I was invited to attend and photograph the 2012 NSMBHL Provincial Championship series at the brand new Queen’s Place in Liverpool this week.

The new Queen’s Place is a fantastic arena with lots of amenities for the local area including a fitness center, meeting rooms, walking track and likely one of the best lit rinks I have had the pleasure to photograph. 🙂

The Major Bantam league is a new league which is just wrapping up it’s second year with this tournament and I was honored to be invited as the official tournament photographer. I look forward to next year as this was some of the most exciting amateur hockey I have had the pleasure of watching.

Check out and maybe even help support your local teams. These kids play with heart and it really shows in the passion they bring to the ice.

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Visit the galleries here!!!

The latest in my series of body painting shoot was based on an Anime concept by Angela O’Neill Whiteley of Angie’s Breathing Canvas.

Angela spent nearly 7 hours painting the outfit and the detail is absolutely incredible. I still feel bad for poor Kyla as the heat conked out and she stood there for the whole time freezing her butt off. I tried wiring up a couple of electric heaters but they just didn’t cut-it. Kyla was an absolute trooper and never uttered a single complaint.

I was amazed at the details of the Nova Scotia tartan pattern in the skirt as well as the really “cheeky” peekaboo frilly undies.

Sadly, just as the painting finished, the heat kicked back in and the studio warmed up just in time for everyone to go home. 🙁

Kyla is incredible. She has some real potential in the modelling world, not Halifax, the modelling world. She has a plan, an incredible work ethic which is so rare with young people today and is willing to do whatever it takes to get the shot. I absolutely loved working with her and I’m pretty sure that one of these days I’ll be able to say, “I knew her before she was famous.” Seriously.

Now for the samples. 😉

I had been speaking with body painter Angela O’Neill-Whiteley for nearly 6 weeks in regards to collaborating with her on a couple of her painting concepts prior to the actual shoot.

If you’ve been following my work at all, you likely know I’ve shot with Lenore (Zebra Lady) and body painter Inesa Manaj and I’ve been excited to work with body painting again ever since.

We arrived on a Saturday morning at my studio at 10AM. I’ve admired Andrea’s modelling work for some time and although we both know a number of mutual acquaintances, we only managed to meet for the first time at this shoot.Angela and I kept the concept a secret from Andrea until she arrived and when it was revealed, Andrea was just as excited as we were about the whole Borg / Star Trek theme.

As my assistant for the shoot, Gary Hillier, and I started setting up one of the most elaborate set’s I’ve ever tried to incorporate into a shoot, Angela and Andrea got down to painting. The set itself took nearly 4 hours to set up and light. Fortunately, the painting took only slightly longer. Interrupted only by a break for lunch to discuss the shooting concept – and for this I need to apologize to the pizza guy. I’m sure it’s a delivery he won’t forget. You know who you are. 🙂

Back to work. Running behind schedule and with heat in the building failing for some unknown reason, we tried our best to help Andrea keep warm by setting up temporary electric heaters. Although they failed miserably to keep up, Andrea was a sport and did a fantastic job making me believe she wasn’t cold. Despite the shivering.

Angela was wonderful and an incredibly talented painter. I expect we will be working together again very soon. Can’t wait!!! 😀

The entire 4 hours + of painting were captured in time lapse for compilation as a video. Watch for a future BTW post in the near future.

Hope you like the samples!