Casual Corporate Headshot and Portrait Session | Le Butler Marketing

My latest portrait session features Simon Bédard who contacted me for some casual corporate portraits and headshots. The shots he wanted were more lifestyle than corporate really, which fits his style and vibe much more. Currently, he works as a freelancing marketing/branding consultant under Le Butler Marketing, but he’s cooking up some other projects as well.

Look at him rock that turtleneck.

I met Simon waaaaay way back in high school. Collège Durocher Saint-Lambert, just South of the Jacques-Cartier bridge, in the good old Montreal suburbs. Longueuil Beach and beyond. We had only met a few times, and I think our first real conversation was a few months ago. After nine years, I barely recognized Simon with his beard. We ran into each other at the launch of a collaborative art project by our mutual friend Aquil. We kept in touch and eventually he contacted me for these corporate portraits and headshots.

As a marketing and brand consultant, he of course knew the type of headshots he wanted. He even sent me a Powerpoint presentation with the photos of stuff he didn’t want. Now that’s dedication. But don’t worry Simon, I wasn’t planning on lighting you with those nightclub-like green and purple lights ;) He’s the business-type of guy, but he didn’t want those cringey stiff corporate headshots. You know the ones I’m talking about.

Right now, Simon is out in Thailand. Riding elephants. But I’ll be seeing more of him soon! You might have seen my blog post about creating my own mastermind group with freelancers in Montreal a few weeks ago. Well the recruiting is finally done and I've found a lovely mix of artists and entrepreneurs, including this guy here. We’ll see what kind of concoction our brains will create.

Thanks for reading! This week I’m releasing my 10th Postcard from Alex, so make sure you check it out if you aren’t already subscribed!

Proposal Photos on Mont Royal | Stephen & Sidney

Last week, Stephen and Sidney drove up from Vermont for a little fall getaway in Montreal. They parked near Beaver Lake and headed straight for the Kondiaronk Belvedere, the lookout point next to the Mont Royal Chalet. By the time they arrived, the clouds had parted and the sun was shining. From way up there, the view of beautiful downtown Montreal (and all of its construction cranes) was framed by mountain’s trees, still displaying their red and orange and gold. Sidney was just enjoying the view when this happened:

Two weeks prior to the proposal, Stephen contacted me with his plan. My girlfriend and I are driving up to Montreal for a day, I’m going to propose to her, and I'd like you to photograph the moment. We started planning out the details right away. For proposal photos, a public location means it’s easier to hide a photographer in plain sight (yeah and especially if he’s asian, in a tourist spot, and has a camera). We even planned out the walking route. Can you imagine if they had gone up the that steep staircase on the South side of the mountain? Stephen would have run out of breath and passed out between Will you and marry me.

So when the big day finally arrived, Stephen stealthily sent me a picture of himself and Sidney to show me how they were dressed that day. And then he would text me three times: once when leaving the house, once at the border, and once upon parking the car. Of course, not wanting to miss the moment due to an out-of-battery phone or a cross-border reception weirdness, I showed up way early, and checked the clothing of every couple I saw. No no, not creepy at all. Thankfully his phone was working fine. With each text I received, my heart rate went up significantly. The final one came. Here, it read. Game time, let’s do this!

I spotted them from far away with lynx eyes, and stalked them like a cat. Holy crap, it was exciting and awkward and hilarious and wonderful all at the same time. I should have hired a photographer to photograph me sneaking behind them and taking the proposal photos.

Sidney said yes (of course!) and eventually Stephen revealed that the entire thing was documented, to her delight. We followed it up with a mini engagement shoot! Thank you both for the most memorable assignment ever! And thank you Stephen for putting your trust in me!

Fall Trip to the Cabin in Chertsey and to Forêt Ouareau

Just got back from a little getaway at Claudia’s parents’ cabin in Chertsey (Chalet Silva), located about an hour and a half away from Montreal. I went with Claudia and her friend Alice from her urban planning program. Our intention was to relax in the cabin, enjoy the outdoors, and do some work. Two of those things, we did extremely well! We also held ourselves to a strict NO INTERNET policy: NO INTERNET (except maybe to follow the elections results. And to look up recipes. And hey we need to look up the directions to the regional park. And how do we say pineapple in vietnamese again? How old is Justin Trudeau?) A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about our winter trip to the cabin, when the lake was still frozen and a blanket of white covered the trees. Things looked completely different this time. For starters, check out these photos of the Lac Creux across the seasons.

