ's feet, so nicely turned out and clean and shiny. Seemed a shame not to do a full body shot. 

P.C. Steve Noble on police mount Champ and P.C. Harold Williamson on police mount Juno Beach outside police headquarters at Bay and College today for the Remembrance Day ceremonies. 

Next we headed over to Queen's Park to meet P.C. Terry Pheby and police mount Samson to do a reshoot in formal uniform at the police memorial. 

P.C. Terry Pheby at the Ontario Police Memorial. 

Playing statues 

P.C. John Feather riding police mount Harry in Queen's Park today.  

The old and the new. Horses, that is. Harry (on the left) is 17 years old and a big old sweetheart. Samson is just brand new on the force. 

P.C. Terry Pheby and P.C. John Feather off to get back to patrol, heading south out of Queen's Park. 

MidWinter's night dream 

Really like this shot. The Sgt and the General both look great. 

ricardo, going for danger pay again, this time courting pneumonia lying on the cold stones. 

Sgt Arlene Fritz at Casa Loma today. It wasn't snowing but it was cold enough, I'm sure. That's General she's riding, a real sweetie. 

Sgt Jim Patterson at Kensington Market on police mount Thor. 

another experiment, this time with P.C. Gregg John and police mount Winston. 

Sgt Graham Acott on Duke in the fall colours 

The light at the top of my stairs. 

Decided to take the camera to the hairdresser and force myself to find something interesting to shoot while I waited for my son to get his hair cut. I use the term loosely since he didn't look any different when he left after the cut.  

Christmas candy already.  

pair of chairs 

Christmas cheer at the strip mall 

Every time we go to the hairdresser we have to sneak past Rocky, the barber, who cut the boys hair when they were young. Now that their hormones have kicked in, they want to have their hair done by Sandy, next door, who is, let's face it, a lot prettier than Rocky and the opposite sex.  

Remember when a gum ball cost a penny? 

more desperately seeking interesting shots. 

At the hairdresser. Can you guess what it is? 

haircut 

Is it any wonder kids are afraid of the barber? This chair looks like an instrument of torture. 

experiment 

This is one of Valeriy's sites if you're interested in looking or purchasing. He's going back to Kiev at the end of the month. :-( 

On Saturday we went to Valeriy Krey's showing of some of his artwork. It was a terrific evening and his work is even more amazing in print than online. Metallic processing gives each photograph a rich glow. This one reminds me of a lush persian rug. You missed a great show!  

mirror image 

Mallory Lewis 

Just put together another blog to take the place of my headshot portfolio which was getting stale.  

...into the light 

Richard took the photo, I nicked it and handpainted it in photoshop. I think I like it. Hm. 

lifeguard's chair 

It's so amazing living on one of the Great Lakes. They're really like inland oceans.  

It came from the depths...

this rubber spider scared the daylights out of me. I actually thought it was a crab. There are no crabs in Lake Ontario are there? Not 6 inches long anyway. 

I love these birch 

Went down to the lake today. 

The final resting place of Captain Fluke. Right after I took this shot I was told to turn off my camera, by a security guard, as picture-taking is not allowed. That's the second time in as many weeks that we've been told that. The other time was in a PARK. Eesh.  

Besides the obvious advantage in crowd control situations and the high visibility on patrol, mounted officers and their equine partners serve a hugely important role in community relations. Not many kids will run up and say "can I pet your cruiser?!" But every single one will ask to pet the horse. And so starts the breaking down of barriers between police and community. In my opinion anyway, for what that's worth. ;-) 

CD cover for Sally 

how's this? 

The best part about shooting the photos for the Toronto Police Mounted unit trading cards is being able to capture moments like these. It's the connection between human and horse that is so special and so endearing. 

And this reallly sweet one. 

Chris and Kris on Major and Keith, silhouetted against the Toronto skyline 
No, those aren't knobby knees on the horses, they're wearing their crowd control knee pads. :-)

a different sort of shot 

Going to post a few shots from the last couple of horse shoots. Haven't had much time to do any post processing of them, I've been up to my eyeballs in work. This is police horse Keith, who was donated to the Toronto Police Mounted unit by Miss Dorothy Keith, a great supporter of the unit. 

Also took the "teacher pictures" for Bannockburn.  

Joe has a very interesting face. He can look like Bill Murray one minute and Jack Black the next. Not to mention Tie Domi and that sci fi actor who got his head blown up in Terminator. He's a man of many faces, agents take note. 

and yes I have a studio and yes I'm still doing headshots. Not all my subjects have four legs and eat hay. ;-) This is the soon-to-be-famous actor Joe Boyd. 

P.C. Terry Pheby (remember Samson?) and Mr. Geoffrey Rumble who served on the Toronto Police Mounted unit before going overseas with the artillery in WW2. Mr. Rumble is over 90 years old and still witty and charming. 

It was absolutely freezing and the wind was blowing 75kmph ... brrr.  

This is Jim Davis, HUGE supporter of the Toronto Police Mounted Unit (he served on the unit for years) and mounted police units all over North America and the world. He's even been asked to go to China and show them the ins and outs of training horses and men to police the community. He publishes "Hoofbeat" magazine, with news of mounted police worldwide. Super horseman, super nice person. 

Zipped over this morning to see the mounted guys at Mississauga South Common Mall. There was a Remembrance Day ceremony there and the Toronto Police Mounted Unit had a little presentation in the mall.  

I really like shots like this, where everyone is animated and not concerned with me, the photographer, and just being themselves. 

Here's P.C. Harold Williamson, P.C. Stephen Noble sharing a laugh with Mr. Geoffrey Rumble. 

The poster boys. Thanks Harold for being such a good sport and helping to make the poster such a success. 

Sgt Fritz again 

A nice shot of Sgt Arlene Fritz on Duke. Next week I think we're getting some shots at Casa Loma with her real mount. 

A few more pics from yesterday's shoots.. one of the ingenious ways of getting a horse to perk up his ears.  

Up at the crack of daylight savings time dawn today thanks to a certain dog in this house, then off to the east end to meet up with Staff Sgt Bill Wardle and police mount Duke. (remember Duke of the big grin?) And look where the shoot is, my favourite secret garden. 

Ok, after this I promise not to use this technique anymore... the novelty will wear off, I know. But it looks so cool. 

headless horseman 

Hmm. Trying a ricardo-angle, lying in the wet grass. Looks strange but interesting. 

Here's Duke looking very regal at the gates to the secret garden. 

sweet 

Justice turned to stone 

After the shoot with Staff Sgt Bill Wardle in the east end, we zipped out to Mississauga to pick up the blown up versions of the Remembrance Day posters. They look super. Home for a quick cup of tea and then down to the Humber Bay to meet P.C. Derrick Speirs with Justice. 

P.C. Derrick Speirs and police mount Justice who happens to be the tallest horse in the stables. Over 18 hands but gentle and sweet. 

and a sunset silhouette.. 

This is the final poster choice. 

Here's the second poster I did for the Toronto Police Mounted Unit, commemorating the mounted officers who served in the wars. 

Struggling with the Remembrance Day poster for the Toronto Police Mounted Unit.   I've literally been in this chair for 12 hours straight. Not with the posters, those were just in the last hour, but with the post-processing of the school photos. My brain is fried. If I had enough energy left I'd run a zillion laps on the treadmill... but I'm heading for bed instead. What an unhealthy day. :-(

another version 

heavy effects 

And the original