Posted by
Robert J. Ballantyne
Urban Oasis
Urban Oasis (photo courtesy of Michael Graydon and Nikole Herriott)Michael Graydon: We were shooting creatives together like crazy, doing blog posts and stuff around this time.
Nikole Herriott: A creative is something that you would just do for fun, not to get paid.
Michael: Nikole and I were walking in our neighbourhood and she looked over, as she often does, and noticed something beautiful in the ordinary.
Nikole: There were lilacs blooming.
Michael: It was like an urban oasis. Nikole has this old picnic bench from her family that she had shipped from Victoria, so we strapped it on the top of my car, and we brought it over to this location in a train track area. Then, before the sun came up, we pushed it over a fence along with all our props and took a picture. This was our first creative together. We were both fascinated with each other. Nikole liked what I could bring to the table, as she was already doing this kind of stuff before I met her.
Nikole: You made it look professional. At that time, technically, I was not able to do that.
Michael: To me, Nikole was amazing because I walked by these train tracks a hundred times before I met her and had never noticed it.
Nikole: It’s one of my favorite photos. It’s sentimental.
Michael: We’ve come a long way since then, but to me this is the nucleus. It’s how we got started.