8th Annual The Corporate State Canada Summit

 

The photo collection above is from the Corporate State Canada 2010 summit website...once the event coordinators produce the 2011 page you will be able to see it at The Corporate State Canada. 

Once again I have had the pleasure of spending the day photographing this invitation only annual summit event attended by some of the premier women executives in Canada, and from the United States and elsewhere in the world. Not only was I tasked with capturing multitudinous candids throughout the day, but I ran a mini executive portrait studio allowing me to face the crazy challenge of creating professional quality portraits of over sixty women in about two minutes each! Speakers including such luminaries as Bonnie Brooks and Dr. Sherry Cooper were undeniably inspiring to the extent that I actually heard what they were saying as I concentrated on capturing the best images possible of their generously shared presentations and personalities. Fabulous day!

Fulfillment Exhibit Sept. 17 - Oct. 29, 2011.

NOW magazine has listed Fulfillment as one of the MUST-SEE SHOWS in Toronto!

Solo Exhibit Sept. 17 - Oct. 29, 2011.

On Saturday Sept. 17, 2011 my solo exhibit at Akasha Art Projects in Toronto opens with a reception from 4:00 - 7:00 p.m. Please join us!

Here is a description from MAG (Mass Art Guide):

AKASHA ART PROJECTS

September 17, 2011 - October 29, 2011
Reception: September 17, 2011, 4-7 PM
Fulfillment - Kathryn Hollinrake.
Kathryn Hollinrake's dreamy imagery blurs the lines between photography and painting. Using the metaphor of the ballet dancer Hollinrake explores the unencumbered dreams and make believe world of our childhood fantasies. A sense of mystery and spontaneity result from her technique of combining layers of encaustic medium and pencil crayon on printed photographic panels creating depths of mood and colour. Beginning as photographs, Hollinrake’s pieces end up as unique one of a kind photo-paintings.

511 Church Street, 200, Toronto, ON
M4Y 2C9, T: 647-348-0104
Mon-Thurs 11-7, Fri 11-7, Sat 11-5

akashaart.com
akashaart@rogers.com

If you are interested in seeing the work online it can be viewed on a temporary web site at http://khollinrake.dphoto.com. Click on the Fulfillment Exhibit 2011 icon.

Service Ontario Photography Images

A small selection of the images I said below that I couldn't publish are now viewable at
http://www.hollinrake.com/advertising/Li_ServOntShot2.php

Service Ontario Photography

The month of May 2011 has blasted by in a blur as we won and executed a large, multi-faceted project for Service Ontario. I worked with a fantastic team of professionals who hit the ground running upon notification that the job was ours. Less than two weeks later, we launched into an eight day shoot, almost every day of which included some element of weather dependance. Readers in Toronto will recall the volatility of the weather, the rain, and the seemingly greater than usual inability of the weather forecasters to 'get it right' this May. But we still got the shots!

I can't show you the pictures yet because they're not published  but I can show you the one above as a precursor, taken of my husband and son pretending to be fishing during one of the several necessary, but very few sunny location scouting visits to Ashbridges Bay Park. The difference between the locations scout's first visit and my final visit was astonishing and gratifying as Mother Nature finally manged to cough up some leaves for the initially scarily leafless trees.

Four houses, a medical office, a park and a very impressive Service Ontario location, over 50 'models' chosen to represent a wide swath of Ontario's diverse population, hair and make-up, wardrobe, props, cars, and a super tight schedule. It was pretty grueling but the people I was working with made it all a fabulously rewarding challenge which was met with unflagging enthusiasm, energy and great results. I can't wait to see the posters, brochures, web banners, etc.

If you are reading this and you were part of this project, thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for your part in it, and for reminding me again how great it is to be part of a whole team of 120 percenters.

Laura Calder Cookbook Cover Shoot

Celebrity Chef Laura Calder's newest cookbook is due out in September 2011 and I had the pleasure of photographing her on location for the cover. You can see the preliminary (or final?) cover design by HarperCollins Canada on my website in the Big People and the Advertising/Commercial sections of my Portfolio.

"Transition..."

Approximately 25 years ago when I was a student in Ryerson's Photographic Technology Program I started working with very long exposures that required my subjects to pose without moving for variously challenging lengths of time. My best friend Pete, from the Film program, who went on to great success as a music video director, and then TV commercial director, suffered through a number of these experiences (I've grown more patient and worked some flexibility into the process over the years), so it was a total trip to find myself shooting him again all these years later with yet another long exposure process. 

