Winter is coming.... GBP Creative Photography and Video

Well, it's mid-November, so whether you're ready for it or not, winter is upon us....

We thought instead of fighting it we'd take a minute to reminisce about all the awesome that comes along with winter...and what better way to do it, than look back at one of our favourite assignments from last February.

We had a client from oversees, come to the Yukon wanting to experience some truly "northern" experiences...So, what better way than to take a Helicopter ride through the mountains, followed by ice climbing at the oh-so-awesome Equinox, dog sledding at Muktuk, and some Rendezvous festivities...

These are a few of our favourite shots, and we're hoping that they'll help you stop fighting the winter, and get pumped for all the fun stuff that can come out of it...

Yukon Beer Shoot? Yes please... GBP Creative Photography and Video

So if you know either of us, it will come as no surprise to you that there are a few things in life that we love and never want to go without:

1. Coffee.  This is the actual fuel that keeps us moving, and it's dark, delicious aroma wakes us up every single morning

2. Photography.  Sharp cheddar warning: We love what we do guys. Like we seriously stop every few months and think to ourselves: "Wholly crap, we actually are getting to do this for a living!"  Then we high five it out and get back to work.

3. Beer.  Good beer.  Heck, it's one of the reasons that Gary moved up to the Yukon in the first place-he saw a sweet little Northern city that had good coffee, a good cultural scene and an amazing local brewery...what more could you want!?

Needless to say, when one of our favourite local businesses,Yukon Brewing, asked us to do some commercial work for them we were ALL IN.

So although they're killin' it here in the Yukon, Yukon Brewing has also spread out to other places in Canada over the years, and they were looking to do a specific ad for a wine festival happening in Alberta this fall.

A beer ad in a wine festival publication?  OH YEAH...you'll see why below.

So, the marketing team came to us with a pretty nailed down concept already, and we had to make the execution happen.  Luckily we had a great team together, and were able to find a perfect little 'bar' spot to set up shop for the afternoon to get a series ready for them to choose from.

Below is the final image, followed by the fully designed edition which hit the wine festival this fall...

Because it's true, Man simply cannot live on wine alone...

Headshot station...GBP Creative Photography and Video

Lookin' good, and feelin' great...That's what a head shot should make people think of...and we think our latest client fits that description perfectly.

Headshots are a great way to show off your personality and professionalism-and with all of the use of web content and social media these days, having a good quality photo (or even video as we're starting to do for some clients), can go a long way...

If you're interested in the benefits of head shots and getting some new images for your business give us a shout!

Info@garybremner.com

Moustache madness...A unique family shoot: GBP Creative Photography and Video

You know who's awesome? Our clients...

Why? Because sometimes they show up for a family shoot with a bag of moustaches....

Family portraits-GBP Creative Photography and Video

You know what's rad? When a single conversation can immediately transport you back in time to when you were a kid.

This is what happened to me (Bri) recently at one of our shoots....

It's always sweet to get to know our different clients and find out what they're into and how they spend their time...and it was as we were doing that during this particular shoot,  that I found out just how much I had in common with a 2nd grader...

"What oh what could you possibly have in common!?" you ask? One word: Playmobil.

That's right...we spent a solid 30 minutes at least listing off what collections we have, where we got them, and which were our favorites...I think the parents and Gary were talking about something else at some point, but neither of us noticed because we were busy in deep conversation...he has the PIRATE SHIP PEOPLE!!!

But maybe i've digressed...photos anyone??

Family Farm-GBP Creative Photography and Video

Sweet Family who's been with us since the early days of GBP + Epic family farm with big equipment, giant sprinklers and horses = One awesome family photo shoot.

Thanks to Deanna, Greg and Hayden for contenting to be oh-so-rad to work with!

