A personal touch: photographer reinventing the corporate video.

• Author: Ross, Ian

The prospect of shooting mundane corporate videos may pay the bills, but it really didn't stir Patrick Gilbert's creative juices.

So the North Bay photographer and multi-media producer decided to create a demonstration project that would showcase his full range of ability and skill.

Gilbert wanted a corporate video that didn't look corporate: something that was deeply personal, that lived and breathed the lives of the people he was profiling.

"I'd clone some corporate videos, but I was having a hard time explaining to people the videos I really wanted to make," said Gilbert.

He hooked up with a young couple who ran a rustic bed-and-breakfast in Nipissing Village, south of North Bay.

Known as the Piebird video, he profiled the folksy and quirky lives of the proprietors, Sherry Milford and Yan Roberts, and their vegan getaway at a century-old country home, replete with meandering pet goats.

"It was about them and their business, but not really talking about their business," said Gilbert. "I had a really hard time pushing that idea, but I knew if I could put this together with these two people it would be a perfect fir."

It resonated with many viewers on the web and has become his video calling card.

"It was really weird because people would call me up in totally different industries and say, we want a video like Piebird," said Gilbert, and I would be laughing in my head. That one definitely changed the direction of everything."

Raised in Thorne, across the Ottawa River from Temiscaming, Que., Gilbert worked for some local design firms and taught web design and visual illustration at Canadore College before branching out on his own.

"I was definitely out of my element. I'm not in my comfort zone speaking in front of 50 people," said the admittedly shy and reserved Gilbert.

He started Patrick Gilbert Productions in 2005, doing freelance web design for clients before eventually transitioning into photography five years ago.

"I spent years where I didn't have to see a whole lot of people or talk to anybody. But the whole time I was always obsessed with shooting. I always had a camera in my hand."

Video wasn't on his radar until the Canon EOS 7D cameras hit the market in 2009. "It opened so many doors."

He pitched the idea of shooting aerial footage to Helicopters Canada, one of his web clients, which got him rolling on the corporate video path.

Today. Gilbert boasts a wide-ranging client base in the mining, forestry, manufacturing, aviation...