Bochsler Studios is proud to be the oldest family owned portrait and wedding studio in Hamilton and surrounding area. Established nearly 70 years ago, and serving three generations, we continue to capture your family memories. Allow us to capture your family's history for future generations.
Bochsler Studios now also serving the beautiful Bruce Peninsula, Owen Sound, Hanover and South Western Ontario areas as well as the Hamilton area. Bochsler Studios is now available to service your wedding, portrait and commercial photographic needs.
Winner of the Hamilton Spectator's Readers Choice Award for three years in a row, our favourite photographer, Joseph Bochsler Jr, has been photographing weddings, family portraits, business portraits as well as handling commercial portraits and commercial advertising studies since taking over the studio in 1982. The Bochsler family has a long history of photographic excellence winning many awards.
Joseph's goal is to continue the long tradition of providing quality, and creative professional photography in Southern Ontario.
As seen in the Hamilton Spectator.
Photographer's winning ways provide means to make his subjects smile.
By Jennifer Adams
It all began in the first grade. He took his camera to school, photographed his class and sold enough prints to buy his first baseball glove. He hasn't looked back since.
"When something like that happens to you that early, you realize it isn't such a bad thing ... It's all I've ever been interested in getting involved in."
As he grew older, Joe got his true start in the photography business while working in his father's darkroom at Bochsler Studios. "This was my apprenticeship, we were one of the first studios in the city to print our own colour."
Although he didn't leave the field of photography, for a while he did venture out to see a bit of the world - travelling all over Canada shooting landscapes.
By the early '70s he was trying his hand in the newspaper industry, working for three-and-a-half years as a colour technician and photographer for the Hamilton Spectator.
Then, in 1980 he opened a co-operative photographic gallery in Hess Village.
But when his father decided to retire, Joe, now 46, wanted to carry on the family name Bochsler Studios. "I thought that this was important (to continue the studio). I mean we're the oldest studio in the city."
Since the early '40s, this studio - currently located on Forest Avenue - has been shooting all kinds of photography.
From wedding, family and business portraiture to landscape, commercial and aerial work. In the studio or on location, Bochsler Studios does it all.
Although he enjoys all of his work, he says it's the wedding photography that is the most fun and challenging. Besides being "one big party", Joe must work under some pretty tight time constraints while coming up with new and innovative ideas. It's this challenge that gets and keeps him going.
For Joe, although there's a serious side to any type of photography, he insists it's all about having fun with the photo subjects. By humouring them and making them comfortable, he has carved out a stellar reputation in this very competitive industry.
This year, he has been chosen as the Readers' Choice Award winner in the favourite local photographer category.
It's not a surprise, as Joanne Marchesano of Hamilton says. She voted for Joe because, as her family's photographer, "he makes us feel so comfortable."
The Marchesano's latest family portrait, taken in 2000, was an on-location picture. Joe shot them in the V of an old tree on the Grand River.
"It's just gorgeous. We had it blown up to 30x40 and it's hanging in our house. It's beautiful, like a painting," says Marchesano.
She also had smaller versions of the portrait made up and gave them as the family's Christmas gifts to relatives last year.
As far as she's concerned, this particular portrait is so amazing because Joe has a knack of making them all smile.
"He's so personable yet professional and he's got a wonderful sense of humour."
As Joe, himself says, "What's there not to enjoy about anything in photography? As long as you're having fun with it."