Really? You'll let me shoot it? How we got the shot... GBP Creative Boeing 737 500 Photoshoot

So one of our favourite clients is the Yukon's very own, Air North. If you haven't flown with them yet, do yourselves a favour and just book a trip to anywhere they fly...they have CHEESECAKE AND COOKIES PEOPLE!

Last year around this time, we were finishing up a shoot of their new flight attendant uniforms and I had mentioned to Christopher, the art director, that it would be super rad to park their flagship aircraft out on the tarmac in front of the mountains and make a really cool image.

They'll never go for it...

A few days later, Christopher sent me an email saying that it was a go... he said we could have the aircraft for a few hours after their last flight, and gave me a few date options. After I finished my little celebration dance in front of the computer, I started thinking about the logistics of trying to get this set up with our wonderfully unpredictable weather.

Ok giant plane, Yukon sky to show off our awesomeness here...That shouldn't be hard right!? Well, it turns out that it takes a bunch of people, a bunch of time to actually get the aircraft out there in place, and a lot of time for us, with all of our gear setup and ready to go, so to say the least, not something that we could just make happen at the drop of a hat any given night when the the sky decided to clear... The best we could do is just decide to pick a night and hope for the best.

So we picked a date, I lined up the help I was going to need, and Christopher sorted out the details on the Air North side.

Holy crap, I had a multi-million dollar aircraft at my disposal to photograph however I wanted too!

What do the hell do I do?!

I figured I better start trolling the internet for inspiration.... turns out, there are not too many cool photos of Airliner type aircrafts out there (except from the manufacturers).... fighter jets, ya, but nothing like what I was thinking. So I ended up finding inspiration for some really cool luxury car photographs, particularly from

Tim Wallace's

work. In the end, I figured what I wanted to do was to light the whole aircraft in sections, and then do a mother of a composite, and piece it all back together with the lovely Yukon Scenery in the background. I put together a quick mock up of the shot so I had a rough idea of how I wanted to position the aircraft... cause it's not like a car that you can just hop in and move if its not quite in the right spot...

Mmm Mockups....

Ok I had a plan!

So the night came to shoot the aircraft.... the weather was nice and we had a few hour window starting around 10:30pm to get everything we needed. So the plan was to position the aircraft, find my angle, get some base shots while the sun was on the mountains and then start lighting the plane. Everything went quite smooth and the night turned out to be beautiful to boot! We spent 2hours making over 500 images of lighting the plane from every possible angle we could think of!

Wish I would have known I wouldn't use a single one of them...

It turned out that the ambient light from the sun when we got there was so beautiful that it looked way better than what I was going to piece together in photoshop anyways! SO I used one of the first frames we took! The only downside to this way nicer than expected evening, was that the sky was almost completely cloudless. As it turns out, when making a dramatic picture, blue sky kinda blows...

Blue sky=kinda boring

Mission: Find a better sky.

This wasnt too hard, as a few weeks later we were coming back into town from a different shoot (so I actually had a camera with me) and I looked up to see the exact sky I was hoping for...so I pulled over and took a few frames on the side of the highway...Boom, I had my sky!

Purple Sky!!

Ok here's where things became a bit tough.... as this was a personal project, meaning no actual solid deadline, it took me quite a while to actually get to the processing part as our other work projects never really slowed down long enough for us to have 'personal project' time. (whatever that is....)  Then there was the fact, that after all of that, I couldn't decide on a specific way I wanted it to look, so with all of those things combined, it led to letting the project sit on the back burner for the enitre winter...

Insert busy, snowy season here.

1 year later.....

Ok back into it...We gotta finish this plane shot!  Christopher wrote us on Twitter!

So, the first thing I did was extract the plane from the image so I could maipulate it cleanly with out affecting the background.

Ohhh naked plane....

Then I took my purple sky photo, and overlapped the tarmac ground layer onto the image.

BOOM tarmac.

Then I brought back in the mountains by isolating them with a layer mask so they could be edited separately.

Don't forget them mountains...

