carly rae jepsen portrait and a website overhaul

As most of you probably know, the Juno Awards were held on Sunday, April 1st. Two days before, I got a call from MAC makeup artist (and amazing painter) Matthew King. He told me a senior artist from Toronto doing makeup for the Juno's is looking for a photographer. The details were fuzzy on what was needed, but I was definitely interested so I told him to have them contact me.

Soon enough, Jade from Artist Relations emails me about 'the Carly Rae Jepsen shoot'. Well, my eyes widened a little more at that line. If you don't know who she is, you'll probably recognize her song 'Call Me Maybe' - that massive pop song that gets stuck in everyone's heads. She recently signed to Justin Beiber's label. And was on Ellen a couple weeks ago. No big deal.

So Jade and I chat via phone and email about the details to work it all out. I was to contact Carly's manager and meet them at their hotel the day of the Juno's. Melissa Gibson, the MAC Senior Artist doing her makeup, would finish up and then I would have a few minutes to get a shot of the finished look.

The room I was set up with was less than ideal (no windows, no sweet furniture, actually not much of anything) but it would do for what was needed. So I call the manager to let them know I'm there, she says it will be 'quite a while' as they're way behind schedule. That's cool, I do have an iPhone to amuse myself with after getting a few setups figured out.

A couple hours later they come down. Because it's getting late at this point, I only have time for one setup. We meet and greet, I get super jealous of admire her makeup and dress, and we get started. I shoot for about a minute, we go through the pics, take a few more, we look again, and that was that. Carly and her manager were both extremely pleasant and I'm really happy I had this opportunity.

It was so weird watching the Juno's that night while editing the photos when she came on the screen to present an award. I had to take a pic. Really weird double vision kinda feeling.

A HUGE shout out to everyone involved: Matt, Jade, Melissa, Jess, Dayna, and Carly. And anyone else behind the scenes.

You can find the photo along with articles on the great makeup over at:

Fashion Magazine
Ottawa Citizen
Huffington Post
Ottawa Life

Another exciting update for me, I have a brand spankin' new website thanks to the folks over at A Photo Folio. I tried out their free demo, basically making my site exactly how I would want. By the end it was a no brainer for me to go ahead and purchase it. Too many amazing features. Especially compared to my old site that was a bitch to update, couldn't be viewed on mobile devices, and looked really small and bad on large screens. Here's the run down on the new features:

- Images scale to your browser/screen size
- Hovering next/prev/thumbnail cursors
- Those buttons also appear at the bottom
- Keyboard arrow keys can be used to advance photos
- Thumbnails can be shown/hidden
- Captions can be shown/hidden
- Fullscreen button
- Video page
- PDF Creator - make your own reference PDF of images you select yourself!
- Site viewable on iPhone and iPad (FYI different layouts than computer version, for best viewing on each device)

I also can't publish this post without mentioning A Photo Folio's incredible customer service. I'm all for giving credit where credit is due, and they really deserve it. For example, at 11:50 pm one night I emailed them with a minor issue I couldn't fix at my end. They're in Virginia, so same time zone. I assumed I would get a reply the next day, probably in the afternoon, with instructions on what to do. Get this: they emailed me back IN 5 MINUTES, with the problem FIXED. Like, done. No more issue. Another day (at a more reasonable time, but still after normal working hours, about 6:30 pm) I emailed with a different minor problem. Again, within 5 minutes they email back with the issue solved. That alone is worth it. I guess that's why they have clients like Dan Winters, Chris Crisman, etc. etc. If you're looking for a new site that's easy to customize and update, check A Photo Folio out for sure.

Oh, duh, also check out my damn site! www.jessicadeeks.com

As for other work, check out interior designer Sonya Kinkade's website. Portfolios 1-4 are all my work I did for her a little while ago. She also was the lead designer in Extreme Home Makeover - Kindness Edition, which you can read a blurb about in...

...Our Homes Ottawa Spring 2012! See what I did there? I have some work in here too, I shot the Home & Builder feature, as well as their People Feature. Pick it up at Sobey's (and other places that I can't remember) or read it online here.