JBSmith Photography

Portraits will always be my first photography love. I am excited for my next Headshot Portrait Party taking place this Saturday. I love offering these mini portrait sessions as a way to get a few professional images without committing to a full session.

If you are interested in one of these sessions at a future Headshot PortraitParty, please dm and I can add you to my email list.

P A S T A (and cheese!)

For any eager planners out there (like this virgo!), I have booked a date for my next Headshot Portrait Party: Saturday, January 27th from 11am to 1pm. These sessions are a great way to get some professional portraits without investing in a full portrait session - and what better way to start the year with fresh portraits! Sessions are taking place at Mint Room (near Symington & Dupont) and are booked in 15 minute increments. Sessions on this date are limited so please do not hesitate to reach out if you are interested in securing one.

UPDATE: This date is now 50% booked.

I recently had the absolute pleasure of photographing Stacey Green for the cover of her upcoming book called You'll Eat It & You'll Like It. It's a realistic and hilarious cookbook about what to feed your kids. Stacey had a vision for this cover. She wanted things a little messy and real and while this is not the final image for the cover (you'll have to wait to see that!), I love how this one turned out. The book comes out in late November so keep your eye our for it then.

MORGAN

Been making portraits professionally since 2003 and it still makes my heart pitter-patter. 💛

I always thought Toronto was a hot dog city. When I went to TMU there were two on-campus hot dog carts and the men that ran them were wonderful. Every year they raised money for scholarships for students in need. When I worked for two summers throughout university at the CN Tower (doing the cheesy green screen photos!), I lived off of veggies dogs and soda pop walking from Union Station to the tower on my way to or from work. When my brother-in-law moved as a student to Toronto from Mexico in 2005, he lived off of those street dogs, something that simply wasn’t a thing in CDMX at that time. (Later when they bought a house in Chetumal in Quintana Roo they discovered hot dogs carts there. The only city in Mexico doing it back then).

I used to think Toronto was a hot dog city until I traveled to Detroit with in 2018 when we sat down at a diner and she ordered a dawg using words I had never heard associated with hot dogs before. She opened us up to the real world of dawgs. A whole new world. We recently visited Steva in Birmingham, Alabama and within an hour of landing, we were ordering dawgs at . I thought I knew hot dogs before this experience, I was wrong.

Before leaving Birmingham a few days later, we had another visit to Gus’s. This time doing a little photo shoot to promote all the goodness that comes from this little stand. I cannot wait to go back.

Portraits are forever my first photography love. It was such a pleasure to photograph the incredibly talented this week. This woman has made murals in ten different countries. I am in awe of her. Originally from Dubai, she currently calls Toronto home and we are so lucky to have her here. Fats has a gallery show coming up in September and I will share the details closer to the opening date.

This is why you get up before sunrise to make portraits: magic. It was such a pleasure to photograph Sabrina and Dan this week in Sudbury.

Working all those angle.

Is anyone else experiencing this thing lately where people are just so poor at communicating which makes working with them super difficult? I am finding that everyone is so in their own heads these days and they are not expressing much or leaving out important bits so you are just left trying to fill in the empty gaps. I am finding that people are so wrapped up in their own things and then expecting you to also be wrapped up in their own things with zero regards for the idea that you actually have your own full life of separate things taking place that they have not even considered. It’s exhausting and it’s such a time waste and I think that people are making their lives so much more difficult by this lack of clear communication. Anyone else feeling that? Just me?

Anyways, here are some images that I recently created for Gibson’s Whisky. The ask was for a summery cottage vibe. We went to the lake at sunrise to create the dreamy feeling of sitting on a dock with a cocktail at the end of the day without a care in the world. Take me there now, pretty please.

