Portraits with Salty Western in Waimea

Ethan likes to say that I (Stef) am unable to have “just a normal vacation”. While Ethan is always on the hunt for our next life adventure together, I’m always searching our next photo opportunity. (In my own defence: we typically travel with our gear anyways and there’s just something so inspiring about shooting in a new location that makes me feel excited) I’m happy to say that this time the tables turned and it was actually Ethan who pitched shooting with Taira, which to our joyous surprise she was on board for!

Taira runs a beautiful leather goods company called Salty Western— “Salty Western was created by islander Taira Barron Cran. She grew up on the North Shore of Oahu and surfed before she could walk. Everyday revolved around the ocean, though her love for horses and the country life grew just as strong. Eventually, she moved to a 35,000 acre cattle ranch on the Big Island of Hawai’i. In her new little cowboy house, she started to use her creativity through leather. Experimenting with it, she began wetting it, dying it, cutting it up, and carving it. She drew inspiration in from her versatile lifestyle; from coming out of the Pacific ocean with dripping salty hair, to sitting by a fire with dirty cowboy boots, sipping whiskey after a long cattle drive. Much like living through an old western movie, though this one is surrounded by Hawaiian salt in the air. This was how Salty Western was born.”

We spent an evening with Taira at her ranch (after first going to the wrong ranch lol) where we photographed her working on, and with, some her of products. Waimea is also known as Hawaiian cowboy county, full of rolling green pastures, and home to lots of cowboy and cattle ranches so this was truly the perfect backdrop to shoot with Taira considering her brand ethos. What is it about watching other artists work that is so beautiful and interesting? Because that’s how photographing Taira felt. We walked around the ranch, said hi to a horse (!!), and later watched the sunset after we parted ways. It was such an honour to do this and we’re so thankful for Taira’s invitation to visit, we look forward to returning one day!

Click the photos below to enlarge and browse through

Headshots with Becky

It makes all the difference when we are collaborating with someone on their headshot session vs. an office headshot day. While we also love the latter, with the former we can work more intimately with the subject to create the images that they will be happiest and most confident with. In this case Becky wanted to update various profile photos while also incorporating her love (and part of her job) of biking into her feature as well.

We met up with Becky at our favourite time of day, in the evening close to golden hour, to shoot around the Corktown Commons and then took a ride around Rosedale Valley for more ‘in action’ shots with her bike.

Click the phots to enlarge and browse through

Portrait Session with Toronto Actor, Neel Nash

YOU KNOW THOSE PEOPLE WHO YOU INSTANTLY VIBE AND FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH?

Neel’s one of them! The week that we were trying to shoot was a complete mess (for me) and I honestly didn’t think that we were going to make things work, but Neel had an audition coming up and needed new portraits ASAP.

Neel is so open and charismatic, he started off our session telling me all about himself and then asking about me… he more specifically said ‘who is Stef?’ which made me feel like that meme or tweet that’s says “that feeling when someone says ‘tell me about yourself’ and you suddenly don’t know who you are”.

We don’t often get the chance to sit and talk with people before we start shooting. Our subjects are usually on the go and only have a limited amount of time to spare, and sometimes don’t even really want to get their photo taken so they can be quiet and antsy for everything to be over. It’s refreshing when we have people who are eager to shoot, who are talkative, and who genuinely want to go in depth about who we are and what we do.

Despite this week being hectic I’m so happy to have met Neel and spent time getting to know him, even just for a bit, because he really reminded me about how much photography/shooting puts me at ease and makes me feel calm (more often than not haha).

We definitely spent more time talking than we did shooting, but when we did shoot we walked around both inside and outside of his condo, and even went down the common/event space area of the building- which believe you me, in this building is insanely beautiful!- using all natural light to create a few different portraits of him that he could use for his audition and even general self-promotion.

See a few photos from our shoot down below