Winter:

Summer:

Fall:

At this point the only logical thing left to do is to return to Lac Creux this spring (and maybe for once I’ll try to find out if there’s any truth to its name).

We then drove through winding roads flanked by colourful trees to arrive at the Parc Régional de la Forêt Ouareau, only 30-minutes away from the cabin. The hike was magical! The forest floor was covered in leaves of green, brown, orange, and red, which was wonderful, but we couldn’t see whether we were stepping on boulders, soil, air, or mud. We were walking through a fall wonderland. A beautiful, shimmering, potentially ankle-shattering, golden fantasy land.

Ambitious kids we were, we decided to go on the trail called the Summit™. When we finally reached the somewhat underwhelming summit, we stopped for a tea & brownie break. Then when continuing our hike we discovered what was the real Summit™. In other words we did what I always do: 1) settle on a spot for lunch, 2) finish eating and continue, 3) find a way prettier spot just ahead. Oh well. Brownies were still good.

Then there was the obligatory it’s fall let’s throw some leaves in the air shot.

By the time we got back, other friends arrived to join the fun for an evening in the spa, followed by rounds of gladiator charades.

It never gets boring here! You can rent it too you know? Check out the Chalet Silva rental page. [3] Thanks for reading!

Need a Great Photoshoot Location in Montreal? Try Breather!

There are tons of interesting photoshoot locations in Montreal. I’m constantly on the lookout for discovering new places to shoot, and every time I come across an interesting spot, I take note of the intersection on my phone. Occasionally, however, I come across a shooting assignment that doesn’t quite fit any of my saved locations, either aesthetically or logistically. Paul Carter reached out to me for promotional portraits for his upcoming website. He’s a musician who plays the bassoon, clarinet, saxophone among other things, so we needed a photoshoot location where he could bring all his instruments. He had a general idea of the mood and look of his portraits - relatively minimal portraits with few distractions or clutter.

Enter Breather! My resourceful friend Ariel introduced me to this great startup. Think of it as an Air BnB for offices and living rooms. Luckily for us, Montreal was one of the first cities to adopt Breather. These curated minimal rooms are quite affordable (10-20$/h) and have lots of natural light. I could see lots of uses for them: meeting clients coming from out of town, working on a large group project, hosting a small event, and of course, photographing a musician.

I used my Sherlock skills to pick the optimal time of day for the photoshoot; I inspected the photos of the room on Breather, looked at the visible buildings through the windows in the photos, and then matched it with Google Street View to find the orientation of the windows of the room. I always have external lights ready to go, but if you’re going in a room that is essentially a beautiful natural light studio, you need to take advantage of it! I'm excited to see how Breather will be doing in the future, hopefully there will be more photogenic locations popping up around Montreal.

Thanks for reading!

Corporate Lifestyle Photos for BMO

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by the Bank of Montreal to take some corporate lifestyle photos. The description of the assignment was simple: take photos of Nagui Hallal, an employee of a BMO locale on Cote-Vertu. Nagui had recently won an award because of his excellent job as the branch manager, and they wanted a portrait of him working, interacting with co-workers, as well as a regular headshot. When you get sent in corporate offices and are asked to take pictures of people interacting together and working, the last thing you want to do is to create photos that look like stock photos. You know which ones I’m talking about. “Man in suit smiling while pointing at presentation.” “Woman behind counter smiling while greeting customer”. Oh god, those are the worst. They’re so bad and awkward that they’re also the best. For me, lifestyle photos need to be authentic and natural - whether they're in a lifestyle corporate setting or in a lifestyle family photo setting. That's why I cringe so much when I see those cheesy staged stock images. So at this point, my number one goal is to deliver the requested images to client. My second very close goal is to do so without creating cheesy stock-like photos. I’m happy to say it was easier than expected! And it was all thanks to my awesome subject. Nagui put everyone at ease, could make everyone laugh in a second (he did my job, really). The minute I met him, I could already see why he was an award-winning manager. He had just come back from vacation, and all employees seemed genuinely happy to see him in the office again. When their staff meeting started, he finally announced why I was there and that he had won the award, and everyone was ecstatic.

Is his infectious energy coming across in these photographs? He looks like the best manager one could have!

