My background is that of design and photography. Most of my career has been that of a visual storyteller for magazines and in a frenetic newspaper newsroom.

STORIES MATTER. We are all drawn to stories of people and their situations. As a visual journalist for Canada's largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, my love of stories was put to the test every day with tight deadlines and sometimes trying circumstances.

So when I left the newsroom, I had to find an outlet for my love of story telling. I never thought I would shoot weddings, but after doing my first wedding for a friend, I realized it was not unlike a news feature! A wedding is a day-long visual narrative with other stories coming in to support that narrative. Weddings are emotional days for those getting married, their friends and family. I love capturing moments of emotion, surprise and moments of quiet. I choose to photograph these moments as black and white images because my style focuses the attention on the moment I have captured. If the images were in colour, I risk conveying the moment because colour can be a distraction and competition to what the moment might be. Other parts of the wedding day are shot in colour since that is what most couple want.

Family formal portraits, ceremony and other times can absolutely be shot in colour (often I give a selection of both colour and black and white). But for the special moments – those are best presented as black and white. Here are a few examples of moments I love, and moments that absolutely work in black and white. With one exception, the colour image! This particular image was a lovely moment, but because the fire truck is all about colour, it needed to be presented in colour!