I had the pleasure of accompanying the rest of StillMotion crew to Toni and Chris’ wedding this Saturday. For the first time I came out from the start of the day, which for Toni was about 7:00am. She had a busy start to her morning and there was so much I was able to help with. By assisting Toni and her family it allowed the rest of the crew to focus on being as creative as possible. As you can see by the same day edit, they got some amazing shots and footage.
Chris and Toni had a high-energy wedding with a large bridal party, huge guest list, 2 bands, 2 priests and a traditional Macedonian dance to top it off! The day started off early and the agenda was filled with activities and we were on a tight schedule. It was interesting to help make sure all the particulars are covered, the fine details are not missed, and liaise with other vendors so that Toni and Chris can sit back and enjoy their wedding day without having to worry about the logistics.
I’ve always loved event planning in the past. Although it can be stressful at times, it’s worth it to know they were able to just focus on each other and getting married. Thanks Toni and Chris for including me in your wedding day. You are wonderful and your enthusiasm made it a pleasure to work with you.
On Saturday, I had the pleasure of shooting Natalie and Mike, and awesome couple whose wedding was at a historical site in Vineland, ON.
I’ve been looking forward to their wedding so much since we first met just over a year ago. It seemed that right from the get-go, they put all their trust in me, knowing that the more freedom I had, the more amazing their photos (and day) would be.
Their day was quite unique. The girls had a yoga session in the morning to relax themselves, and then they went to put some final touches into their reception decorations. After they were all dressed and done up, they drove to the chapel in a mustang convertible, giving Natalie’s hair a good dose of adventure. She looked awesome.
But the best part of the day for me was when Natalie and Mike crawled into the waterfall. It was 15 minutes before the reception was to start, and Natalie commented on how refreshing the water looked. Next thing I knew, we were all in the water doing an “on-the-wedding-day” trash the dress shoot!
So a big thanks goes out to Natalie and Mike for being so awesome, and to Cyndal as well, who was a great help in general (she came out and assisted me with some photo related things).
We are so fortunate to be surrounded day in and day out with so much positive energy, so much anticipation and excitement, and so much love and caring. It is rather ironic, and gratifyingly so, to put together a demo with a song about no more happy endings.
Weddings can be somewhat of uncertain events with so many details to plan and not enough time to go around. As it all starts to come together and the big day approaches, the stress level often rises and we wonder if everything will come together the way it has been dreamed about for years (well at least for the brides…) I view this piece as being very inspirational- a celebration of so many happy endings.
When we set out to create this compilation of our work, we really weren’t sure what to expect. What we ended up with was much more than we could have imagined.
Last weekend we had the honor of shooting Ellie and Kevin’s wedding. It was a beautiful event decorated to the nines. Everything was pulled together so well and believe it or not, Ellie and Kevin had the first wedding I’d EVER attended that ran on time!
I would attribute the majority of the aforementioned aspects of the wedding to the amazing coordinator Jodi Gagne from Simply Perfect Events. Jodi was efficient, easy to work with, easy going, yet firm and absolutely wonderful . Everything went off smoothly and without a hitch and most importantly she was able to accommodate all of our special needs on the wedding day.
We’ve traveled the world shooting weddings and have worked with many many vendors, and I would absolutely in a heart beat recommend Jodi to every single one of our brides and all of the brides who read our blog, If you want your wedding day to look amazing and feel first rate, please give Jodi a call as I’m sure she would be more than happy to accommodate any of your wedding day needs.
On the weekend, I had the pleasure of running a workshop at Pikto, a print lab in the Distillery District of Toronto.
My voice is still a little hoarse… speaking from 10 to 5 for two days straight is no easy task, but it was fun like you wouldn’t believe.
I had a class of 13, all of whom had different levels of experience - from 30 years of film background to freshly-out-of-school enthusiasm. The entire group was a blast. They were totally involved, asking questions every 2 minutes! They probably talked more than I did! So awesome.
John also came as a guest speaker to discuss some ideas about business development. He was a big hit - so big, that he was invited to develop and run a marketing related workshop with Pikto.
I wanted to send out a big thanks to Michelle from Pikto who was a huge help throughout the weekend. From getting us all coffee to being an awesome photo assistant, she really went out of her way for us. I also wanted to thank Jaime, Sandy, Milena and Sam for coming out and modeling for our shoot in the alleys. Jaime, as most of you know, got married last July. Sandy is due to marry Mark in about a month, and Sam & Milena are still about a year away.
Here are a few shots from Sunday. Milena wore her mom’s wedding dress, which I thought was the COOLEST THING EVER!! Oh, and you’ll notice that Sandy’s photos have a bit of a different spin… but everyone has different ways of dealing with wedding stress.
Unlike most brides, Ellie found us about a month before her wedding. They had seen much of our work both online and in the theater, so they felt they had a pretty good idea of what to expect from their SDE. With relatively little time to prepare, we got to know them quite quickly and shot their love story just a week later while going over all of their wedding details.
