Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
One of my best clients, Ottawa’s boutique media-management firm MediaStyle have been incredible clients and creative partners with me for the past two years. Last year, I came in and produced which were (and still are) some of my favourite business portraits for the team. While I certainly know how to re-create the images, it […]
There’s a few things going on for me outside of regular work and this here blog, so I figured I’d give my readers a quick update as to what’s going on. First off, the above portrait is of Tom, the father of a groom at a reception I recently shot. I don’t often shoot weddings, […]
Over the summer I was contracted to produce the portraits for a new Ottawa law firm McNally Gervan LLP. They knew their logo branding was going to have a simple red and white design – any hint of direction is helpful when creating commercial images – so we opted to work with a seamless white […]
My first work to go to print in the new year is an Ottawa Woman feature with Kristin Shannon, a pharmaceuticals sales rep, who also happens to be an accomplished fundraiser and outspoken advocate for woman’s mental health. Essentially a traveling sales-woman, there weren’t a lot of location choices for our shoot. She works from […]
I photographed Sarah to help showcase her new play, one she’s co-written and staring in, based on the lives of civil servants. There’s few better representations of the brutalist architecture our indentured servants than Tunney’s Pasture – the place should have a perimeter fence. You can now read full Kitchissippi Times articles online, which isn’t […]
Harriet is was the Chef du Cuisine at Navarra Ottawa, a lovely restaurant in the market I personally had never been to before this assignment. Harriet is a hard worker, and while she wasn’t reluctant to have her photo taken, she’s certainly more used to operating behind the scenes. I took this image before opening, […]
I received an incredible editorial portrait assigment with these two incredible young athletes for Centre Ice a few weeks ago. We worked out of the busy “Sens Sportsplex” which houses 4 rinks, 8 teams at a time, and several hundred hockey parents chatting it up. It was hard to find any out-of-the-way spots to make […]
When you’re assigned to photograph someone who is to be addressed as “His Excellency” you expect a certain level of regency and pomp to come along with that individual. Of course none of that turned out to be true, as His Excellency was incredibly friendly, down to earth, regaling us with tales of his youth, […]
The NiceJewishGadgetFamily is a blended family, a single mom isn’t so single anymore thanks to her superman (he’s Jewish, quite nice, and she likes gadgets). As always, the style of my Extreme family portraits lends itself more to my commercial photography, than a traditional family portrait. You might recognize GadgetGirl from the shoots I did […]
Sometimes you take on some commercial photography work just because it’s fun. I was approached by the Rideau Valley Roller Girls to do one of the pages of their fundraising calendar. It was the new girls in the league photo, and befitting the “Fresh Meat” they are, the location of a local butcher was used. […]
It’s funny how everything in your life is connected, and how old contacts become new ones, and colleagues become clients and friends and hire you to be their commercial photographer when they’re ramping up their business. I wasn’t always a notoriously extroverted commercial and editorial photographer. There was a time when I worked in the […]
Dr. Haykal isn’t my doctor, but she was awesome to work with on her day off a few weeks ago on my latest editorial portrait for Ottawa Woman. I went really simple with these portraits, I’ve been trying to get my location kit down to something very manageable, which forces me to be a bit […]
If you’re a hockey fan, you probably have mixed feelings about Ron Tugnutt’s career performance. Despite some incredible games and seasons, he had a rough go at others. That said, he’s a hell of a guy, and was great to shoot on this editorial photography assignment for Centre Ice. He’s taken on some vested interest […]
David Whellans Part 6 of 6 David was how I introduced the series, and I’ll finish it off with him too. David was one of the few I shot for this editorial series who, when I walked into the location (his home), I had two spots to use. The first you saw last week, his […]
Part 5 of 6 Dave and I went to see Peggy on a particularly rainy day. I hadn’t been to her expansive barn in Manotick before, but I did have an idea in my head of how I wanted a light and airy image taken from a high vantage showing the depth of the location. […]
Part 4 of 6 Nancy is a successful Ottawa realtor, but her claim to fame nowadays is chairing “Women for Mental Health” at the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health. Struck by the closeness of a local teenage suicide in age to her two daughters, she took to fundraising to raise awareness. Nancy was a […]
Part 3 of 6 We worked with Darryl on the last day of shooting for this assignment – the first subject of two in that day. I had to switch up assistants on this gig because Dave went and got himself a real job. My good friend Chris stepped up for this day which was […]
Part 2 of 6 After a few too many drinks one night, Paige Cutland decided to start a brewery: Hogsback. The first subject of my series produced for Ottawa Magazine, we were to meet with Paige at the “Keggerator” which, unlike a home one, holds *all* the kegs for the market. This location was a […]
Part 1 of 6 This was my first project undertaken for Ottawa Magazine and I really wanted it to show as my best work to date. It would serve to impress my new client (hopefully), and challenge myself to push my work ahead. I had recently read on David Hobby’s Strobist blog about Gregory Heisler […]
The only thing better than return clients are ones who make you feel like part of the family. Lee and I hadn’t been back to see the Cole’s in a year, but that didn’t stop them from welcoming us into their home treating us like a member of the family (maybe that’s just because they […]
While I always try to shoot for the medium the images will be used in, sometimes I can’t help myself when a good portrait opportunity comes along. Ottawa Woman is newsprint, which means an excess of dark, or black, will smudge the paper (and fingers) around it. So it’s best to shoot lighter coloured, white, […]
First in, hopefully, a series of Best-Friend Forever (BFF) photographic series I’ll be producing… maybe someday. Ashley and Kristine have been BFF’s since they first met in grade 9 ten years ago (Kids!). Ashley is the General Manager at Free Form Fitness here in Ottawa, and Kristine is a stylist at The Hair Loft on […]
I was excited to be contacted by Ottawa’s Great River Media to do some editorial photography work on the lead story for their brand new Hockey magazine “Centre Ice” with The Ottawa Senators latest draft Cody Ceci. It was a tight schedule, figuring out when to shoot Cody only a few days before deadline… he […]
The latest issue of Ottawa Woman should be hitting your local free newspaper shelves around the city. The feature story was with Kathy Cameron, a wonderful hair stylist up in the Market. We had a fun time during the editorial shoot, taking care of some basic and necessary cover portraits before she opened up, and […]