Forming my Montreal Mastermind Group

Mastermind groups have been on my mind for a while now. For those not familiar with the concept, it’s essentially a small group of people, usually entrepreneurs, freelancers or independent artists, who meet regularly to discuss their respective craft and business. After listening to a bunch of podcasts and webinars on the topic, I’ve decided to start my own Montreal mastermind group and I’m excited! Why is this important? As a photographer, I don’t have any immediate work colleagues to throw around ideas or discuss issues in my business. Freelancing can be absolutely terrifying. Why not team up with others who are in the same boat? With multiple people tackling a problem at a time, we can grow at a much faster rate than working on our own. I want honest, unbiased advice about my work. I see the value in outside perspectives from professionals in different fields. I know the importance of having an accountability group, to kick each other's asses when we're not meeting our goals, and to celebrate our wins, whether big or small. And I know there are like-minded people out there in Montreal! I posted a long status on Facebook asking if anyone would be interested and had a crazy case of FOCAPFS (Fear Of Crickets After Posting Facebook Status). Thankfully, people were interested, and responses are coming in. My goal now is to form a group of people who 1) can all mutually benefit from one another, 2) who I think would mesh well together, and 3) who have the same expectations in the structure of the group.

Photo intermission for this blog post that is mostly text. Here's an off-topic cup of coffee.

There’s actually a “conventional” structure for mastermind groups. Usually, a 4- or 5- person group meets on a regular interval (could be once a week or once a month), either in person or online, for about an hour. Each meeting starts with a round of updates and wins in our respective businesses, and then the designated person in the hot seat for that meeting presents a problem or topic they want to discuss, while the rest of the group listens and then chimes in to share experiences and advice. Meeting after meeting, the hot seat is passed on to another person, and with time, we learn more and more about each other’s work and grow together.

I have this mastermind fantasy. We all love each other, we help each other out, we develop sustainable ways of doing what we’re passionate about, we find the cure for cancer and we save the world from a zombie apocalypse. Am I too ambitious? I'm sure I’ll find others who share the same vision!

Thanks for reading!

UPDATE: I've found my group! Read more about the 8 members in my mastermind.

AIN Conference in Mont Tremblant

I just got back from photographing the 4-day Applied Improv Network conference in the Laurentians near Mont Tremblant in the Blueberry Lake resorts. This is the second of three posts highlighting the amazing things I saw during the conference. See the first post about Quest of the Dragon King here, the second post about Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra here.

It’s been over a week now but I’m still feeding off the positive vibes and energy from the conference. I came to the Applied Improv Network conference not knowing anything about applied improv and was suddenly immersed in it for 4 days. I can hear the first question already: Alex, what the hell is applied improv? I’m happy to say I can answer this after having photographed 30+ workshops during the conference. The idea of applied improv is to bring the tools and philosophy of improv off the stage and into other environments (such as corporate businesses, academia, or therapy) and ultimately using these improv techniques to develop spontaneity, cooperation or communication for whichever purpose, whether it be for increased performance and efficiency, team building or human development.

As you might expect, the conference was full of energy and hilarity. After a morning of photographing people singing, screaming, laughing, hugging, someone told me: "You probably feel like you've just walked into a weird sect right?" Where do I sign up and do we get free refills on the punch? I had a blast and met tons of interesting and talented people. I'd be so excited to photograph the AIN Conference in Oxford 2016. WINK. WINK.

I had been familiar with improv as a performance and was used to photograph improvisers, having photographed a bunch of Montreal improvisers over the last year (Mongrel, Easy Action, Meags Fitzgerald, and all members of Montreal Improv's house teams in my Faces of Improv project). Funnily enough, none of that improv photography led me to this assignment. It just happens that a few friends of mine from the 100in1day Montreal community took charge in proposing Montreal as the host city for the 2015 Applied Improv Network conference and organized the whole thing. HUGE shoutout to the lovely team.

And I also have to mention this. I love food and love great food even more. We had Andrew P. Cuisine Inspirée (& Mélissa!) and La Brigade cook for us all weekend. My goal in life right now is to be the photographer at all the events where they're catering.

I'm really grateful to have been a small part of this lively conference! And nothing beats seeing comments like the following ones left by the conference attendees:

Thanks for reading! Talk to you soon :)

Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra | AIN Conference in Mont Tremblant

I just got back from photographing the 4-day Applied Improv Network conference in the Laurentians near Mont Tremblant. This is the second of three posts highlighting the amazing things I saw during the conference. See Part 1 and Part 3 here! Clearly, the organizing team of the Montreal AIN conference wanted to spoil us. As if the delicious food, cozy cabins, bonfire stargazing, and hilarious improv shows weren’t enough, they also treated us to a perfectly timed sunset-gondola ride up Mont Tremblant, where a massive feast was waiting for us in the Grand Manitou restaurant.

