This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

After spending about 15 mins photographing my son Victor I’ve discovered one thing: photographing 3-year olds is hard! Especially ones who are quite used to their mama’s camera and would rather play around the firepit and walk along the logs holding your hand. And yes, he’s wearing a pyjama top

At 3 Victor has gone through some pretty big changes (I notice that this happens around his year marks, he seems to take a few big developmental leaps around his birthday). The biggest one is being potty trained (mamas, you know how big a deal this is!), as well as progress in his language (he’s still quite a bit behind but he communicates in little sentences now and for the most part he gets his point across). He’s also a lot less temperamental and tantrum-y, which is huge for me since he had a pretty bad and long spell of ‘terrible twos’. He’s a breeze to take out most of the time and is also easy to put to bed. The biggest challenge with him is mealtimes/food in general, but I think that’s quite common with a lot of kids. He loves TV and the computer but isn’t as obsessed as he was before (and like his sister is now), and he plays really well by himself, talking to himself and doing all those cute little kid things that they do with their imagination. He has a really good memory and is extremely observant (he’ll mention something and it will take Dan and I several days to figure out what he means because it’s such a small little detail), and he can ‘read’ several books by himself because he has them memorized. He knows his ABCs and 123s in English and French and loves to learn that kind of thing. He’s also getting really into playing outside in his sandbox or the yard (he wanted me to roll in the grass with him the other day), and I’m looking forward to trying out different activities with him over the summer (he was never really old enough to ‘get’ activities before). He’s quiet in public and still a bit shy but can be super hyper and rough and tumble, especially with his sister. He’s turning into a real little boy and it’s been so fun to watch (he surprises me almost everyday with something new).

This boy, he’s got my heart pretty locked up; he’s my first and my beau garçon.

(When I saw him doing this I knew the session was over, ha!)

Thanks for letting me share some personal photos of what takes up the rest of my time when I’m not working

Back soon!

Sometimes, when you’re a photographer, you can get a bit of ‘big camera fatigue’. While I LOVE my job and wouldn’t want to do anything else, I admit to relying on my iPhone for taking the majority of my at-home pics (especially now that I have the 4S, the camera is really decent on it!) And while I do take a lot of casual, candid shots of my kids with my ‘big camera’ for my Project Life albums (a scrapbooking system that I need to blog about!), I don’t do many ‘real’ sessions with them. Especially my son Victor, he hasn’t had a ‘formal’ session since before Violet was born! So anyway, one evening a couple of weeks ago I decided to take them out into the side field as the sun was going down and get a few ‘real’ shots with my big camera. Nothing fancy or too planned out, just some shots of my kids as they are, right now. First up I’m sharing Violet’s shots

If I have to describe Violet usually the first word that comes to mind is either ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’. She is such a little personality and completely different from my first born that we still wonder where she came from most days! At 19 months she is in full blown toddler mode, getting into everything and exploring as much as she can, making messes and throwing tantrums along the way. The thing with her is she is just so FUNNY. She’s a bit of a drama queen and make ‘drama eyes’ when things don’t go her way, and has a fake cry down to a science (she also likes to go sulk against the wall, peeking to see if anyone is looking of course). She pretends to sleep on the stairs when we catch her coming down after putting her to bed (as if we wouldn’t notice her there), she pats our back and squeezes our neck when she gives hugs, she pours entire glasses or even jugs of liquid onto the floor (or onto her father’s lap while he’s sleeping on the couch-really), she doesn’t say a word but still gets her point across easily, loves to wear her rubber boots everywhere and is a bit of a TV junkie, eats all her veggies before anything else at meal times, follows and mimics her brother, and does a dozen funny or odd things throughout the day that makes us laugh. Even her looks are kind of crazy, she her shaggy blonde mullet (that is getting so long!), and big front teeth (but still only 2 bottom teeth despite having molars), she’s her own little person and we love her for it. She’s ‘ma p’tite bine’ (little bean) and will always be my baby.

Enjoy a few of her shots below!

“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” -William Shakespeare

Back soon to share her brother’s images!

I’m back to share the 2nd part of my session with Courtney. After we did our indoor shots we headed out into the relatively warm April weather and did some photos around the fields and woods near her home in Waterford. It’s insanely beautiful out there and even though it was high noon (meaning the sun was a bit harsh), we managed to find enough shade and avoided too many crazy shadows. I asked Courtney to dress a bit ‘boho’, and of course she looked amazing. We were out there for over an hour and I could have photographed her all day, easily

Enjoy!

