#ShotByYoni

My name is Leonard “Yoni” Sambo and I’m a photographer born and raised in Ottawa, ON, Canada. I primarily focus on fashion and portraiture but I also shoot commercial work such as architecture and food. 

I’ve always admired fashion as it’s a way for people to communicate a mood, a thought, an idea/concept or how they feel daily without ever saying a single word and it always varies from person to person. The range of clothing is limitless really - with different cuts, colors, types of fabrics, different influences, there’s really no end to what you can create. The majority of my inspiration and how I photograph draws from my travels, things I’ve seen, food I’ve eaten and most of all: movies and how they’re filmed, character development, sets they build, scripts they write and all that comes with it. I shoot in a more cinematic way which allows me to bring out as much texture as I can in the photos to somewhat bring the viewer into the frame as if it were you behind the lens and stood right before each model.

My photography will always be a work in progress as myself as an artist and as a person. I’m always tweaking things and trying new things to see if they work or not. I find myself much happier at this stage of my career and with this style of photography that I’ve developed over the past few years. Who knows, maybe I can take what I’ve learned in photography and apply it to a short film in the near future. By looking at my work, my goal is for each viewer to understand its purpose or at the very least they bring out a or some of your emotions. By no means do all these photos that I’ve submitted connect in anyway like a series, but what I can say about all of them, is that they were all #ShotByYoni.