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Ottawa Environmental Portrait Photographer: Valerie Jacques for Ottawa Woman

In Print - Valerie Jacques for Ottawa Woman

We worked pretty hard on the image above. Had them move, adjust, and straighten the ambulance in place. Set up our lights in and around the vehicle, then drafted someone to come and start the truck, to get the lights *going* for about 30 seconds as they ran out of the cab and ducked out of the shot. Since the lights alternate, there’s no one shot with all of them on, so we just had to keep shooting and pick the one that had the best balance. Of course, none of them were chosen to finally make it to print, *sigh* them’s the breaks.

As is the case with all my shoots for Ottawa-Woman (so far), Valerie was incredibly fun to work with, and we had great buy-in and support from the entire Paramedic staff. Alex, my assistant for the day, was super-keen on a ride-along, and kept asking (the answer was a repetitive, but friendly, “no”). Once thing that was pointed out to me, not of the images here, but of the actual majority of my portraits, was that they were so tight that you wouldn’t *know* she was in an ambulance. Context matters, and while I’m there shooting in front of an ambulance, it’s important to show enough of the vehicle to give context to the scene (like the second image above). You can read the full article in the June edition of Ottawa-Woman online.

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