But there’s another reason why I was ecstatic about reaching the peak of Mont Tremblant: Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra was waiting for us!!! Knowing that they’d be coming, I made sure to bring my lights and all my equipment. I wanted to capture the frenzied chaos that is Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra. And sure enough, they put on a ridiculously energy-packed performance and partied with AIN conference attendees until midnight.

For those who don’t know Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra, they’re a Montreal-based band who fuse the Cumbia percussion rhythms from Caribbean-Colombia, along with the Gypsy style brass melodies. And along with their musicians and singers, they have dancers, who are as much part of the Orchestra as the trombonist or violinist. Only (yes only) 11 of them were present, all crammed on the small stage, but their infectious energy extended over the entire hall. The next day, I overheard a 60-year-old conference attendee say that he had initially planned on taking the early bus back, but once they started performing, he had to stay because he just couldn’t stop dancing.

Thanks for reading! In the next blog post, I’ll actually talk about the AIN conference and what it was about.

p.s. GKO - I’d really really really really love to do a photoshoot together.

Quest of the Dragon King | AIN Conference in Mont Tremblant

I just got back from photographing the 4-day Applied Improv Network conference in the Laurentians near Mont Tremblant. This is the first of three posts highlighting the amazing things I saw during the conference. (Part 2 and Part 3 are out!)

While browsing through the Thank You section of the conference program, I came across familiar names: Katie Pagnucco, Meags Fitzgerald, Vinny François, and Brad Kane. Individually, they’re all amazing people, but together they form the formidable improv troupe Quest of the Dragon King. They describe themselves as “Four jesters who act out improvised stories of high fantasy, fairy tales, and medieval legends. Heroes & villains, monsters & magic, love & madness.”

They were invited to come perform in front of an intimidating 200+ person crowd of fellow improvisers, and what a show it was. Starting off with a single suggestion from the crowd (“geologist”), they improvised their way through a world of magic crystals, verbose elves and immortal demons. And a snow leopard, seen here:

With their great performance, they were rewarded with a long standing ovation. When the evening was over, we drove back to the Blueberry Lake resort (barely avoiding death while driving through super sinister fog that was probably full of skeletons/zombies). And before my work shift started the next day, we had time for a 10-min impromptu photoshoot deep in the Laurentian forests. We were able to work quickly since they were already used to working with me. I had photographed Katie during my shoot with Girl Talk (my first improv photography assignment ever). I then photographed Brad in my Faces of Improv project at Montreal Improv. And Meags was part of my Montreal Artists series. Only Vinny was an Alex Tran Photography virgin. He did well.

Go Like the Quest of the Dragon King Facebook page to keep track of their performances in Montreal Improv and around! And come back to see my next posts about the amazing AIN conference. Part 2 is here.

South Shore Wedding in Hotel Rive Gauche | Sandra & Jimmy

Over the weekend, I photographed Sandra & Jimmy’s wedding in the South Shore. You might recognize them! I photographed their engagement session in the Montreal Old Port not too long ago. If you haven’t seen that post, check it out and read their cute story. The morning preparations for both Sandra and Jimmy started in their home in Brossard - we’d make sure one was either upstairs (or downstairs) while the other was downstairs (or upstairs).

How awesome is this hanger?

We then had the ceremony in the beautiful Ste-Anne de Varennes Basilica located right by the Saint Lawrence River.

I love churches with steps in front! Makes it so much easier for full-group shots!

And finally, we ended the night in Beloeil with the reception at the Hotel Rive Gauche.

A week before the wedding, Sandra and Jimmy are over at my place. Sandra pulls out her phone and says: “Alex. You’ve gotta do something about this.” She turns her phone around and shows me the weather app. September 19th: Rainy. Chances of thunderstorms. I promised her I’d do my best anti-rain dance. And so I did, and a few days later, the app showed a sun and a few clouds. “OMG seriously Alex I don't know how you did it but you and your mad science skills did something to mother nature!!!”.

Oh classic me and my mad science skills.

In the end it just rained a tiny bit during the night. During the day? A few clouds here and there, but nothing to worry about - clouds are amazing softboxes in the sky that tame the mid-day sun. (But hey if someone has their wedding in a torrential thunderstorm don’t worry about it! It think it would look amazing!)

I got some cool behind the scenes shots from my second photographer Fabio! And you can see my DIY dual-camera harness that I mentioned here!

Here I am inspecting the light in the church and preparing before the big entrance.

And here I am doing my best at being a bride. Sandra was much better. Thanks for reading! And congrats again to the newlyweds Sandra & Jimmy! Enjoy your honeymooon in Italy!