Re-branded!

Belated Happy New Year to you all!

I think this is going to be a great year, and to kick it off we've got a shiny new website!

We've actually been working for months on a complete re-branding and re-structuring of things over here at Jessica Lin Photography - new logo, new products, new services, even new team members! Norman and I are both still here (LOL) and we will still be your photographers, but we've been joined by our new cinematographer Emily and assistant Kristen. They are both great to work with, and it's made my life way easier finally learning to delegate some things ;)

Not to overwhelm you or anything, but we've also added vimeo, pinterest, and etsy to the list of ways you can follow us and see what we're up to (don't forget there's always facebook and twitter). We'll be continuing to add new content, so be sure to "like" and "follow" and stay in touch :)

We've been so lucky the past few years to work with so many amazing people, and we're happy to have collected many new friends as well. So give yourselves a pat on the back, because you're the ones who make it possible for us to keep doing what we love best, and for that we are eternally grateful :) And a special thanks to Dave Dick at Toy Rabbits Design for all the hard work on our great new logo, website, and everything that goes along with it.

So what are you waiting for? Check it out! And let us know what you think :)

xo
Jessica + Norman

Sneak Peek of our Awesome Japan trip (October 2012)

As some of you already know, this October we went to Japan - a trip I had been dreaming about for over a decade, and which my lovely husband not only agreed to but actually set in motion. I had been putting it off for ages, at first because of how expensive I assumed it would be, and later because secretly I was afraid that there was no way Japan could live up to the expectations I had steadily been building up. I will admit - I had the entire country and culture on a pedestal. In my mind, it was a fantasy land where the distant (and very romantic) past happily coexisted with a sort of science fiction future, where everything was not only steeped in meaning but also aesthetically stunning. Long before I ever went to Spain, France, Ireland or Mexico it was the only trip I ever wanted to take - and yet it was the trip I continued to not take. 

So last January when Norman and I were discussing possible places to visit,  I mentioned always having wanted to go to Japan. In that way that people who are not you have of making very obvious and simple observations about things that you have made very complicated in your own head, he said "so let's go". And that was it.

We ended up going for just over 3 weeks in October. We took one DSLR, one point-and-shoot, and one Super 8 camera. There are now over 2300 images, 80 short videos, and four rolls of Super 8 film, along with a journal that is so far three books long. Needless to say - it's going to take a while to edit through all this and process and absorb the whole experience, but so many people have asked to see pictures from our trip that I thought I would share a few snippets :) I will also share the two major things I learned as we were in Japan - 1. it doesn't have to be nearly as expensive as I thought it would be, and 2. it is even more awesome than I could have imagined :)

Here are a handful of my favourite images.. some are from the farm we stayed on in Gifu, and others are from Kyoto and Hiroshima (I promise - stories to follow at a later date!) - enjoy!

This last image is a piece I put together by collaging different elements of images from Tokyo, Kyoto, Miyajima, and the airport in Taipei (seriously!) - it's my plan to do a collection of collaged pieces as I've done with my France images (if you missed those at the Queen West Art Crawl this fall, stay tuned for information about upcoming shows..)

Have a great weekend!

xo 

Jessica

Beautiful Wall Art Canvas by Jessica Lin Photography

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you a little teaser of a creative project I'd been working on.. well - here's the finished result:

I combined a couple of images of us from our wedding trip with some collage-style detail shots from places we stayed and from our wedding party, and I'm totally in love with the final result :) It's 36"x48" and the impact in real life is incredible.. it's hard to show on a blog, so you'll just have to drop by to check it out!

Here are some of the details included:

These birds (which is actually just one bird, included twice to make a little pair) are part of an origami mobile that I made for our internationally-themed wedding party for the family and friends back in Toronto. The purple flower petals are from a shot I took under a tree while we were in Spain - there were these tiny little purple flowers all over the ground and I love how they look scattered across the image :)

One of my favourite parts - Norman wrote our initials in the condensation of the window in our room where we stayed in Cork while driving around the south of Ireland

I made this little postcard out of one of our shots from Spain (believe it or not, we had not only a camera on a tripod on self-timer, but also a light on a stand with an umbrella for this one..) and "tucked" it into the corner of the big frame

We took about five different pictures of our rings in various places on our trip - this was on some rocks on a beach in Clonakilty at the southern tip of Ireland in County Cork (that's a little barnacle in the front).

The orange fan was an awesome find for 2 euros just down the street from where we stayed in Alicante, on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.

This is my lovely husband's handiwork again - this time on a beach in Sligo on the western coast of Ireland (just down the road a bit from where they filmed the Point Break surfing scenes!)

The rose-coloured wallpaper and the gold frame were from our bedroom wall at the B&B we stayed in while in Sligo, and the little vine grows across our tool shed in our backyard in Toronto (it was photographed at the party as well)

Ta-Da! This is the finished file, before I sent it off to be printed on canvas. I love the way this allowed me to include all sorts of pretty and sentimental details, and I really love the whimsical feeling of the end result :) I can't wait to start creating these for the couples we work with, so that they have a totally unique and stunning piece of art that they will love from the images we have created for them! 

Email us today for details and to order!

xo Jessica 

Sneak Peek of the Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Made

First of all, my apologies for being too busy to blog lately - I have a backlog of stuff I want to share, but it's just a matter of finding the time..

Anyways, today my mission was to create something totally awesome using images from our wedding trip - because it seemed like a great idea, and because I would love to start offering something similar to my wedding clients - and it was one of the most creatively satisfying days in the history of my life :)

Norman doesn't get to see it until I get it back from the printers, so neither do you ;) but I thought I'd share a little sneak peek of the final image....

I can't wait to see the final printed version! I promise to share as soon as I pick it up :)

xo Jessica