Toronto Lifestyle & Editorial Portrait Photographer Jessica Blaine Smith

Maternity Portraits | Soon they will be four

MaternityPortrait01 The last time that I saw this couple they were pregnant with their first child. Fast forward three years and they were back at my studio, in the same state as before, but with their daughter in tow! I was very excited to meet her and to document another life change in all of their lives. MaternityPortrait05 MaternityPortrait02 MaternityPortrait03

Engagement Portraits | Cherise & Ed at The Thompson & Sunnyside Beach | Toronto

Oh Cherise and Ed! How I do like these two! I had the pleasure of photographing weddings for both of Cherise’s brothers, mostly recently Rachid’s which took place this past summer. That wedding was a ton of fun and Cherise was the maid of honour so we spend some good time together. Fast forward to 2016 and this is the year for Cherise and Ed! For their engagement session, we started at Sunnyside Beach where we pretended that it wasn’t cold. These two spend a lot of their free time biking along the lake so choosing this location made sense to them. We then got fancy and finished the session off at the Thompson Hotel. Nothing beats that rooftop at sunset! It definitely has one of the best views in Toronto. Cherise and Ed are two people that are meant to be together. Within the first five minutes of being with them, you can see it. They laugh a lot together. They speak to one another without using words. This is love and I cannot wait to photograph their wedding this summer.

Lifestyle Portraits | Real Family Portraits

I was asked the other day what my favourite thing to photograph is. While the answer to this question seems to constantly change, after thinking about it for a minute, my answer that day was: kids. Why? Because they are such funny little humans. It’s a lot of fun to photograph them at all ages and it’s a lot of fun to let their personalities show in the resulting images. I also love creating real family portraits. I think that it’s a wonderful thing to capture all of the emotions and expressions that come from the session. If we only photographed the smiles, we would be doing a disservice to each personality. At least, that’s what I believe. When it comes to my family portraits, I am not looking for perfection, I am looking for realness.

Jill is a fellow photographer who has a gorgeous family that includes her husband, five year old daughter and two year old twin sons. In short: they are one awesome family and twins are one of my most favourite things in this world. They recently came to the studio for a family portrait session. While Jill takes a lot of photos of her kids, she is rarely in photos with them and it’s even more rare to get an image with the entire family together. We had a lot of fun at the studio and we had a lot of changes in mood, especially from the boys. (They’re two! And there’s two of them!) This is real life. No family is “perfect” (whatever that means!). No child is smiling and happy all of the time (just like no adult is).

A Good Book Drive in Toronto

I am a big fan of reading and always have been. I think that it’s an important part of life and when I meet a person who tells me they have never read a book, I feel confused. I remember being read to as a kid and I remember how my imagination grew from hearing all of those fantastic stories. When my pal Lana Gay told me that she would be organising a kids book drive in Toronto, I immediately asked how I could help. A Good Book Drive originally began in Vancouver in 2012 and since then it has expanded to Brooklyn, Calgary and now Toronto. For the month of February, locations all over Toronto have boxes where you can donate your new or gently used favourite kids book. The books donated are going to the fabulous Children’s Book Bank located in Regent Park. The Book Bank provides literacy programs for kids and every kid that visits is allowed to take a book home to keep forever. What makes A Good Book Drive that much more special is that those donating books are encouraged to fill out a label to personalise the book and to let the kid receiving it just why they think that the book is awesome. I love that. With this drive in Toronto, our goal is to raise 1,000 books before the end of February.

For the past couple of weeks I have been running around town taking portraits for A Good Book Drive and it’s been a lot of fun. These photos of people with their favourite book will then be featured throughout the month on the A Good Book Drive website where you can read a little bit more about them and their book.

My question for you: what is your favourite kids book and why? I really hope that this blog post encourages you to help out. You can see the book box locations here.

(Pssst! Recognise any of these faces? I spy Raina, Brendan Canning, Amber J and Hannah Georgas to name a few!)

Newborn Portraits | Miss Harper Quinn

I really like Harper’s parents. When I first heard the story of how they came to be, my heart melted. Liz is from Australia and Quenton is from here. They met on a bus in Vietnam. Liz caught his eye and her interest was peaked. Quenton says he just knew that they were meant to be. Ten years later, they are married in Toronto and a couple of weeks ago they were graced with their daughter Miss Harper Quinn. I visited them last week to do a newborn portrait session at their home. She is as adorable as you would expect and already she has two of the best parents out there.