lor
Working with Lor was my first shoot in Toronto. I knew I needed to shoot something and find a way to meet interesting people in the city I’d just moved to so I set about trying to find good model agencies. This brought me to the door of Thesis (Who now work as a casting agency) Thesis repped the coolest people in Toronto it seemed. The statement on their website was that they represented “artists as models” - which I liked. It seemed to give each model a very personal sense of style and mood when compared with tradioanl agencies where they all seemed to blend into one. After our first meeting I agreed to shoot any of their models - they all seemed interesting - so along came Lor.
Lor is a musician first and foremost, she makes very dreamy alt pop and does it very well I might add. The place we were shooting it could be described as a studio - but it could also be described as a back room of a tiny event space in west Toronto. The backroom was painted white at least and had one small door to let some light into it. There is something quite freeing about shooting in “bad” spaces without too much kit because you can just focus on getting what you can, rather than the worrying about why it isn’t perfect straight away.
We had a nice few hours chatting about music, life and everything I should do in Toronto. She was very natural in front of camera and I just remember us having fun and the time flying by. I was mostly just shooting around our conversation which made it feel very relaxed. I think it comes across in the images as they don’t feel overly thought out or put together, they just wok nicely. Lor was also one of the first people I did an audio interview with after our shoot. I wanted to experiment with capturing some of the atmosphere and spirit of the people I was photographing - and being able to share that with others alongside the visuals. We took a nice walk around the north side of Trinity Bellwoods park which was across the street from the very cool cafe she was working at - I asked her long questions and short ones, trying to experiment with how to get people you barely know to tell you their real feelings. I’m unsure how much it worked but I enjoyed the little clips I got from this. Now I just need her to get incredibly famous so this interview goes down in history.
