I'm a family & life photographer. (And wedding photographer, but that's on my other website.)

So it's not every day I get an inquiry to do a photoshoot for a horror movie. Which is what made this inquiry so cool. Just before Christmas, in the midst of yet another blizzard, I got such a message (or was it a phone call?) from Simon Phillips, an actor and director (who incidentally plays Santa in this holiday horror).

The details were vague at first. Meet up was at a house in rural Ontario, North of Napanee. Late at night... The roads were icy, the evening hours pitch black, the schedule kept changing, and my initial enthusiasm to do this shoot was wavering.

In the end though, we met at Queen's pub in Napanee, during daylight hours, though you couldn't tell because inside it was dark as night. The cast had been filming for days; long, hard days that started at 3am and went on until everyone was exhausted, some of them sleeping on the cold wooden floor between takes, covered with their own jackets for warmth. The whole place had the stench of fake blood.

Despite the gruelling schedule and apparent sleep deprivation, every person I photographed was phenomenally friendly.

It was a glimpse into a different world for me. The task was to take portraits for promotional posters for the movie, and my instructions were that the portraits had to be dark, moody, half-lit.

Below you'll find a few of the photographs I took.

"Once Upon a Time at Christmas" comes out Dec 2017. Look for it here.