I had the pleasure of speaking at Wed By Hand again this year and had a wonderful time!

Wed By Hand is a fabulous Ottawa based Indie Wedding Show, which took place at the Glebe Community Centre on the 11th of February, 2012.  The show features lots of DIY vendors, DIY workshops and just a lot of super unique ideas to plan your wedding.

I spoke about ‘Engaging  your Engagement Photos’  I had lots of ideas to share, from Guestbooks, to framed collages, to Table Numbers to a Movie Poster - Here’s a peek at the workshop itself

Thanks to the wonderful Liz Bradley of Elizabeth & Jane Photography for taking the wonderful photos - Liz you are pure awesomeness!

Featured on Wed By Hand’s Blog

The Magnum Photo Workshop at Contact 2010 is now accepting applications:

MAGNUM PHOTOS WORKSHOP
Participate in an intimate five day shooting workshop with your choice of one of five Magnum Photographers: Stuart Franklin, Constantine Manos, Alec Soth, Chris Steele-Perkins and Alex Webb with Rebecca Norris Webb. In addition to the dynamic within each workshop, focusing on story formation, visual literacy, and personal vision, there will also be ample informal time for cross pollination of viewpoints and discussion with all participants. Tuition: $1300 USD

MAGNUM IN MOTION WORKSHOP
Designed for intermediate multimedia producers, the Magnum in Motion workshop aims at enhancing photographers’ multimedia storytelling skills. The goal of the workshop is for each participant to produce a personal and professional multimedia essay and/or to refine an existing essay. In addition to creating a unique story under the guidance of Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang and MIM’s Producer Adrian Kelterborn, participants will gain insight into the history and modus operandi of Magnum in Motion. Tuition: $1600 USD.

Monday May 3 – Friday May 7, 2010
Ryerson University
Application Deadline: March 30, 2010

Get all details here

Hi everyone! How is everyone doing? I’m finally resurfacing after a whole 2 weeks of being sick - I guess I got hit pretty hard this time with the flu/cold/fever the whole sha-bang!  But I’m on the road to recovery, thank you to all those who have been sending me love-mails and their well wishes, asking how I’ve been doing all this time.

There’s something I’ve been dying to blog about but just didn’t have the energy to do it earlier - I was lucky enough to attend the first ever STARFISH WEDDING WORKSHOP! What a workshop I tell you!  I found out about it by visiting Starfish’s website and was totally intrigued by  it so I thought, I’d sign up for it….I know I know you guys must be thinking I’m nuts to sign up for a Wedding Workshop when I’m not even getting married…but I thought this was the perfect way to learn about all the planning that is involved and try to see things from a bride’s perspective - I do deal with them on a daily basis and I often spend a lot of time with my brides just going over the wedding plans, working out with timelines, and vendor referrals and such.

So I registered for the workshop, and I am totally all praise about everything Starfish related. From the moment I sent Hannah…oh wait, I completely forgot to introduce the two shining stars of Starfish! Samantha Moonsammy and Hannah Schatz! These two fabulous ladies are phenomenal at what they do! I’ve had the honour of attending a few of their events and I can tell you that they don’t miss any details and they are super creative, artistic, helpful, organized and completely in control of all situations!   So I send Hannah an email, letting her know I’d like to register and within a few hours I get such a wonderful response, Hannah was super excited for me being a part of this workshop and she left out no words to celebrate this! I was already excited about this workshop..but now I couldn’t wait to meet Hannah and Sam!

Just to keep things organized and composed (because, otherwise my thoughts go all over the place!) I’ll break the rest of the description into parts.

Arrival:

On the day of the workshop, I was greeted by the staff of the Arc Hotel!! Gorgeous, Gorgeous Hotel! and I was ushered upstairs to the 2nd floor - at the door I was greeted by Hannah who recognized me instantly and helped me get seated and comfortable. I got a chance to chit chat a little bit with Sam and Hannah and I could tell they were just ecstatic to have everyone there. Around the room they had different stations set up, to give brides ideas for their weddings - really nice! They also had lots of goodies for each one of the attendees, which included a Cherry Cupcake from Little Cakes, Starfish Waterbottles, samples and lots more!

The Workshop:

The workshop started and I was totally blown away with all the information that Sam and Hannah had prepared. They covered everything, from budgets to bride personalities, to design ideas, to time management, and even a practice round of ‘walking down the isle and bouquet toss’ - they left nothing out! (All the stunning bouquets were creations of  Ottawa Flowers!) Everything was extremely interactive and I could tell the brides were totally enjoying this! heck I was enjoying it so much hehehe!!

