industrial photography

Industrial Portraiture Adventures


Admittedly, when I boarded on my first Airnorth flight in 2 years to head to Vancouver for a job, I did not expect I’d be standing approximately 130 feet underground just a few days later…

Did I deep breathe the entire walk down here? Yes, yes I did.

This is yet another reason I love this crazy job of ours…every week is an adventure, and this past month, that adventure took the GBP Team to two of Pomerleau’s latest projects in Vancouver, creating environmental portraits of their crews on the job! 

The Superintendent’s daily commute to work.

Industrial sites are always incredible to photograph, not only because they’re visually impressive, but also as it’s fascinating to learn just how much detail, planning, and person hours go into the structures and systems that we use, and likely take for granted, every single day.

In this case we were able to work with the teams building a new outfall pipeline for waste water, and seeing the construction that is involved in laying 200-580 meter long tunnels. Impressive to say the least!

From tug boats, to tunnels, to cranes and road building techniques…it was a whirlwind!
Here are a few of the images we created, and a few BTS along the way. A HUGE thanks to the Pomerleau crew’s we worked with. You guys were so informative and enthusiastic..we can’t wait to come back again!

And a little BTS for ya…

Photo 1: The boys loading all the gear while I take photos.

Photo 2: Gary and I had differing reactions to when I dared to question Siri and got us lost trying to get to our hotel. NEVER QUESTION SIRI.

Photo 3: As is the custom when you haven’t left home in 2 years, we pac-manned our way through the city in our down time. This is Dinner #2 of the evening

Photo 4: In depths! 130 feet underground in a tunnel!

Photo 5: Our boy Stu doing his best to shelter our gear during a sudden Vancouver downpour (luckily only lasted about 5 min)

Photo 6: When it rains…shelter under the bridge and keep it movin’

And so it begins...Hello 2021!

New year…SAME US! (just slightly more grizzled…)

Last year was a DOOZY to say the least, and we’re certainly not naive enough to think that a change in calendar year is going to take away all the hardships. HOWEVER, that being said, we do know that even a perceived fresh start can go a long way…

It’s also a great opportunity to simply take breath and reflect on what WAS good last year. As challenging as it was, there were some pretty great moments too.

We had the privilege of working with an incredible group of clients last year. As much as we were able to help them reach their goals and complete their projects, they also helped us…we were able to keep this family run business up and running throughout a global pandemic and that was all because we have the best community and clients we could ever ask for who believed in us, who trusted us with their visions, and let us get creative.

Looking back over our work this year, a few things stuck out to us.

First, it was a year of composites! As we had to ensure we had safe spacing between people, one of the most efficient ways we could still get teams together was to actually photograph everyone separately and then bring them together in post production! We have always loved composite work, but it just became even more practical this year as a way to keep people safe.

Secondly…our small business community! What an absolute roller coaster of a year for so many small business owners. We were absolutely honoured to be able to work with many of them as they found new and innovative ways to continue to serve their clients-whether that was moving their products and services online, or ensuring new PPE standards were in place to keep both staff and employees safe. We are so damn proud of every single one of them for making it through this crazy year.

And finally…the thing that always gets us through our hard times…a sense of humour. Without it, we wouldn’t have made it. Thanks to everyone who shared a laugh with us either in front of the camera, or behind the scenes as part of our crew.

So thank you to all we worked with over the year, and we absolutely can’t wait to see what adventures the new year brings…although if it was a little less intense, we wouldn’t be mad about it… ;)

The people behind the city...Photo Library update!

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We’ve mentioned before that photo libraries are one of our favourite ways to create content for clients. Instead of one-off photo shoots as things come up over time, photo libraries are a way to purposefully create a library of personalized stock images that marketing and communications teams can then pull from as needed.

A lot of our larger clients are now turning towards these libraries as it can help communications teams pull content easily and efficiently in order to not only plan ahead for campaigns, but also respond when an event comes up throughout the year that they need content for.

We recently did an update on some of the City of Whitehorse departmental photography, and as always, had so much fun working with all of the crews. Always welcoming to us hauling our gear into their offices, or capturing them out on a job site no matter the weather-just a bunch of pros!


Northern Solar

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Not everyone knows this, but Gary’s former career before he took the leap and started GBP, was actually as a Journeyman Electrician. He had spent years before that installing communication towers throughout western Canada, and then when he moved to the Yukon, he switched gears into the electrical trade.

Specifically, he wanted be an electrician so he could specialize in renewable energies, and in particular the growing field of solar.

So needless to say, now over 10 years later, when we were able to team up with Solvest, a northern Canadian based solar company, to create some new imagery for them, Gary was pretty stoked!

