Ryan Parker photographed Bob and Barbara Walker, Bill Smith, Jill Fenton, Daniel W. Yeung and Sine Chadi for 6 Who Inspire, a set of profiles that ran in Edify’s June 2026 issue.
The story
6 Who Inspire
It profiles six people, aged 66 to 91, who have spent decades giving back. Bob Walker managed construction of city hall and the Royal Alberta Museum and co-founded the Alberta Immigrant Women & Children Centre; Barbara taught for 25 years and led the Compassion House Foundation. Bill Smith played football in Edmonton before serving three terms as mayor. Jill Fenton was principal of a school in Kigali and started Tools for Schools in rural Rwanda, Daniel W. Yeung built Universal Dental Laboratories and mentors new technologists, and Sine Chadi, an entrepreneur and former MLA, has helped hundreds get started.
- Magazine
- Edify
- Issue
- June 2026
- Ran as
- The opening page, and four two-page spreads
- Words
- Mariana Gutierrez Serna, Ben Roth, Alyssa Noel and Isabela Varela
- Art direction
- Kim Larson
- Photographs
- Ryan Parker
As printed
The cover, and the pages.
01Edify, June 2026
The frames
The photographs, before the type.
01The photographs
How it got made
The brief, the room, the frame.
Kim’s references were Vanity Fair fabric photographs and dancers, where the subject does the work with the fabric. The six we were photographing were 66 to 91, so I needed a way to bring that energy without making them the ones throwing it. At the fabric store I went looking for the lightest white I could find, saw black beside it and grabbed that too, just in case. We needed the room of my big white wall, and against it the white just didn’t carry the motion Kim’s references had.
So we went to the black. Two industrial fans on the floor blew it upward, and all the sitters had to do was hold it. Kim, Tiiu and I held the edges out of frame, let go at different moments and watched what shapes we could get. It was a really fun, playful shoot, which was exactly what we wanted.
Below is me testing it on myself, with each frame from the camera lined up to the moment the flash fired.
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