Art of Weddings

When British-born Mike Day picked up a camera for the first time in the early '90s, it was for reasons one can easily relate to: he was about to embark on a cycling expedition across continents to quench his thirst for travel and adventure, and he wanted to capture the world through his camera as it unfolded one exotic destination at a time. Little did he know that this journey would end up with him discovering his passion for photography, leading him to his true calling in life – The Art of Weddings, and his future Canadian wife.

Fresh out of undergrad school with a degree in chemistry and geochemistry, and not unlike most 20-somethings, Mike was clueless about what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He had tried his hands at all kinds of jobs. “I worked with the homeless, worked in a factory, did some cleaning work, was a milkman and even a bicycle courier for a bit,” he says. But nothing excited Mike more than the idea of travelling all over Europe, India and Nepal, and crossing the Sahara desert while going from North to West Africa. “I took a lot of pictures on these trips and really loved it,” Mike reminisces.

After feeding his wanderlust, Mike came to Canada, where his love for photography started to expose itself. He set up his own darkroom (this was during the pre-digital era) and started exhibiting his black-and-white travel prints in galleries, cafés and art shows around Ottawa, and even sold a few pieces. It was after he moved to Toronto and found work in downtown camera stores that Mike started dabbling in wedding photography.