If I have any luck I’ll get to photograph Courtney again someday, so much fun!

Have a good day everyone!

Over the winter I was feeling a little ‘blah’; I’m sure the weather had something to do with it, but I think that I was feeling a bit confined creatively. Although I was very thankful for the work I was doing and was happy with what I was creating, I just felt like it was all kind of ‘standard’, and I hadn’t done anything different in quite some time. Then I saw a few photographer friends doing ‘just for fun’ creative shoots, either to try something new with lighting, or to practice their posing/composition, or just to do something out of the box. I decided that for my own good I should try something similar, but I didn’t know exactly what I wanted or who to ask to be my ‘model’. Then while driving into town one day it hit me like a flash: I knew exactly what I wanted and who I wanted to ask. I started feeling giddy and that spark that I was missing came back with a fury. Just having that initial planning stage was so good for me creatively, without even picking up my camera. Anyway, the images below are the results of my ‘just for fun’ session.

I knew that I wanted to photograph a girl, and not just any girl, but a really beautiful one. I know many beautiful people but Courtney’s name was the one that popped into my head as I was driving that day and sparked this whole thing. Courtney is a friend of my sister Daphné and we’ve been ‘online friends’ through Twitter/IG for a little while now. To say she is beautiful is an understatement; she is amazingly gorgeous and I had the most amazing time photographing her! She said that she was nervous but as the session went on she started to feel a bit more comfortable and trusted me with my ideas, which I really appreciate and I admire her for putting herself out there for me.

The basic concept was that I wanted to pretend that I was observing her as she started her day. I also wanted it to be moody and a bit melancholy since I absolutely love that style of emotive photography but rarely get to photograph it, so I asked her to keep her hair/make-up/wardrobe really simple, to not look at me too much and to keep it fairly calm/reflective. She needed very little instruction and nailed what I was looking for. The lighting in her room was limited to  a small window but being confined like that added to the mood and forced me to work my angles a bit. I also wanted to try a bit of a different editing style than my usual, so I used lots of deep black and whites and matte colour. I’m thrilled with what came out of it and it definitely pulled me out of my ‘winter blues’.

This is just part 1 of our time together, will  be sharing the outdoor images later this week!

Have a great week everyone! And please, leave Courtney some love, she was so good to me!

I have another beautiful newborn session to share, this time another sweet boy named Damien. His mama Isabelle emailed me long before his arrival to book a session and I eagerly awaited all winter for an email or call from her announcing his arrival! I drove up to Fredericton to meet this brand new family and was greeted by not only Marc and Isabelle (who are some of the nicest people ever), but by grandparents, extended family, friends (and a dog!) as well. It was probably my largest ‘audience’ for a newborn session to date   Everyone was really helpful though and after a bit of work on our part, Damien fell asleep and we were able to get to work. We incorporated grand mama’s fur coat into one of the shots (love!), a cute football crochet set (knit by grand mama as well), and made sure to get a lot of sweet family images. It was the first time I did family shots like this using my backdrop and I LOVE the results! Marc and Isabelle were so gentle with their little bébé, and were so calm and in love with him, it’s always such a joy to observe a new family in the making

Please enjoy a few of my favourites from their session below!

Have a great day everyone!

I dare say that spring is finally here! After such a long winter it felt absolutely AMAZING to get out and shoot a session outdoors without being bundled up and working with that gorgeous late evening sun that I’ve missed so much. I started my ‘engagement/wedding/crazy busy’ season last weekend with one of my August couples, Lori and Darren. We were originally supposed to have our engagement session last November but due to bad weather we decided to wait until the spring…I’m so glad that we did because even though the trees were still bare and the grass wasn’t quite green, we still managed to have some amazing weather!

Lori and Darren claimed to only have 3 ‘good’ pictures of them in the 5 years that they’ve been together, which is insane, so I was more than happy to help add to their collection They did really well at their first photo session and I’m looking forward to photographing their Saint John wedding in August! We used one of my go-to locations nearby, the park in Apohaqui, and I absolutely love how some of the images turned out.

Enjoy a few of my favourites below!