After sprucing up the plane image a bit, accentuating it's shine with some dodging and burning I added the plane layer back on.

We're getting there...

Next in order to finalize the image, I worked some more photoshop and lightroom shinaz (that's business talk for tweaking perspective, adjusting highlights and shadows, adjusting clarity and desaturation, etc.) in order to really make the plane pop and the sky have even more contrast to get that really dramatic feel....and here you have, one year later, our Air North Boeing 737 500 shot!

HUGE thanks again to Air North and everyone who helped us out that night with the photo shoot. It was one of our favourite collaborations to date...

Conrad Portrait Session-GBP Creative Photography and Video

Alright, as promised, we have session two of our portraits with Megan Jensen to share with you today, and we are super stoked to see what you guys think!

So this portrait session was particularly special to Megan and her family, and we were SO honoured to have been able to do this for her....we won't bore you with the story of how it took us THREE attempts of driving out to Carcross to make it happen! (hints: road construction, then crazy rain storm, then third time was a charm!)

But the reason it was so important for us to get out to an area known as Conrad, just past Carcross is because it has such significance to Megan and her family.  On the way out there, Megan told us the entire story of how she was actually the first in her family in over 90 years to take part in a traditional coming of age ceremony where she stayed out at Conrad alone in her own camp for five days, receiving visits from various women in her family and community.  It was absolutely fascinating learning about all of the teachings she received while she was out there, and to see her go through the emotions of returning to that spot and sharing her stories with us.

We learned more in that one afternoon with Megan than we have from reading many-a-books! She has an incredible gift of sharing her family's traditions and knowledge, and so when we got to Conrad to do the shoot and we had Megan do her traditional drumming on the shore, it was an incredibly powerful experience.

Speaking of her drumming, I woke up the next morning singing her songs...they were stuck in my head for days! I unfortunately didn't sound nearly as good as she did...

So we wanted to share these images and send along another huge congratulations to Megan and her family for her recent graduation and thank you guys for having us be a part of such an incredibly special time in your lives.

It was truly an honour.

Prom Dress Portraits-GBP Creative Photography and Video

So this is the time of year when hundreds of Yukon grade 12 students are getting ready to finish up their high school career and jump out into the world on a variety of adventures, whether that's through more school, working, or travelling...

But first, there is graduation. And there is prom.  Time to celebrate all of the hard work that went into getting them to where they are at...We'd like to say we remember exactly how that feels, but we're trying not to think about the fact it's been a while since we were both in their shoes....Like we don't even want to do the math...

BUT that's not the point! The point is to celebrate all of these young adults that are about to embark on the next phase of their lives...and we got to work with one exceptional young lady that fits into this category recently as her mom gave her some portrait sessions with us as a grad gift.

So this is part one of that series...the "Lookin' like a hollywood bombshell" half! 

For this shoot, we really wanted to focus in on the glamour of her dress, hair, makeup and energy, so we decided to go with a nice, simple studio environment with a bit darker of a backdrop to contrast with the tones of her dress.

We could not have asked for a better model...you looked stunning Megan! 

Maternity Portraits-GBP Creative Photography and Video

Baby madness!!

Anyone else notice there's a lot of new families starting here in the Yukon? Because we sure have...

We've been getting a ton of requests for maternity portrait sessions lately, which are always fun to shoot-especially when it's for the couple's first child...

We don't have any kids, unless you count our 'fur child' Bill Murray (he's a newfoundlander with an attitude), but we feel like we have learned a ton about what to expect if we ever do from our clients...they are always happy to share their nervous laughter when they are navigating through what to expect with their first child, and then the tales of both the highs and lows of the parenting process once they've met the new family member.

It's one of the best parts of these jobs, getting to know how each family works together...

These particular soon-to-be parents were top notch.  Great sense of humours, super easy to work with, and just so happened to have epic natural light in their home (Huge win for GBP!)

We'll be getting to meet their newest addition in just a few weeks too!