George!
I first met George when he was still tucked safely in his Mom, Sabrina’s belly during her maternity shoot.
I first met Sabrina over four years ago when she reached out to me on Instagram wanting to connect and talk about the possibility of headshots for an upcoming event.
Since that first meeting at a coffee shop in Yaletown where Sabrina actually took my photo over four years ago, we have stayed in touch. I shot the co-working space Sabrina opened when the paint was still fresh on the walls. Those images went on to be published in Grey Magazine. The co-working space is called L’Atelier located in Gastown and it’s beautiful.
When Sabrina got engaged to her now-husband Francis she reached out to me for an engagement shoot. We met on a grey day and made some great images with early cherry blossoms and some in the rose garden at Stanley Park.
We have stayed in touch through the past few years in various different ways, sometimes through photography, sometimes through co-working events or sometimes through just reaching out.
I have a side hustle over at @freeadmission on Instagram where I feature continuous line drawings of my photographs. I wanted to try to transfer one of those drawings onto vinyl so I reached out to Sabrina to see if she would be willing to feature the vinyl drawing at L’Atelier.
She said Yes! So away I went to create the vinyl after I showed her my library and let her choose the image. Sabrina chose an analog photo on a coffee table to be applied and featured outside of L’Atelier’s telephone room.
Over time my photography has evolved from shooting fashion to shooting portraits and now doing documentary photography for families. I am a documentary photographer at heart, I started to use my camera to document my world when I was 12 so this is a natural transition for me. It’s kind of like coming home.
I took a course over the holidays with Creative Live and learned about the in’s and out’s of family documentary photography and then I got myself a real-life mentor.
My real-life mentor suggested I get a family that I can follow and shoot once a week.
I reached out to Sabrina because by now her beautiful baby boy was born.
She said yes and we started shooting February 3, 2020, and each week we connected to capture a different event in their lives. George is such a happy baby, he’s a go-anywhere and has fun kinda little dude and it has been such a joy watching him grow. My highlight was taking him to the playground for the first time, he had so much fun and you can see him thinking about things, you can see his curiosity blooming and his personality too.
I asked Sabrina to share her thoughts with me about having this period of time with her family documented.
And here is what she shared,
‘I think it was an awesome way to bond with you as a photographer plus I got really nice keepsakes of a world that doesn’t exist anymore. Going to cafés, playgrounds, science world is not possible right now but I have photos to remind me how it was like and hope that one day it will be like this again.’
‘I felt like it deepened our friendship.’
With COVID 19 we have suspended this project, I was able to shoot with Sabrina and George for George’s 1’st birthday and again to create content for Sabrina’s blog. Catch her weekly video’s here, she’s a powerhouse and is putting a lot of time into this channel and it’s loaded with some very helpful tips.
