Tolen Photos - Saskatoon

I’m a photographer based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada who specializes in photographing weddings; I am also a Ph.D. scholar in Biological Engineering.

I was born in Imphal, Manipur, India: a beautiful town in the Northeast region of India.  I grew up in different parts of the country;  I started living away from home at an early age and landed in the beautiful scenic coastal city of Vishakhapatnam when I was 11. Then I attended college in Food Engineering in one of the most amazing places, Gangtok, Sikkim. Sikkim is where I fell in love with general photography. How can anyone resist the mesmerizing sceneries of the majestic Himalayas! I was predominantly an amateur landscape photographer. Then after my graduation, I had the opportunity of interning at the capital city of India, New Delhi.  During all my nomadic life in different parts of the country, I was lucky enough to meet a number of amazing people who opened my eyes to the world of art and design; which hopefully altered the path of my life in more ways than I could ever imagine.

After graduating college,  I moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in hopes of one day becoming a scientist and a researcher in the field of food and biological engineering. I started my Master’s degree in Biological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan and after graduating my Master’s degree with four international journal publications, I was pretty motivated to continue my study in the same field of study. So, I am doing my Ph.D. at the present. Apart from my academic career, I was somehow building my creative and business portfolio without me being aware of it. Every time I got a chance, I would go to the rocky mountains, hike all the beautiful places, take pictures and post them on my social. Also, whenever I felt like doing something fun, for some reason I always chose instinctively to some kind of photography, let it be street photography in the amazing Broadway and Downtown Saskatoon or some landscape or cityscape photography by the Meewasin trail or by the university bridge. This somehow got to the attention of the Indian Student Association and they invited me to take some pictures at one of their Indian cultural event called ‘Parichay’. Things slowly changed from here on and my work got recognized by some people.  People approached me to do family pictures, graduation pictures, stylized photo shoots, e-commerce photoshoots and I was getting paid for all these. Being at an infant stage in the field, the idea of getting paid for photography was not on my mind. Being a trained researcher, I did some research on ‘photography as a business’ and I was fascinated by all the amazing possibilities. One business model that I really got connected to was wedding photography.

Wedding photography is all about creating an emotional anchor filled with beautiful memories, and to me, photography has always been about creating and treasuring memories. To better finesse myself in the wedding photography genre, I have attended a full fledged training program on starting a wedding photography business from SLR Lounge and Lin and Jirsa Photography. I cannot thank them enough for they have taught me some great insights on how I should execute my business.

In 2020, I founded the Tolen Photos, a wedding photography business and I have been documenting weddings in the form of photographs, capturing the timeless moments.