About Us

A Message from Justin Lam, owner and operator of Matte Box Memories:

I want to share my gift of vision and love of story to those who would like to honour the past and celebrate the present.  Helping people overcome their insecurities and embrace their differences is important to me because it is these very things that make us all unique.  I want people to fall in love with memories because in the end, it's the memories we remember that define the life we lived.

​In my life I cherish memories in photography and videography and I share this passion with my family.  It is truly an honor to be the historian for our family and now for yours.

I fondly remember the pictures hung on the wall of my grandparents home.  A window of time frozen forever that tells of life in a place I would never know or get to visit.  Photos that survived a war and the journey that would bring them from Asia to Canada.  It gave me insight to the people, the history and the legacy of my family tree. I am forever grateful to my elders who felt that photography was important.  In my youth, I would constantly flip through the many thick albums my parents had.  I found myself constantly asking them about the story behind each one.  Every photograph had a story and every story was important in how we got to where we were.  So where am I now?

Matte Box Memories exists because of my undying curiosity and deep rooted desire to document life through photo and video.  I believe that there is a place for both fine art portraiture and photojournalism in our work.  Some photos I believe should be flawless, beautiful and a preserved formally.  Formal portraiture lets us showcase the very best we can be.  They make us feel beautiful, give us confidence and has a luxuriousness to it.

I also believe there is an intoxicating and addicting quality in memories that can only be captured by being completely present in an unscripted, unplanned environment.  Photojournalism as it is known is powerful and tells a deeper story. Stories that at first glance may feel mundane, but over time carry so much more sentiment than we could ever imagine. The nervousness as your husband waits to see you walk down the aisle, the loving hug between a mom and her child or even that rare moment dad gets caught dancing the hokey pokey with the kids can be preserved forever. And those memories are absolutely priceless.

I want to meet and document as many people who cherish and love photography, videography and story.  I want to be a part of their life and provide them a gift of eternal preservation.  I want to share in their moments of strength, times of joy and times when they feel weak and vulnerable.  I want to forever change how photography is viewed and invoke a sense of pride in all their experiences because it is their experiences makes them unique.  I want photos to adorn walls, be accessible by opening albums and allow those images to whisk them away back to that moment and be able to share that experience with others.  I want videos to be played over and over again because it invokes deep emotions.  In short, I want to celebrate as much of life as I can, and I work with a team that shares that same deep desire.