For my 31st birthday, I decided it was about time I spend the day doing exactly what I want to do, instead of celebrating by putting on a big stressful party for other people to enjoy. What I wanted to do was spend the weekend in Toronto with my husband, exploring and doing things I’ve never done before like going to the Art Gallery of Ontario, the aquarium and riding a streetcar!

Despite the chill in the air, us both having colds and getting lost a few times, we had an amazing weekend! We intentionally went to the aquarium during dinnertime so it wouldn’t be so crowded, but it didn’t work. It was still packed with obnoxious parents shrieking at their fairly well behaved children, people taking in the oceanic atmosphere after enjoying some of our newly legal cannabis and everyone jockeying to get the perfect shot of everything single thing they encountered. To tune out the crowds and the chaos, I started trying to take silly glamour portraits of the animals from positions and angles no one else was interested in using. I showed my husband the few I’d gotten and made him break his usual reserve to chuckle, so I kept going and actually had a blast indulging myself and my models.

All photos by me.