FROM THE ARCHIVES. Two years ago I did a shoot for a corporation to showcase some of their employees working from home. The purpose of the images was to show future employees that this company was offering flexible ways to work - either from home or from their office. At the time of these shoots, the choice was entirely up to the employee. We all know how the pandemic has shifted basically everything in our lives and how it highlighted that maybe it isn't necessary for some jobs to require its staff to go to the office.
Two years later, I have only really seen a slow shift back to the office. When I visit my corporate clients, I usually ask the staff what their deal is. Oftentimes it is that they're required to be at the office 2-3 days a week, otherwise they can work from home. Oftentimes these large spaces are quiet and nearly empty. The news reports of vacancies of the downtown office spaces and how detrimental this can be to cities. When you walk around downtown now, the hustle is a fraction of what it used to be.
In early 2022 I had a shoot that had me doing headshots in the lobby of a new downtown tower. I was there at the beginning of lunch hour and this was after  Toronto's last long lockdown. I remember seeing tens of people get off the elevator, talking and laughing, on their way to grab lunch. I remember feeling the energy and life of these people and thinking that this is what we are missing by being at home. People to laugh and talk with outside of those we live with. New light and spaces to work from and be inspired by. It felt like a nice thing to experience as an outsider.
As someone who has been a freelance photographer for the past twenty years, I have never had a job where I need to go to an office for a set number of hours a week. Nor have I really ever had co-workers to commiserate with or to bounce ideas off of. I'm not sure if the state of how these offices are is a good or bad thing overall for our world. This working from home makes a lot of things easier for most but I think that it is also creating a big disconnect between ourselves and others. We are getting stuck in our own little bubbles and I wonder what we are missing out on.

Spending this week cleaning up my archives. This is something that I have been avoiding doing for too long. I take A LOT of pictures. The fun in it is being reminded of past photo shoots.

Here is the ridiculously kind and talented from two years ago when he was at the kitchen at Le Phenix. You can now find him making incredible food at .

LIGHTING MATTERS. If you've been a longtime follower here you know that I photograph a lot of cocktails. There are a lot of bad cocktail photos out there. There are a lot of people photographing them who don't understand light and who don't understand the importance of lens choices. Here is a beautiful cocktail that I photographed yesterday for Bar Pompette on their back patio. We did this shoot early in the afternoon when we knew that the light would hit the patio because I love working with real and direct natural light. Dappled light, when the sun shines through tree leaves, is also so pretty. It creates a mood. I wanted to highlight the clear elegance of this cocktail and make sure there was good contrast to make it stand out. I placed the glass in a patch of harsh light and exposed the photo for this. This meant that anything without light hitting it would go dark. I love the end result. It makes me want to sit at that table and drink that cocktail. 

If I wanted a photo that was more vibrant and bright, I would have placed the glass in a darker area of the table. If I had then exposed the photo for this shadow part where the glass sat, the spots in the frame where the sun hits would be blown out or super duper bright. This is fine, as long as the cocktail (the main subject) was exposed properly and would have just created a much different photo than what I was going for. I wanted to create something with more mood since I know that Bar Pompette is only open from 5pm onwards and I wanted the image to be a fair representation of what guests can expect to experience there. Having a bright and vibrant final photo would be a misrepresentation of the space and the experience of that beautiful bar.

As a professional photographer, you should always be considering who you are taking the image for and WHY. Why are you creating it, why are you photographing that thing in a certain way. There always needs to be a purpose and a goal with the final image.

Flying Unicorn Latte. Would you?

One thing I will never tire of is seeing my photos in print. It always feels so good. I created that image and now it is an actual real thing out in the world. I take a lot of pictures for my clients but I often do not get to see where they end up. Recently I got to help celebrate Canada’s Best Bars 2023 and it was pretty neat to pick up this magazine to see so many of my images in it. (Plus a sneaky Best Restaurant add-on!).

Dear people in bars and restaurants: have your spaces, your team, your food and your drinks professionally photographed. You never know when you may need these images and it is always great to have a library of these photos on-hand so you stay in control of your image and how your hard work is portrayed. I have heard of too many spots complaining about bad photographers being sent to them by various publications. Hire a professional that you like and that you can build a relationship with over time. They will make the best images for you, guaranteed.

LIGHTING MATTERS. Over the last number of years I have seen so many photographers dub themselves as "natural light photographers". It's cute. The thing is, if you are out in the world working as a photographer natural light isn't always available to you. Oftentimes the ambient light in a space is unflattering and at a colour temperature that doesn't work for what you are going for or doesn't balance/match in the space. If you are a photographer who is being paid to take photos, you need to be prepared for every and any situation without relying on that glowing ball in the sky. Of course, I love photographing with a natural light whenever possible but I know over the past 20 years working as a photographer, this isn't always possible. When I see that people dub themselves as "natural light photographers" I see someone who isn't that experienced in this world of photography.

