Alyssa Bistonath Photography: Of Life After 24,

Yesterday I took a taxi, a ferry, a plane, a car, another plane, and then a truck all so this could be the first thing I saw this morning. After twenty-two hours on only four hours of sleep I can safely say it was worth it. Shooting in Gatineau Park (Quebec) yesterday was a thrill and I am even more thrilled to be shooting oceanside here in Nova Scotia today.

From a recent photo shoot with Dar. You can read about it over on Little City.

Does anyone else love how babies point at everything? Well, I’m not a baby but I do want to point out this ultra cute family. Little Liam was seeking imaginary “chu-chu frains” all Saturday morning as I was photographing him and his parents.

What a busy month it has been. I’m gearing up (literally) for six shoots in the next two weeks. In a week and a half I’ll be travelling to Ottawa and Halifax and then taking a little rest in Charlottetown and Cape Breton before  making my way home the first week of September. I’m terribly excited about what I’ll be shooting out east. I can barely wait.

I was recently accepted into the Lucie E-pprentice program, and I was lucky enough to be paired with the one and only Michael Crouser. During our first mentoring session, I asked him about how he dealt with the pressure to be innovative all the time. It not only seems unsustainable, it actually feels impossible to constantly stay ahead of the pack. His answer was simple but comforting: he doesn’t worry about it. He simply spends (and takes) his time working steadily on images that interest him. It occurred to me that our idolatry of innovation might actually prevent us from creating honest imagery that reflects our true interests. How are those weird alter-interests that we think we should have interfering with all the great things we could be sharing? I’ve been a photographer for about five and a half years, which is not many compared to the giants in the industry. I think it’s a nice reminder to my peers out there — shoot what you like. Tell the stories that need to be told. Let your infinite curiosity take care of the rest.

With that in mind, here’s a lonely shirt that I photographed in Punjab, India. The children in this particular village would wash their school clothes each evening so that they could be worn again the next day.

I feel really blessed to have inspiring people all around me. Everywhere I look are loved ones with something fantastic bursting out of them. Above are stills from some one-shot live music videos I did over the weekend of Nathan, Andrew, Sarah, Ben and Sam. I love portraits and I love music and I really wanted to put them together in a simple way in order to showcase some of the musical talent in our community. I’ve learnt so much about the medium of video these past few weeks and I really look forward to the process and challenge of learning more.

You’ll be able to find these just-for-fun videos on Little City every Friday starting this week.

Also, a serious thanks to the above musicians as well as Ali, Lisa, Jesse and Marco who helped over the weekend to make these videos possible!

My lovely band was kind enough to allow me to shoot an impromptu video on one of the hottest days of the year. I’m learning so much about shooting video and boy is it ever fun.

Guitar and lead vocals- Andrew Patten, Ukulele- Lisa Devries, Piano- Ali Symons, Bass- Scott Barnett, Ben is sadly missing, and of course I am not playing the drums because I’m shooting.

The song is the Dove and was written by Andrew.

Camera: 5DMKII
Lens: 50mm 1.4
Audio: iPhone 4/iPhone 3Gs (mixed) & a broken string!
Edited in: iMovie ‘08

Djenné Mali//Brampton Canada