CORE
Principals

  1. We are makers, craft is sacred

  2. WE create for tomorrow

  3. BEAUTY LIES IN RESTRAINT

  4. Intent speaks louder than scale

  5. Vision is not mass produced

Founder of on2

Nicholas Hyatt is a Toronto-based photographer working across beauty, still life, and fashion. His work is defined by restraint and a sculptural approach to light and form, positioned at the intersection of fine art and luxury retail.

He approaches image-making with the care and intentionality of a 1990s fashion-era workflow — concept-led, highly considered, and built through collaboration. Working fluidly between digital and film, his process allows for precision in development and nuance in the final image, balancing control with the inherent qualities of each medium.

Projects are developed through close collaboration, extensive personal testing, and an insistence on effort beyond necessity, resulting in images that feel both precise and resolved.

Largely unconcerned with visual trends or short-lived aesthetics, Hyatt’s photographs favour control over excess. Form, texture, and negative space are treated with equal importance, allowing the work to hold tension without spectacle.

Influenced by photographers such as Irving Penn and Herb Ritts, his practice explores the relationship between body and object — where materials are not simply styled, but constructed with structure and presence.

Hyatt has collaborated with clients including Lune 1860, Sephora Canada, Former Girlfriend, and NUVO Magazine. His background in the fine and high jewellery industry — where precision and detail are paramount — continues to inform his photographic eye.

His personal work drives his commissioned projects, maintaining a visual language rooted in trust, curiosity, and measured control. Recently, Hyatt has begun to expand this approach in motion, exploring how time, rhythm, and restraint can extend his sculptural language beyond the still image.

THE ORIGINS
OF ON2

Toronto’s Fashion District was built by visionaries — tailors, pattern makers, and entrepreneurs who transformed raw fabric into possibility. From the early 1900s, the warehouses along Spadina buzzed with energy; it was a place where craft and ambition intertwined, weaving Toronto’s creative spirit into its very fabric.

Today, On2 continues that legacy in a new form. Located at 174 Spadina, our studio inhabits one of the district’s historic spaces, transforming it once again into a site of creation.

Where garments were once sewn, we now shape light, form, and story—crafting images that carry the spirit of the makers who came before us. Rooted in history but driven by vision, On2 exists to honour the past by making something entirely new.

Vintage urban street scene with historic buildings, early 20th-century automobiles, pedestrians, and tram tracks lined with bare trees.

Spadina Ave. looking north, 1926. Toronto Archives.

Black and white photo of an urban street scene with a tall brick building labeled 'Les Gardiner' and a partially demolished building with a crane. Several parked cars are visible on the street.

174 Spadina Ave., 1984. Peter MacCallum.

Black and white street scene with traffic, pedestrians, and a large Chanel advertisement featuring a woman, located in an urban area with buildings and a bus visible.

Queen St. looking north on Spadina, 1994. Avard Woolaver.