Architectural & Interior Design Photography, Corporate Commercial Photography, Advertising & Portrait Photographer | Ottawa | 613-558-7585 | justin.vanleeuwen@gmail.com
Last year I was able to grow my commercial interior design and hotel photography portfolio with work by 4té design and the Metcalfe Hotel. The large open spaces of the lobbies and even the layout of the rooms lend themselves to my favourite bit of “trick” photography: Panoramas.
I was thrilled to be the photography sponsor again at this years’ Housing Design Awards, not least of all to see all the many architectural and design projects I photographed through the year come up for awards. There were winners and, truly, all the finalists had fantastic projects; many of them I photographed. So while […]
For their 20th anniversary, Astro Design wanted to do something special for the community, donating materials and kitchen design to the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre. Astro also leveraged their many suppliers to donate to the cause, I was happy to donate my own services in photographing this project.
For the past year Ottawa Magazine has had me document the recent development of tiny houses across the region. It was a unique experience to get into the lives of people wishing to downsize their lives, and their homes. Editorial Photography is always full of challenges and surprises and this assignment was no different, with […]
It’s very rare that sitting at home, wishing you had more editorial photography assignments and portrait work, pays off. But that’s pretty much exactly what happened when the folks at Grocery Business Magazine contacted me to to photograph local entrepreneurs, co-owners of Kardish Health Food Centres, and brothers Carey and Robert Assaf. The creative agency, […]
What a pleasure it was to walk into my local craft beer brewer – Beyond the Pale – one day and have them ask me to take updated photos for their website. “You want me to do beer photography? Yes. Yes I will.”
I love a good personal branding photoshoot. More than just a headshot, personal branding will give a subject the opportunity to showcase their personality over a series of different looks and setups. Shelley contacted me after a recent life-shift. She moved to Ottawa and has also left the boring life of a scientist to start […]
What do you do if you’re approached by a beautiful, charming, and good friend to help her with a collaborative fundraising calendar portrait, including some of the best wedding, portrait, and commercial photographers in Ottawa? Of course, you say “yes!”
First workshop taught. Check that off my to do list. I had a great group of students at Saturday’s “Learn your Lights” Photography workshop at the JVLPopUp studio here in Ottawa. I chose to do a one-day intensive so we could all keep our Sundays as a weekend day and not run into any trouble […]
It’s been an incredible first week at the JVLPopUp photo studio. We had an opening party which (though I didn’t tell anyone this) marked two years in full-time photo business for me, with incredible food by Essence Catering, drinks from Beyond the Pale, perfectly rendered and HUGE canvases by CanvasPop. I’ve entertained a few headshot […]
It’s been a busy couple months around here, and while I’ve taken the time out to post some tutorials, there’s some stuff going on outside of this blog that I should link to.
Ghetto-Flo Intro I was introduced to the “Ghetto-Flo” lights after reading the excellent blog of New York-based photographer Brad Trent. He had mounted 4 standard workshop flourescent light fixtures into light-stand mountable strip lights. “Ghetto-Flo” because they’re similar in use to the much more expensive Kino-Flo lights, though there are advantages to the later (variable […]
One of the problems I encounter as an editorial photographer is that the medium can dictate how we’re supposed to shoot. Newsprint, for example, doesn’t reproduce details well, and prints “wet” which can lead to ink transfers when the images contain too many black or dark colours.
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 […]
Sometimes we can do bad work that gets published, and other times we can do good work that never sees print. This is the later. I was asked by iRun Magazine to produce some editorial product photography showing this years big running shoe releases from Adidas, Ecco, Merrell, Mizuno, North Face, and Salomon; with a […]
I have been greatly honoured by my friends at CanvasPop by being chosen by them to do the product photography for their launch of their Instagram-to-canvas launch. For those who don’t know, instagram is a free app for the iPhone that allows you to quickly take photos add a number of preset filters and, most […]
Working for “free” gets a bad rap, of course it’s also often misinterpreted in what free involves. A few months ago I was contacted by the lovely folks over at Local Tourist Ottawa to write a blog post that included a good selection of my personal work from the Ottawa area. Now, I do believe […]
Tina’s awesome. She’s nearly always happy (as far as I can see) world travelled, nice and tall, and has her own catch-phrase. “Are you kidding me!?”