On-site Demonstrations:

We were also lucky enough to have someone from Bacardi come in and give everyone tips on drinks at the weddings and also taught us all how to make Mojitos! (in my case a Virgin Mojito) (can’t stop saying Mojitos!!!) lolll Loved it!  A second presentation was made by the lovely Evis and Danielle of Holtz Spa. They gave in-house demos on updo’s and different hair-styles, as well as giving everyone tips on what products to use, what to use when, what to avoid - all to make sure that your hair and make-up are top notch on your wedding day.

Speed Networking:

The workshop ended with a Speed Networking Session - Just fantastic! It gave all the brides to speak to different vendors in the industry, one-on-one and ask any questions they had - basically gave the brides and vendors a chance to meet in person.  A special shout-out to all the wonderful vendors which come highly recommended by Starfish:

Sara of Paper Studio - beautiful, beautiful designs, they have such an amazing collection of cards, stationary, everything paper related!

Hana of Wedding Republic - an online personalized gift registry to make all your wedding dreams affordable!

Melanie of m-photography - who has the art to make any woman look like royalty through her lens!!

Lorant of Sixth Sense Catering - wonderful catering company. Excellent food, presentation and service!

Bridget of First Kiss Films - such a beautiful person who really  knows how to capture beauty through her lens! A Filmmaker that specializes in fine art wedding films on 16mm and Super 8mm film.

Suzanne of Wedding Decor - all the displays in the room were her wonderful designs! Definitely worth getting in touch for your wedding!

and

Jessica of Fabulous Cakes - Wow! her cakes are GORGEOUS!!! and I love how she loves creating masterpieces!

and that’s that folks! so if anyone of you, who happen to be engaged and in the process of planning your wedding…don’t hesitate and take this workshop! It will make your life so much easier!  So make sure you go out and register for their next workshop! I’ve included all the details below. Thank you Sam and Hannah for putting together this wonderful experience for all brides-to-be!

I’ll be back soon with more posts…there’s a blog post pile-pile up on my end! too much to blog about, not enough time!

Take care everyone!

XoXo

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.769591&w=425&h=350&fv=]

*If you cannot see the embedded video above, go to this link: http://thelongestday.tv

I had the opportunity to go for the Photography Show in ottawa over the weekend. It was simply fantastic! I went with a few other photographer friends and we had a great time! We attended workshops all day and I thought it would only be fair to rave about them on my site - just to get the word out.

The show was heavily sponsored by ‘Henry’s’ therefore all the workshops were 45min. condensed versions of the 3 hours courses they offer.  This is how my day went:

10:50am - Arrived at the hotel - Parking is free - YAYY!

11:00 - Registered our Cameras & Gear at the entrance

11:05 - A man approached us and asked if we wanted free tickets to the show - YAYYY #2

11:10 - We were inside! Everything went pretty smoothly.  Once inside, we roamed the various stalls they had. Pretty good representation. My friends had a few questions and are nikon users, so we spent the next few minutes there and then decided to head to the workshops.

11:45 - Workshop # 1 - RAW Workflow

Rating: ***** (5 Stars)

The guy who taught this class was great, He was interacting with the audience and just had a whole lot of information to share. Definitely worth the 45 minutes!!

12:45 - Workshop #2 - Working with One Light Source

Rating: ***** (5 Stars)

Again the instructor was great - He involved the audience by getting them to volunteer as ‘The Model,’ ‘The Photographer,’ and ‘The Assistant.’  This was great as it gave the volunteers a chance to learn hands-on and also was a good way to explain the full setup to the audience. I definitely learned a lot in that class.

1:45 - Workshop #3 - Flash Fundamentals

Rating: ***** (5 Stars)

We had the same instructor as we had for ‘Working with One light Source.’  Once again  he was great. He showed us how to use the flash most efficiently - On the camera and off the camera! Fantastic Workshop!

2:45 - Workshop #4 - Posing Techniques

Rating: -***** (-5 Stars)

This was a complete waste of an hour! It was mostly a sales gimic. I learned nothing and the Instructors spent 5 mintues demonstrating posing and 40 minutes talking about how they got into photography and where they have worked (NO WE DONT CARE THAT YOU PHOTOGRAPHED FOR THE SEARS CATALOGUE 50 YEARS AGO).  This was the worst workshop I have ever attended. Very poorly presented!

3:45 - Workshop #5 - Travel Photography

Rating: *** (3 Stars)

This workshop was alright. Nothing phenomenal - but I still learned a few tips and tricks!

4:30 - We are done with the workshops for the day, so we head back into the Display area and I head over to the Canon Counter to try on some lenses -YAYYY #3.  The guys at Canon were great! Answered all my questions! 

5:00 - The Show is over!

—-

Overall I had a fantastic time! Except for that damper of a course ‘Posing Techniques’ - The day was great. I was really looking forward to ‘Posing Techniques’ but oh well! I definitely went home with a lot more knowledge than I came in with, and that’s what counts!

Happy Shooting Everyone!