Here is a beautiful cocktail that I recently photographed at Bar Mordecai. If you have been to that bar, you know that it's a beautiful space. The windows face East so unless you are there in the morning, there is no direct sunlight coming through those windows. If you have been to that bar before, you also know that those windows are actually tinted so when sunlight does come through, it's not that intense and... the colour temperature of it changes because of the tint. For this cocktail photo, I used a small softbox on camera-right. The light was on a stand behind the bar. I aimed it to hit mostly the backbar to light up those bottles and to create a greater separation between the drink and the background. It was also aimed to just slightly kiss the cocktail with light. Without this light, the image would appear flat and the cocktail and foreground would be compressed. If I had aimed the light to directly backlight the cocktail, the background would have been dark leading to a less interesting image. Settings: ISO 400 f5.6 1/80.

Are posts like this useful? Does anyone care? :)

Weekend vibes

It was such a pleasure to photograph this Art of Pairing dinner at last night. The event included a Torres Brandy tasting lead by before a 3-course dinner and cocktail pairing created by and . Together they created a menu focused on sustainability and everything was ridiculously delicious.

Cutie Father’s Day image I created for .

I love photographing pals, especially when it is to celebrate a new role in life. I recently photographed as the new Whiskey Guardian for Toronto. This is a bourbon made right in Louisville, Kentucky that is finished in Ruby Port barrels. Hint: it’s real good. Congrats, Lucas on the new role!

Making cocktails on the beach. Por que l no?! Lifestyle photography shot for . Shoots like this when you just get to play always result in the best images.

The thing about being a photographer is that sometimes you photograph something exciting for someone and then you have to patiently wait for it to go out in the world. You get excited at the shoot and even more excited as you process the images. You deliver the final retouched files to the client and then you wait. And wait. And wait.

Back in September, I had the pleasure of photographing Evelyn Chick ‘s upcoming book For the Love of Cocktails: The Everyday Guide to Delightful Drinks for Anyone, Anytime published by Figure 1 Publishing . We spent a lot of time planning the shoot and a number of long days creating the images. The book was then designed this past spring and come October 3rd -
over one year later - it will be officially in the hands of the people. I am not allowed to share much more of the book until then, but I am allowed to show off the cover. A bunch of hands that belong to meaningful people to Evelyn and a wonderful way to introduce the idea of coming together through a delightful drink (whether it be alcoholic, non-alcoholic or cannabis-inclusive).

This book is now available for pre-sale and if you know anything about authors in Canada, these pre-sales really count! Indigo has dubbed For the Love of Cocktails as one of their Most Anticipated Books and I have to agree.

You can preorder your copy here: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/for-the-love-of-cocktails/9781773271972-item.html?ikwid=for+the+love+of+cocktails&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0 =323208afd9a3ef8b2030426a0f0a2388

I have so much love for my corporate photography clients. Especially those that I have worked for over a number of years. It is such a pleasure to get to know them and what they do. You become this almost distant relative of theirs. Last week I headed up to the YMCA Cedar Glen Outdoor Centre to photograph for Tangerine. Every year a big group of their employees spend the day volunteering at the centre to help get it ready for a busy summer of overnight campers. Over the past 11 years, Tangerine employees have put in volunteer hours that are equivalent to one full year of work. It's pretty awesome. I have been photographing for Tangerine since before they had that name (ten years and counting!) and this was at least my 8th time visiting Cedar Glen to photograph for them.

Happy Monday, beauties!

This cocktail/work of art can be found at .to .
10/10 would recommend.

My lovefest for friends doing great things continues with this woman: Christina Veira. Another dreamer and schemer who is always up to so many things. She recently won Bartender of the Year 2023 for all that she does for the industry. She is co-owner of which placed 14 on the Best Bars 2023 list and also placed 42 on North America's 50 Best Bars list. I met her many years ago when she worked with Josh at the Harbord Room and she soon became a good friend who saw me as an individual and not just his partner. I appreciate this woman a lot.

This portrait was taken back in March when I had only an inkling of what it's main purpose was for. And then in classic Christina-style, she changed her hair nearly immediately afterwards. I have lost track of how many times I have photographed her now but it's always fun - and she always has the best outfits.