Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
With us firmly into the holiday season, a lot of my corporate clients have shut-down for the holidays and editorial photography is mostly due out in the new year. It’s an interesting lull, where I find myself with time I didn’t have before. Obviously the end of the year provides us with a time to […]
Thank you. This is been a crazy year for me and my family, and while I’m not a spiritual or religious person, I would say that the first word that comes to mind is that it’s been a blessing. A blessing because I got to stay home with my kids for most of the year, […]
Bonkers, pictured, is a local watering hole in my Hintonburg neighbourhood. I posted this photo on Flickr yesterday, and this is a suggested crop of that image (thank you for your input folks!). The nice thing about this shot, for me, is that it was something I had pre-envisioned. I knew I wanted to take […]
It’s been a while since I posted a HDR image – mostly because I haven’t been shooting them. Some people hate the effect, some love the results. I find it’s usually pretty polarized within a few groups “photographers” and everyone else. See – photographers themselves are always polarized – which camera company, bag, lens, flash, […]
Last Saturday was Tara & Tony’s wedding. It was crazy humid and I had to go two notches down on my belt as the day went on, in order to prevent my pants from completely dropping off. We were at the Brittania Yacht Club in Ottawa and, at first, I wasn’t crazy about the layout […]
Haven’t posted (or done) an HDR in a while, this one seemed alright. I especially liked that I processed it through plugins only – Photomatix, Lightroom, and ColourEfex Pro… no Photoshop. This week I was supposed to get an iPhone. I had been wanting one for a while as the “photographers” phone of choice. Big […]
Okay – I’m defeated – even WITH GUIDE LINES I can’t take a straight picture. I have a bubble level and plan on using it from now on… I’m sorry. One shot with my Panasonic LX3, single image processed in HDRMax with some blending in PS and lots of little layers on top.
Okay, I actually processed this image twice, it’s an HDR, which I just couldn’t seem to work out the way I wanted, and then I went a tried out HDRMAX (there’s a trial version available), and bingo – gave me that punch and contrast I was looking for. I’m thinking of grabbing it permanently – […]
Quinn’s first Christmas, my second in Ottawa, and the first in our new house. This is his first ornament. There’s something about Christmas time that makes me want to process HDR images, it’s probably the surreal nature of the whole time – I mean really – who goes through all this trouble EVERY freakin year? […]
Another image from Montréal last weekend. I was standing in the street taking these exposures when a guy in a car pulled up. Naturally I assumed I was going to get some sort of security beat down (because I had a tripod), but it turned out this guy had his Nikon with him and popped […]
Mel and I (and Quinn) went to Montréal this weekend. At first I thought maybe a change of scene involved touristy things – exploring, photos, long walks – but I quickly realized that was what I liked to do. Mel wanted to shop, but thankfully (for me) she was up for my roam through old-Montréal […]
I borrowed a rebel xt this weekend since the broken hand isn’t conducive to my normal setup (1DMKII w/ 24-70mm lens). It was a nice reprieve from the weight, but that’s the only thing I liked – I don’t miss the XT at all, changing ISO through a menu system, poor metering, and lazy autofocus […]
If Attila even cared, he’d probably give me a hard time for posting so many HDR’s, the purist that he is. As it is, they just happen to be the better shots I’ve been taking lately (aside from those of Quinn, which I’ll keep to myself mostly). I got roof access to my work building […]
Last of the series… maybe. Shot from the opening day can be seen here.
Shot with a Lensbaby 3G – I see at Photokina they announced a revision of the brand plus a new model: I completely recommend it (and wish I had this one instead) to anyone looking for a bit of creativity thrust onto their camera.
I originally didn’t like doing too much in HDR – it’s Fake looking, I admit. But “fake” could also come to mean painted, and I think that’s what I was going for in these shots. I wanted to showcase features of the park – it’s highlights as well as it’s location – but I wanted […]
An HDR from my early morning at the Cancer Survivor’s Park the other day. All the CSP’s in North America have this as a fixture within them.
So I thought it would be a good idea to wake up at 4 today and “beat the sun” out to the Cancer Survivor’s Park, which I was scheduled to photograph at about 2pm. I’m not sure if I saw the real benefit of that extra time spent in the dark – I certainly got […]
Okay so not really the beach, I didn’t actually want to spend any time AT the beach because drunken teenagers were running around drinking. Am I getting old? As the prospect of getting wasted on a beach in front of the sunset is, in fact, appealing, taking a time out to chase seagulls and throw […]
How many of you forget that there are awesome buildings in your city? I mean, they’re likely the ones with the tourists around them (Grade 8 grads travel from across Ontario and Quebec to visit Ottawa or, as was my case, Quebec City). But these are legit photo opportunities – if not clichéd, they can […]
I’ve been taking pictures just fine lately – it’s sitting down and processing them that’s the trick. I’m often happy enough with the RAW image, but sometimes I almost NEED to enhance it in Photoshop, just do something y’know? Granted, I still lack the proper skills to get them exactly the way I want, but […]
Montréal is awesome. This was my first trip to the great city and I loved it. My buddy Rainbow once told me that Montréal had the hottest girls in Canada – he’s likely right – though these things no longer phase me, I was just told he was right. This was also the first time […]
Every time we stop at the The Log Cabin Restaurant I end up hopping off of the bus (if there’s light out) and snapping a few pictures in and around the parking lot.There’s really nowhere else to go around here, and if I venture too far I risk my bus taking off without me – […]