We’ve actually had our eye on the Solvest team for quite a while. They’re a super cool company that not only specializes in residential, commercial and industrial solar installs, but also is working on northern food security issues through their Cropbox product, as well as research and consultation.

Part of the reason we love working in industrial settings, and in this case specifically with solar installation, is that Gary feels at home on the work sites. He knows the safety standards, he understands the principals behind the systems, and this allows him a unique perspective and the ability to really know which elements to highlight when photographing both the site and the employees on the job.

On this particular project, he was even able to work along side some of the crew he used to work with as an electrician, just this time, he was behind a camera instead of helping with the install itself!

So on that note, here are a few of the images we got to create of the Old Crow solar project. This project is expected to offset annual diesel consumption by up to 30% for the community! It’s a super unique system, custom to Old Crow as it’s east/west facing to take advantage of the long summer days, generating power at the time of day when people are at home, utilizing it the most!





Turns out birding is awesome...

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Being commercial/industrial photographers, we have gotten to experience a lot over the years in terms of learning about different industries, programs and organizations. That’s one of our favourite things about our job is that we are constantly learning new things and getting to meet the awesome people that make up our community.

BUT one thing I can say that we have never come across before is Birding…until NOW that is!

We are so stoked to be working with Lotteries Yukon and Mosaic Communications on Lotteries’ new “What’s Your Recreation” campaign, which was just launched! Throughout the course of the year, we get to work with Yukoners around the Territory and get portraits of them out doing a variety of recreational activities

And you know what guys? Thanks to Tedd here, our first model of the series, it turns out we learned Birding is CRAZY COOL.

Like did you know Woodpeckers tongues are so long, they actually wrap around their entire skull to help protect their brains from concussions!?

LOOK AT THIS DIAGRAM IT’S INSANE:

And that’s just the start of it…Immature Eagles have longer wings than adults because they act like “training wheels” and the Arctic Tern (which we do get here in the Yukon) has the longest migration of any animal in the world!

BIRDS! Fascinating creatures…

All this to say, my world view on birds has been changed. I now get excited when I hear them. I’ve caught the birding bug….

Huge thanks to the awesome team behind this exciting campaign! It’s always so awesome to see our images “out in the wild” with design and we are so excited to see what else we get to capture along the way!


A Legacy Portrait Project: Mining in the Yukon

It's Mining and Geology week here in the Yukon, and so we wanted to take the time to share one of our latest projects with the Yukon Chamber of Mines, the "Our Yukon, in it Together" Legacy portrait series

It was such a great experience getting to work with such a diverse group of people over the past few months, learning about their experience in the Mining industry, or about how the industry supports their organizations and communities. 

From the on the Geologists working on site, to the aviation industry, to the hospitals and communities than benefit from fundraising efforts.... We were so happy with how the portrait series came together to showcase the various faces and experiences behind the industry.

For more info on the campaign, check out http://www.ouryukon.ca/ , and to find out more about what is happening this week, go to:  http://www.yukonminingweek.ca/ 

And finally, a huge thank you to all of the community members who were a part of this series:

1) Joella Hogan, First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun

2) Al Doherty, Exploration Geologist

3) Wendy Tayler, Alkan Air and Kaetlynn Mitchell

4) Brad Thrall, Alexco Resource Corp.

5) Samson Hartland, Yukon Chamber of Mines (and his eldest daughter Cadence). 

6) Mike Burke, Senior Geologist

7) Karen Barnes, President of Yukon College,

8) Karen Forward, Yukon Hospital Foundation

9) Josh Clark, Whitehorse, Yukon

10) Shelagh Rowles, Centre for Northern Innovation in Mining, Yukon College

Showcase your company: Creating a photo library

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One of the most popular services we offer our clients, is creating photo libraries for them.

In order to stay current and relevant with online marketing, one of the most beneficial things for a company to do is to have a library of images that they can pull from on any given day. 

So instead of having a few standard shots that are used throughout different platforms, many of our clients instead are asking us to do a series of images, so that they have more to utilize over a longer period of time. In this way, they have a larger variety of media to choose from, and can therefore react to current events, or simply have better control over what media and images are highlighted over time.

We love this type of assignment as it really relies on our ability to shoot a variety of different scenarios and locations, but still retain a consistent look/feel for the client so their media is diverse but also cohesive all at the same time.  Sounds like a challenge!? We'll take it...

Today we thought we'd share a few examples from a recent photo library we created with the City of Whitehorse. It was so fun over the course of a few months to work with such a large variety of departments, in order to showcase the variety of work the employees do. From winter to summer, office work to heavy machinery, we got to highlight it all. 

If this is something you're interested in more of, give us a shout at info@gbpcreative.ca and we can chat about how a photo library might be useful for you!