I have a black cat and I should have called her Selina. If she were a person, she would be the Catwoman. She challenges me and I love how unpredictable she is. Playful like a kitten and agile beyond belief, she gets herself into trouble, but always manages to get out without a scratch. She leads a double life, the sweet loving cat at home, she stalks the streets at nights and shows up with a mouse as her trophy every now and again.
I hear DC Comics have been around for 75 years now and Catwoman was there from nearly the beginning! Impressive, right? It seems nobody can quite decide where she came from, where she’s going or what to think of her! She is the ultimate Feline Femme Fatale. Just like my kitty cat!
Indulge me, please! Halloween is almost here! The best holiday of the year! I have never quite had the guts to put on a Catwoman suit for this special occasion, but I know a beautiful girl, who does and makes the suit look incredible too! Meghan Campbell aka Irena Dubrovna
But there is more to this story than a pretty girl in a catsuit. I was inspired to photograph this idea after seeing a picture of Meghan in the suit at the Comicon and after watching the Dark Knight. Which in my humble opinion is the best Batman movie to date. Dark and gritty made for adults that respect the child inside themselves. I loved the story and I loved the look of it.

I wanted a challenge for myself and I spent a lot of time working in a studio where controlling lighting is effortless and everything there is made to make a photographer’s life easy. Location is less predictable and you need to go with the flow and utilize everything available to you to make things happen and look the way you want them. I gave myself a homework, use what’s there! But finding a suitable location was the key. As the days get shorter, the nights get longer, darkness takes over. But I still need some light to play with and this was ideal!

This entire story is shot with a Canon 5D Mark II camera with no other than the available lighting. The challenge here was not to light the environment for my shot, but to compose the image with the existing lighting in mind and make it work. It’s amazing to see what happens when you turn your work flow upside down.

I love the fact, that my cat has a part of her life I will never be a part of. The mystery is so appealing. I feel the same about going to a location to shoot. The unpredictability of many aspects of unknown spaces is what inspires creativity. I did see the building in advance and I saw the advantages the location had, I spent some time visualizing ideas for individual shots in my mind. But it was not until I started looking through the viewfinder, that problems that would need solving manifested themselves. I feel it’s this challenge that sparks my interest and makes me creative. I shot this story to keep myself from becoming lazy and comfortable. Freezing outside at night solving problems seems to be my kind of fun!

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This weekend was the exciting one when the Convention center in Toronto got invaded by aliens, Comic book, Sci-fi and Anime fans. If you are a comic book fan and live in Toronto, there is a good chance that you have made your way down to the coolest comic book store around, the Silver Snail. Then you must already know George, who runs the place. But this is not a story about the store or about comic books, this is a story about George.

George let me come into his house and photograph him in his Kingdom filled with his favorite art and collectibles.
It was a cold winter day and there was next to no light available. I had to light it all and I really didn’t mind. Somehow the subject needed more than just available daylight.

All of the action figures, three dimensional pieces of art stand out better if lit in somewhat dramatic way. Especially since they are very dramatic fictional characters, lighting them this way makes complete sense to me.

George has a massive collection of action figures and wide range of replicas of weapons. Everything from the shields of Spartans from “300″ to swords of the knights from the “Lord of the Rings” to the fabulous Captain America shield and a helmet George finished himself. And as I learned while visiting him, he is not only a collector, but also an artist and an illustrator. He has been collecting action figures since he was a little boy and the Green Lantern was always one of his favorites. No wonder there were many of them, couple of hundred scattered all around his house. You can wonder around for hours and keep on discovering new fun stuff!
There is something really cool about people that have the drive and commitment to create a huge collection of whatever it is that floats their boat.

The time and resources it takes to acquire a collection like this is a huge deal. But what I like the most is that a part of this collection George made himself. There are some very unique pieces and some that have an enormous amount of craftsmanship invested into them. Even George’s cat looks like a character from a graphic novel. It’s not only his wicked two colored eyes and beautiful long hair that gives him a mane like a lion’s. His personality follows the suit. Curious and inquisitive, calm and cool, he almost seems wise if that can be said about a cat! He fit right in with all of the decor. Almost as if he were one of the Superheros surrounding him all around. He can best be described as a Cool Cat!
I admit, I am a voyeur and I love being invited into peoples homes and photograph their lives. It’s an honor to be trusted with someones personal privacy and get an insight into their reality. I guess that is the unique advantage that being a photographer offers.
But there is another advantage, I don’t have to be the one to clean this house. Can you imagine dusting this place?!

All die-hard comic book fans know this, but maybe you don’t yet. The big day is almost here! Free comic book day! It happens every year! So head down this Saturday, May 2nd to the Silver Snail for your free comic book! And while you are there, say hello to all the great people that were so kind to let me photograph them in their super cool costumes last Halloween. I have a few of the portraits done and more are on the way. I love the effort and time they put into creating these awesome costumes. Some of them are really polished and some of them are totally not, but that’s what makes them so charming, right?
I find Halloween to be the funnest day of the year. We all drop our inhibitions and reach deep into our closets to change our persona and create characters we admire, love and wish we could be in their skins for a night. The intriguing part of this series of portraits, to me at least is the playful fact that we often reveal more about ourselves when wearing a mask, than we hide.