A High School, A Book & A Decade

This shoot just turned 10 years old. 

Back in 2015, I was invited back to my former high school to explore and photograph. Medicine Hat High School would soon be undergoing a modernization upgrade that would see a significant part of the old high school demolished. 

This was one of those projects that I took on out of my own curiosity and connection to the place, but the shoot turned lucrative when it became the basis for my photo book, "MHHS As It Was" in 2017. Not only did we sell over 1000 copies in pre-sale that year, but I was then hired to shoot the architectural images of the modernized high school in 2018. 

It just goes to show that some of those "free" shoots can pay dividends if you see the potential in owning the work in the long term. It also has me thinking I'm overdue to give that photo book thing another crack at some point lol. 

Good memories.

Photographing the Rise Up Hot Air Balloon Festival

Over this past weekend I had the pleasure of utilizing my media pass and photographing the Rise Up Hot Air Balloon Festival in Medicine Hat, Alberta for the 4th year in a row. Featuring a variety of launches, flights, glows, and a handful of custom "googly eyed" memes, my content this year reached over 300K people on the Editing Luke socials in just the first 4 days of the festival. 

The Rise Up Hot Air Balloon Festival is a vibrant, free, and family-friendly event held annually in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Launched by Willy and Cindy Taillon in collaboration with the nonprofit Our Collective Journey, the festival aims to uplift spirits and promote mental wellness through the awe-inspiring spectacle of hot air balloons soaring over the city.

Scheduled on May 22–25, 2025, the festival featured nearly 30 balloons from around North America and involved morning and evening flights, weather permitting. A highlight was the mesmerizing Balloon Glow event at Kin Coulee Park on the Friday night, where tethered balloons illuminated the night sky creating a magical experience for the attendees.

Your Cinema Needs You at the Paramount Theatre

My thanks to the Kamloops Film Society for selecting my documentary, Your Cinema Needs You for a series of screenings to help celebrate the 70th birthday of the historic Paramount Theatre in downtown Kamloops, British Columbia last weekend. 

Seeing this project travel the world and play in so many unique and historic venues has been the cherry on top of what we saw happen back home with the Monarch Theatre. 

Thank you so much for the continued support!

Online Release of Your Cinema Needs You

The wait is finally over! After 15 months since the premiere that reopened the Monarch Theatre and the extended international film festival tour that followed, Your Cinema Needs You is online and available to screen Canada-wide right now. Click here.

Hawaii, a Bentley, and a Magazine Cover

Back in the early days of my professional travel shoots (once it became a full-time gig) I felt like I was making up for lost time. This resulted in some questionable business decisions.

Jump cut. Oahu, Hawaii.

So much potential. I have a laundry list of locations I plan on documenting across the entire island. This is going to be amazing. But you know what would make it even better? Keeping it low key in an incredibly ostentatious Bentley Continental GTC.

I was watching a lot of Top Gear at the time. I could already picture the edits. I got in touch with a luxury dealership in Honolulu and worked out the details for my shoot. 

Now, at the time, I knew I'd have to sell a lot of the content just to cover my overhead and that, frankly, I was doing this first and foremost to have a story to tell.

I sold a few images after that trip, but not nearly enough to turn a profit on the shoot. Not exactly surprising.

Two years pass.

I have multiple galleries from the Oahu shoot online collecting casual hits. Out of the blue, I get a message about licensing from a marketing firm in Australia.

We chat. We hit it off. The idea expands. Another month passes.

I get an email notifying me that my Oahu shoot has turned into a multi page spread and that they'd like to offer me the cover story for the winter edition of the Qantas / Jetstar in-flight magazine. Highlights of that little road trip I took is now going to be in every seatback in Oceania.

Needless to say, the shoot finally turned a profit.