I’m back to share a quick and sweet little session I had with 1-year old Charlee. What a little cutie she was! Her grandmother Judy wanted some photos of her at a year (an important milestone), so I was happy to oblige Photographing 1-year olds is always interesting, you never know what you’re going to get! Charlee was just learning to walk (she was quite good already) and didn’t sit still for very long, but we managed to use a few props to slow her down a little bit, haha. Big sister even got in for a few shots, I love their matching dresses!

Enjoy a few favourites from their session!

So sweet

Back next week with another newborn session to share!

Have a great weekend,

I can’t believe that we’re into May already! Time is flying by as always.

I have a few more indoor sessions to share from the winter before getting back into my ‘regular’ sessions, starting with this sweet newborn session I did about 6 weeks ago. Meghan had contacted me asking for newborn photos of her 3rd child, Jonathan, but what made it really neat to hear from her (again) was that she was one of the first people to buy a gift certificate from me 2 YEARS ago for her sister Jodi (the resulting session with Nicholas was my first newborn session ever!) I was thrilled to work with this family again, and Jonathan was a great little model. I brought my backdrops to their home and I think that helped him feel comfortable and he slept for most of the time we needed him to. We then brought in Jonathan’s 2 older siblings, Andrew and Macy, and had a little sibling session on the bed. I love some of the shots of them together, so sweet!

I’m still learning so much about newborn photography but it’s always fun to try new things and new props (this was my first time using a tie and a basketball!), and I’m so thankful that families trust me enough to capture their precious little ones at this important time in their lives.

Enjoy a few of my favourites from our session below!

Back soon with another set of siblings, 2 cute little girls!

Until then,

When you work for yourself you don’t really have any ‘colleagues’; no one to chat with on a daily basis or go to coffee with, to help with the workload or just bounce ideas off of. That is probably one thing I miss about working in an office, the daily interaction with other adults (my kids are around but they don’t contribute much, haha). So when I started finding other photographers in my area who I admired, I went out on a limb and reached out to them just to say hi. This is HUGE for me since I’m not the most outgoing person in the world and I greatly fear rejection/confrontation (working on that as I get older though!) Anyway, a couple of years ago it was Faye (who is now a good friend) up in Miramichi, and last year I reached out to Shannon-May of Shannon-May Photography. I found her through a FB page of another FB page I was following and sent her an email. I was pleasantly surprised when she responded with equal enthusiasm and friendliness! We eventually met and I had her do our couples photos in the Fall, and ever since then we’ve been in contact, chatting and learning from each other. I also emailed with Christina of Christina Coffey Photography earlier this year and we met for coffee shortly after, and I now consider her another one of my ‘colleagues’ as well.

It’s so amazing to have people around you who get what you’re going through, both as a creative person and as a person trying to run their own business; someone who ‘gets’ how hard packaging and branding is, what it’s like dealing with different types of clients and who feel the struggle of staying creative and confident in your own work. I greatly value what these women contribute to me both professionally and personally. We are all on similar but different paths, at different stages of our businesses, and even though some might consider them ‘competition’, to me they are more an asset than anything, and I’m so glad that I now have a small but growing network of ‘co-workers’

Back in February Shannon-May contacted a group of ladies for a ‘shoot and meet’ type get-together in early March, a chance during our slow periods to shoot just for fun and to socialize a bit. Unfortunately no one else was able to make it for various reasons so it was just Shannon-May and I. I contacted Christina a couple days before and she was able to make it last minute, so the three of us had our own fun evening. We met at Lily Lake for the photos first, and I must say that we definitely froze and laughed quite a bit being ‘models’ for each other, but luckily it was equal parts laughter to chills so it made it worth it We all come from different backgrounds and have different ‘specialities’ (Shannon-May is pure weddings and all things love, Christina is the maternity/newborn expert and I’m a bit of a jack of all trades), so it was great to watch how each of them worked the camera and worked with each other. After our ‘session’ we went and had supper and drinks at Thandi’s in uptown SJ, a perfect night away for me, and I hope that we get to do it again soon, but maybe when it’s a bit warmer out!

I’m really looking forward to seeing how they photographed each other (and me too, oh my!), but in the meantime, here are a few of my favourites that I captured of these 2 beautiful ladies!

(Can you tell how cold we are?? We were pretending the ice in the background was sand, ha!)

Hope you all have a great weekend, I have a few sessions from last month that I’m ready to share, so I’ll be back soon, sorry it’s been a bit quiet around here lately but it’ll be picking up soon, I promise!

Until then,