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I got a call not too long ago from Panos, who was the groom in a wedding we photographed about a year and a half back, asking if I did food photography. I told him that, yes, I had taken photos of food before. Which was true. I mean how hard can it be, anyway? Panos’ family owns the Luigi’s restaurant on the north side of Lethbridge and they were wanting to update their old photos for their upcoming website and get some prints for their walls.

I did two shoots in the end. The first one was of some of their menu items, which I photographed late at night, mostly after they had officially closed. I shot everything there in the restaurant as the chef made the food. Due to some bad organisation on my part, I had not had dinner beforehand and so I had to photograph all of these mouth-watering dishes—and desserts!—one after another, all on an empty stomach. Not that they wouldn’t have let me eat something, but we were trying to keep things rolling. At least Panos sent me home with cake.

The second shoot was in the kitchen. It was all photojournalistic photography, shot during a busy lunch time as the staff did their thing. I have a new respect for everyone who works behind the scenes in restaurants now! These guys are awesome—and fast. They were really easy to work with, too. I might post some of those photos later—they turned out really well—but for now I just wanted to show you a few of the food images.

P.S. you wouldn’t believe what I used as a backdrop.

Last Friday I went along to check out Eyes of Isis playing live at Lethbridge’s Moose Hall. The band had invited me to come by and hang out, but I brought my camera just for kicks. These guys put on a really good show! I’ve been to quite a few concerts and at most of them I’ve been kinda bored, because the band didn’t get into it or develop any rapport with the crowd. Live playing is a skill that not a lot of studio bands have. It takes a lot of on-stage energy to keep a crowd pumped up past the first three songs. What I really liked about the Eyes of Isis performance was that they really had fun on stage. I’ve seen too many bands spend all their time trying to look cool and just end up being boring. Even though the images I chose for the blog are the more rockin’ out kinda shots, there were lots of times when the guys were smiling and just enjoying themselves. I think that’s pretty cool, especially for a band that plays fairly heavy rock. These days hardly any rock bands know how to have fun on stage anymore, but I remember way back (showing my age now) when Van Halen, for example, would be running around the stage and having tons of fun. Of course, they also wore spandex, and we really don’t want to see that again.

Here are a handful of images from the concert.

If you are not a wedding or portrait photographer you are probably wondering what the WPPI 16×20 Print Contest is all about. Well, as far as wedding and portrait photography contests go, this is the biggy. It is an international contest and thousands of photographers from all over the world send in thousands of images for live judging by a panel of very highly-regarded photographers over the course of a week. Something to note is that this is not just an image contest, because this involves getting the best prints possible. Getting great prints that show the images well under the harsh competition lights is really a whole separate skill set and most photographers rely on pro labs to do this for them. In my case I printed all of my images myself, so I was in control from the very beginning of the image creation to the final product. Wait, let me just pat myself on the back. There. I feel good now.

Anyways, I’m happy to say that I received eight Accolades of Excellence awards for the images I submitted. Yay! Here are the images below, roughly in chronological order, with the most recent ones at the bottom.

My main assistant photographer, Jessica, is taking on some weekend weddings for now up until the end of May and some weekdays throughout the year.

Jessica has been shooting with me since the beginning of June last year and she’s been a fantastic asset to Unique Images Photography. She will still be photographing as my assistant photographer this year as well, but she is also going to be available as the sole photographer for some weddings. This is something she is going to do apart from Unique Images Photography, so this blog post is just a heads-up for brides looking for an alternative for their Lethbridge wedding photographer. Her rates start at $1500 and range up to $2500. If you’d like to know more about Jessica’s wedding photography, contact her at jessica@uniqueimagesphotography.ca