Anna-Maria and Michael's wedding

I've recently had the chance to work with the amazing Michelle Quance on a wedding in Toronto. 

Check out our work on her blog: http://michellequancephotography.blogspot.ca/2013/11/anna-maria-michael.html

Toronto's Magical Sunset on Christmas Eve - 2013

Click here to see them in big: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bettinabphoto/

York Against Animal Abuse

Helping a good cause is always something that I like to do when it comes to photography. It does not matter if it's a big or a small case. A couple of months ago I was photographing out on an United Way fundraising campaign launched by Hershey Canada. Last week we were at York University shooting a fun event called 'York Against Animal Abuse'. 

My friend Martini's course was organizing social movements at the York University campus. The assignment was to pick a cause which they felt passionate about - and create a social movement based on it. Martini, Stephanie and Sabrina chose the animal rights - and specifically focused on alerting the public about preventing animal abuse.

The girls had over 200 people come and visit their table at the Vari Hall, on last Friday at the University. 150 of those people filled out surveys and pledged to help to put an end to the animal abuse.

Having two already rescued pets on the location proved that most of the students of York University are animal lovers. Everyone stopped for some love. It was amazing to see how people (students and teachers as well) are passionate about animals and their rights.

Niki and Tia were the absolute starts of the rainy Friday morning - these two beautiful babes are proving that you can only win if you rescue a dog. They were helping the group to spread the word about adopting/rescuing from shelters and to inform other people about the irreversible damage of abuse.

For more photos, click here. 

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Bruce's first snow. :)

I love babies.

Grunge Monday - Beautiful Barbara

This session came from a long-time inspiration - from one of my walks in the fashion district and on Queen West. 

We wanted to channel something grunge - something pure - and something with a dominant make up and a beautiful girl. 

This is was led to us shooting in Toronto's Financial District (pure, simple backgrounds) - with this oh-so-gifted girl, who's got this amazing sense of style. I just loooved working with Barbara (who happens to own the same last name as I do) - she understood exactly what I wanted, she saw the image in my head before we even captured it. Thank you pretty porcelain doll, I hope you love your photos! 

And honestly - I feel super lucky, because I found the best make-up artist in Toronto, and I am never going to let her go. Never. Ever. Thank you Martini for your magic once again. I encourage everyone to take a look at her blog please: makeupbymartini and follow her career on facebook. She is going to be super famous and very soon.

Also something we quickly realized while conducting this project: having a photo-session on Monday morning in the financial district of Toronto means that you are going to have some serious suits for background - and people will stare at you, haha! 

Why I love living at the Beaches

First of all, I'm not a nature photographer. I will never be one. However, I appreciate and adore the miraculous view here at The Beaches.  There is not a day that goes by without me saying: 'Oh my... Look at the sky! Look at the lake!' 

They say if you moved to The Beaches once, you will never leave. The whole place has amazing energies and inspires me every single day.

I could talk about my home all day long, but since I'm a photographer, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

These were taken with my iPhone 5. They are not professional, just for fun.

Hope you enjoy!

Young and Beautiful

I was going to write a couple lines about this project anyways, but I never found the right time for that. Our 'Young and beautiful' project back in May, truly inspired by art, beauty, spring and Lana Del Ray's music. 

The idea was born when Miss Brush walked into my life trough that door. I knew at the first moment, that I NEEDED to take pictures of her. As my luck usually goes, she said yes and pretty much yes to every request I had. 

The main concept was about capturing her natural beauty in natural environment. I imagined her among flowers, lots of flowers! Of course Mother Nature had different plans. When we've arrived to our location, I could count the number of the flowers with my fingers. Two. 

However thanks to the amazing stylist and make up artist, Barbara Bogar (more of her work: http://putsomelipstickon.blogspot.ca/) the entire concept was saved.

I was desperately looking for flowers, but once we stopped at our first location, quickly realized, that we've got the most beautiful flower in the world and that was Katie herself. 

The whole session was super girly and we all had so much fun. You can find the results on my facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/BettinaBogarPhotography

Reading all the feedback (especially the male ones) has propelled our amazing team to work together again. Maybe Katie will show more of her SIDEBOOB soon. Stay tuned!

Behind the scenes - VS Drakkan

Last week I've had the chance to take pictures of an extremely talented Toronto-based author, called VS Drakkan. 



I've always thought that it's not easy to work with another artist because of the strong and different personalities, but we had only an hour before sunset to get the official author images for his debut novel and I was truly amazed.


























We had one of the most easy-going, fun and artistic photo-sessions together. Despite the lack of time, he was willing to be goofy for the camera - and here are the results. 

To support VS Drakkan you can: 

- purchase his novel online: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/318613
- follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorVSDrakkan
- like his page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vsdrakkan