2023: Top Photo Essays of the Year

Suffice it to say, my feed was pretty documentary heavy in 2023, but I still found time to release some major travel shoots throughout the year. It's once again quite a mixed bag of locations, which is a nice reminder of just how much this aspect of my career has grown over the decade.

The 10 images shown here represent complete photo essays that were released on the Editing Luke site in 2023 - ranked as the 10 most viewed collections on the site this year. Thank you all for coming on this ride with me. Here's to continued adventures in 2024!

10. A visit with the Statue of Liberty

9. Capturing iconic London views from the Royal Leonardo Hotel

8. Inside the German Spy Museum in Berlin

7. A stay at Winnipeg's iconic Fort Garry 

6. The Big Donut: Randy's Donuts

5. Trying the best scotch at the Balmoral in Edinburgh, Scotland

4. Inside the Academy Museum in Los Angeles

3. A stay at the Watergate in Washington DC

2. Climbing the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City

1. Sunsets & Cowboy Baths: Camping out in a vintage trailer in Joshua Tree National Park 

Premiere Screenings of Your Cinema Needs You

What an incredible way to close out 2023! The premiere screenings of "Your Cinema Needs You" at the Monarch Theatre have been a resounding success with just over 1200 people passing through the cinema's doors for 3 nights of sold out shows.

It's been 3 days of laughs, cheers, tears, and a lot of nostalgia as the Monarch Theatre received the long-awaited reintroduction that she deserved, and the feature-length documentary finally got the climactic conclusion that we always dreamed would be possible after first learning of the theatre's closure back in 2021.

If I'm completely honest, I was never concerned that people wouldn't "like" the documentary. We'd done enough previews and test screenings along the way to know that even the casual movie-lover was likely to find something to sink their teeth into. What I hadn't prepared for though, was for quite this many people to actually LOVE it. And I mean, paragraphs long messages, tears in their eyes, personally recommending it to all of their friends, love it. That's something you really can't know until you're in the moment and you're seeing it unfold directly in front of you each night.

This was all a bit of lightning in a bottle. The timing of the production lining up with the closure of the Monarch was one thing, but then getting the opportunity to reintroduce Canada's oldest, surviving, purpose-built movie theatre by hosting the premiere screenings as part of the official reopening was all incredibly serendipitous. As I said in my premiere speeches each night, "I couldn't have scripted a better conclusion than this."

"Your Cinema Needs You" has the privilege of being the last screening at the Monarch in 2023, and will now also be the first screening of 2024 with the launch of the encore shows beginning on January 4th. I simply can't say it enough, but thank you to everyone who has made this possible. This has absolutely been a dream come true. Happy New Year!

History Was On Hand: Monarch Documentary

Thank you to the Medicine Hat News for being in attendance and sharing this story following the opening night of the Premiere Screenings of Your Cinema Needs You at the Monarch Theatre in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Read the full news story here.