Their day flowed very smoothly and, for the first time in the history of StillMotion weddings, everything ran either on time or early. This was, in no small part, due to the tremendous help of their coordinator, Jodi Gagne from Simply Perfect Events (more on her coming soon).
It was truly a team effort with this one as myself, Mike, and Konrad all had our hands on both the shooting and editing throughout the day.
The day after their wedding we received this wonderful email from Ellie which really speaks to how much of an impact the SDE can have:
“I must thank you all again for an amazing effort and job yesterday. It’s incredible how hard you guys work and what you’re able to pull off. It really is unbelievable. All of our friends and family were blown away by the video - I know this is a regular thing for you to witness and we had prepared ourselves for an amazing reaction, but you never really can prepare yourself for it. It was pretty surreal…. ”
Thank you to Ellie and Kevin for letting us be a part of such a wonderful day.
I’m in the studio on my own today, believe it or not everyone else has the day off! After 2 weeks of solid work I might add! It’s a little odd being here without the usual hustle and bustle. On the plus side, I can kick back in the gallery and listen to music. Today I’m listening to Copeland, The Beautiful South and Stars! On an unrelated note I know that our cinema guys have something REALLY super super cool coming down the pipe that should be making it’s debut soon. I snuck a copy and threw it on facebook so if you are a member of our facebook group you’ll get a sneak peak. I also have another really awesome project that will go live SOON! It’s pretty cool. We’re just ironing out the kinks and adding some glam, expect to get your invites mid month.
Anyway, I’ll get to the point! I’m looking to speak to some wedding coordinators based out of Palo Alto, Scottsdale, LA/SoCal, Britain and Vancouver. If anyone would like to suggest people they’ve worked with, or if you’re one yourself.. hit me up. My email is johnATstillmotion.ca
This weekend I get to shoot Rhonda and Brent’s wedding who by the way are fellow Stars fans! Woohoo! Here are some of my images from their e-session:
As many of you know, John, Michael, Patrick and I flew to London this April for a wedding. After several weeks of editing, here are some images that John and I put together.
Someone… ahem… has been hogging the blog a little (you know who you are), but finally I’m getting a little blog control.
Here are some of our favourites from Johanna and David’s wedding.
It threatened to rain all day yesterday! We always monitor the weather heavily the day before a wedding to plan for every contingency. Thankfully it held off and we managed to get some stunning imagery and a REALLY awesome SDE.
When we first met Julia and Phil I was pretty sure they’d be quiet and conservative, and I wasn’t sure how far we’d be able to push them, which enables us to create such interesting art. I don’t think I’ve ever been proved quite as wrong as I was yesterday! I shot Julia with Patrick and Tony in the Morning while Amina and Mike worked at the Barbers Shop with Phil. Julia and Phil are racers (like for real!) and own a sporty little Alfa Romeo. I got to drive stall it, so Julia hopped behind the wheel in her wedding dress and we took it out for a spin! What fun, Patrick was running full pelt behind the car in his steadicam suit while Julia drove off down the street..! I was extremely surprised he managed to get such amazingly smooth steadicamtastic goodness. While I was busy driving around Mississauga with Julia, Amina took the guys to a fairly decent size river, and in true StillMotion style, made them stand in the middle of it. Her shots are beautiful.
The ceremony was gorgeous and the reception was wild. Despite some concerns of rain and getting a little wet, we still managed to pull off a heck of a SDE.
-John
::Edit
I would like to send out a special thanks to Gino at Good Vibrations. The plan was to have confetti streamers for Julia + Phil’s first dance. I had the shot visualized and had a perfect place for it to fit into the SDE. When we arrived however, there was some concern about the height of the chandelier directly above the dance floor. We were about to save the confetti for later but Gino was confident he could pull it off and he didn’t disappoint. The result has got to be my fav shot in the whole SDE
Well Jess and Ryan, the wait is finally over and you get to see your SDE again
What a crazy weekend it was. On Saturday I had to climb through a window in a clothing factory to get into our photo-session location. We had the plant manager on the phone, but he was in another city at the time and the workers inside couldn’t hear us over the noise of the machines. After seeing some of the finished photos from Chase and Betsy’s wedding the previous weekend (aren’t you going to share those with everybody John???), Jess and Ryan really put the pressure on us to find an equally cool spot to shoot and we couldn’t let this chance pass by.
After showing their SDE around 11PM, I headed back to the studio and got ready to fly out at 5am the next morning for Anita and Sanders wedding that day. While I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to shoot two weddings, in two days, in two countries- Anita and Sander were just so excited that we had to find a way to make it work. A special thanks to Casey from Mind|Castle Studios for flying down to Cali ahead of time with Michael just in case I didn’t make it in time. Not only is their work very tight, but Casey was a very cool guy to work with. Watch out for a rather quirky video and polaroid day after shoot coming shorty.
Here is the SDE from Jess and Ryan’s wedding on Saturday. Thanks again for having us and a special thanks to Ryan for laying down your white Hugo Boss suit in the name of great imagery. For those who are curious, John got up at 5am the day of the wedding to shoot that sunrise.
On the weekend, I had the pleasure of running a workshop at 
