Dallas Kolotylo
Wedding | Last Updated: April 4, 2024
I started experimenting with photography when I was ten years old shooting with my mother’s Pentax ME Super. I fell in love with it instantly, and photography became my hobby for many years. Film is costly though, so I didn’t really start to grow as a photographer until I went into digital.
My first digital camera was a Nikon D60 and Nikon 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 kit lens. It was such a great experience for me and I learned so much from that camera, it gave me the opportunity to experiment and obsess about taking pictures the way I always wanted to but couldn’t afford.
I currently shoot with a Nikon D3S and I absolutely love it, it feels strange thinking back when it first came out and it was such a dream for me to be able to use one!
I typically use the Nikon 58mm f/1.4, and Nikon 85mm f/1.4 – I really love the way that these two Nikon camera lenses render perspective and colour. I’m a big fan of portraiture and I find that those two focal lengths really work with my shooting style.
I also use the Sigma 35mm f/1.4ART lens as well as the Nikon 24mm f/1.4 on occasion if I’m in a small space or need to fit a lot of people into a shot.
I photograph with my wife Sabrina and she currently shoots with the Nikon D800 and the same lenses that I use, but she is also a big fan of using the “modified” Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens (that I made after reading a tutorial by Sam Hurd) to do some incredible free lensing shots that you typically can’t do with Nikon lenses.
Nowadays I’ve come full circle and I shoot film for my personal work, and I’ve even taught myself how to process my own black and white film, FUN!!!! Sometimes I bring some film cameras to weddings just for fun, I mostly shoot with my Mamiya 645AFD, its my big, fat, heavy, loud, clunky, heavy, loud, heavy baby, and I love it to bits.
The next gear we will purchase will likely be Nikon D750’s since the reviews about that camera have been pretty mental, (ed – check out the Shotkit review of the Nikon D750) and the small form factor combined with a beautiful full frame sensor is really appealing when you’ve been lugging around a D3S for a few years.
Sabrina and I love to travel, and it’s quickly becoming a regular part of our business as well. We love shooting destination weddings and recently we’ve been in Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and China, and we are adding Europe to the list in 2015!
We were just named one of 30 rising stars of wedding photography by Rangefinder Magazine for 2014 and also one of Canada’s top wedding photographers under 30 years of age by the CPC for 2014 so that’s been exciting.
What we carry:
Canadian & European Passports (Sabrina is also a Spanish citizen, bonus) so we are always ready to travel!
Nikon D3S
Nikon D800
Nikon 58mm f/1.4
Nikon 85mm f/1.4
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART
Nikon 24mm f/1.4
“modified” Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens
2 x Yongnuo YN560- III flashes
Dallas uses the Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home Camera bag with the Holdfast Moneymaker Strap.
Sabrina uses the Thinktank Retrospective 5 camera bag with the Blackrapid RS-7 Strap.
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