Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
Last year I was contracted by Ottawa Magazine to take some lifestyle-esque editorial photography of four towns within a days drive of Ottawa; perfect for a daytrip! Travelling to these spots was going to be an interesting challenge for me, since I hadn’t been to many of them before. The assignment, should I chose to accept it, was to photograph stores, food, people and places; to distill a bit of the charm, people, and product available so close to Ottawa. Overall, I didn’t know what to expect, but counted on my own Toronto-born charm to get me some access into these small towners lives.
Sadly, most of the images never made it to print, in fact, it took a whole year before they went to print at all. So below are some that made it, and a few of my favourites that didn’t make the cut. It’s a long post, but I promise, there are more photos than words.
Even though Wakefield, Quebec was the last stop on my trip, it was by far my favourite location to shoot. Helped, in no small part, by the gorgeous day, and incredible pasteries from what has become my absolute favourite pastry shop in the world: Patisserie La Toque. Macroons, cakes, and a very special ginger creme that you must try. We also visited Pipolinka bakery, Jamboree and Expeditions Radisson which was a fantastic outfitters slash coffee-shop slash art gallery. The espresso was almost as good as the company of those who served it.
Backbeat Books & Music had one of the most obvious portrait backdrops I’ve ever had the pleasure to walk into. Of course we shot it, and, unpublished, the faces behind the records:
Perth also showed us that small-towns were capable of having a high-quality grocery store like Foodsmiths, something my own local “big chain” can’t seem to get right.
And the downtown was just a perfect place to spend the early part of our day:
We found the heart of the small-town charm in Almonte, where we were greeted at every location with big smiles and wonderful local crafts. The Tin Barn Market was an incredible store to go into: stuff overload. But some shots just made themselves in this lovely textured environment.
We paid a visit to Baker Bob’s for some pastries, had some coffee at Palms, and ate at the Mill Street Crepe Company for a bit of food photography.
Of course, you can’t leave Almonte without checking out their lovely river and waterfalls. Too often we build over these things and, for now, it’s certainly a sight worth seeing.
Merrickville was the smallest of our small-town daytrips. All of our locations were around a single two-block radius but, as luck would have it, we got a bit stuck waiting for the rotating bridge to become unstuck on the way in (Small-town problems). Pictured above is Janet Campbell and her daughter who run the Mrs. McGarrigle mustard empire. They have more types of mustard than I do condiments in my fridge. We also paid a visit to The Grotto Artworks, an artist co-op that’s located in a former bank (thus the vault in the background).
And spent some time playing with leather at Rowland Leather, which turned out to be one of the more creative approaches we had for the whole series.
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The daytripper section and so much more are available in the Summer 2014 edition of Ottawa Magazine, on newstands now.