We've kept in touch on and off and when I found out he was moving his family out of his downtown home I leaped at the chance to photograph him in "Transition..." with not much more than a day to go before the moving truck's arrival. Just about to wrap up post production on one project and getting ready to travel briefly before diving into his next commitment, while simultaneously changing his home base, he was in a resonantly transitional phase (even if only briefly in his case), something that has become a huge theme in the lives of many of my friends and colleagues in recent years, and which I wanted to capture creatively.

Technically, the main capture was not far from complete, as will be apparent from the images above. I just needed some window area that was a little darker and uncontaminated by stray light streaks, and I needed the light to be on, which it couldn't be during the long main exposure, because it would have contaminated the primary lighting.

SNAP! 2011

Ballet Story Panel #4 has been accepted by the SNAP! curators and a print of it will be available for sale in the silent auction at SNAP! A Photographic Fundraiser for the Aids Committee of Toronto. The gala/auction takes place from 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 p.m. March 27, 2011 at the National Ballet School, 400 Jarvis Street. Tickets are available from the SNAP! website at http://www.snap-toronto.com. All the art is available for preview on the SNAP! website. It's a fabulously well run and well attended event and the variety of high quality original art donated and on exhibit to be sold at the live auction is always incredibly eclectic and inspiring.

Canadian Soul

In April 2011 John and Yolanda Davis of Davis Canadian Arts in Stratford, Ontario are opening a beautiful new gallery/shop just a block or so away from their already established and successful art gallery. I'm so excited to be one of the artists to be represented in this historical and feminine themed boutique. I was there dropping off four new original photo based pieces last week and had the opportunity to be one of the first to check out the gorgeous paintings, jewellery and one-off pieces of clothing designed and made by Canadian artists. If you are interested in contacting the curators they can be reached at 519 271-0664. Canadian Soul is located at 24 Ontario Street, Stratford, Ontario.

New Romantics Exhibit

Saturday February 12 please join me at Akasha Art Projects, 511 Church Street, Toronto ~ http://www.akashaart.com ~ for the opening of their New Romantics exhibit featuring work from four photographers including myself. (Mine is the image in the bottom left corner.)

Beautiful ballet story of love found, lost and found again in a calendar

For our January 2011 self-promotional mini-calendar we conceived of a story to be shown in six parts of a beautiful ballet dancer who finds a bouquet of exquisite flowers, falls in love with them, gives them up to a mysterious bird who appears to take them from her, finds herself bereft at the loss, then is filled with joy as she realizes the bird was not taking the flowers to keep but to show his flock which now showers her with more of them, until finally she is surrounded, jubilant and filled with love.

It's a romantic and ultimately positive and optimistic story which gave me the impetus to create a piece of art that is illustrative both visually and prosaically of my vision, and I was thrilled that Martin was willing to trust me with producing a set of images like this for a calendar that was going to represent his design firm as well as my photography business.

We had the opportunity to work with the very beautiful and talented Lindsey Twynam, a trained dancer who was willing to let me choreograph her in my studio on a white backdrop. We had basically one bunch of flowers which I shot in various combinations and from various angles knowing that I was going to have to make them look not only bigger, but as if there were a lot more of them than there really were. With permission from the ROM I photographed the one bird that I selected from their hanging display as having the appropriate characteristics and being situated within the multi-bird display such that I could shoot multiple angles without it being obscured by the other birds in the display.....lots of close-cutting involved after that. That one bird had to be digitally reworked so that it became a small flock that didn't look like it started as one bird. 

Once the photography was completed and the digital alterations made, the compositing had to be completed based on my storyboarded layouts. Then it was time to layer the printed images with acrylic, pencil crayon and encaustic (pigmented wax) on board. The final step, almost, was to do photographic copywork of those panels. The real final step was taking Martin's advice and digitally reworking the final panel image to reduce the area covered by the surrounding flowers and make them less visually heavy and overpowering, just for the calendar, since the images reproductions would be so small. So if you happen to see the original art piece (with the 6 panels attached to each other to make an approximately 16x30 inch piece) which will be hanging in the new Davis gallery in Stratford as of early spring 2011 you may notice that the final panel looks a bit different from the final image in the calendar. 


I've already received some heartwarmingly positive and much appreciated feedback from respected clients. I'm so thankful to Finesilver Design for the opportunity.