Jumping for Joy

Jump for Joy is the theme at i heart faces this week. I love love love the depth of this shot and the amazing cloud formations that day, not to mention the glee in the couple's faces.



Hope you have a shot of your own to enter. xx

A lovable pup by any other name is still a lovable pup!

So this poor poor puppy - he has had so many different names since he came into our family. We adore his colour and wanted to call him something that referred to it, but everything we came up with was over used, a bit twee or too girly for our burly boy.



Oddly enough, his litter name was Orange, named after the colour of his collar, and although he is sort of orange, we still were not sold on that name. Many of the other litter pups (there were 11 in total!!) were named after their collar colours too - Blue had beige fur, Purple and Red had orange fur too, and there were black wooly ones which were just too delicious though can't remember their names. I will do a whole post about the two litters another time with maybe some follow up pics of they dogs all grown up in their new homes too.



Our little fuzz puff love ball is such a teddy bear. But since we already have a cat called Bear, who for the moment is still bigger than the dog, we couldn't use that name. We were given so many great suggestions (thank you blog readers!!), and tried tons of them out, but for some reason, not sure why, we kept coming back to one name.



Ben is still not sure about the name he has had for a week or so now, but the kids like it. We were not keen to use a place name again, what with Oslo in the family already (no he was not conceived there - just love the egalitarian policies in Norway and Oslo is such a poetic word!). And with my obsession with "ay" and "oh" sounds, I like it. Not to mention, he is the colour of desert sands and terracotta buildings.



So for the moment, or perhaps forever, we have named our beloved pup Cairo.

xox

Vallee Family

The Vallee family lived in Bermuda for four years before moving back to Canada. Since leaving the Island two years ago, they have returned for a family holiday each winter and each time have booked a session with me. The first one was a rainy shoot at Stonehole Bay. Last March, we went to the Botanical Gardens in howling winds and clouds, and this year we chose Grape Bay as our location since it is where the couple used to go when they were expecting. The boys adore to walk barefoot on the sand and run in the shallow waters, splashing everywhere.



Both of the boys were born in Bermuda and Felix is now four years old and Maxim is three. They are the best of friends and play together all the time.



Felix loved missing a few weeks of school so that he could spend time with his little brother in Bermuda. He is sweet, gentle and always smiling. He adores teaching Maxim the things that he has learned at school and wants to help all the time.



Maxim is a little character and such a happy little chappy. He worships his big brother and misses having him around when Felix is at school.



I was on the phone with the Vallees several times on the day of the shoot, monitoring this mad weather we have been having and finally made the call to move the shoot earlier. On the drive to the beach, it started to rain so I rang the family to suggest we put it off. But they were on their way too and decided rain or shine, they wanted to go for it. I tried to explain that the colours are never as vibrant, eyes look hooded and the results from a beach shoot under cloud cover is never as successful as a sunny one. The Vallees insisted they didn't mind and so I kept driving, sad that for the third year in a row, they had an overcast day for their family photo.



Half way through the session, the clouds lifted and it turned into the most unexpectedly lovely afternoon. The colours of the sea became vibrant and the reflected hazy light from the sands was soft. I was in heaven and so grateful they had encouraged me to take a risk on the weather - what did they know that myself and www.weather.bm did not?















Maxim could not come to Bermuda without his beloved bear, Bebe Toutou. I always feel bringing personal items just makes the shoot.







These shots of Maxim being thrown up are priceless - I cannot believe how high into the air he flew - he was fearless as long as he held his teddy.



Felix had that extra year on Maxim and the whole awareness of what could happen has already kicked in so he was not nearly so keen to be hurled into space in the same manner. Spinning still was fun though.







Love how the water mark on their trousers creeps higher and higher as the afternoon goes on.







They tucked into these beautiful apples hungrily.





Good thing the cupcakes were hidden, or they might not have devoured the apples in quite the same manner.









Thank you all for encouraging me to do the shoot despite the weather - it was so worth it - see you next year! xxx

Happy Birthday Blog

My blog is one year old today!

I cannot believe I have been officially blogging for 12 whole months. A year ago today was the official launch date and my first official post was of the Peckett Family, though I added a few other recent shoots back dated before theirs like the one I did for Heather Nova, plus some wedding ones, just so it didn't look quite so empty for a first time visitor. Since then, I have added repeat clients' previous shoots so they could compare the before and after images, and even see how much I improved as a photographer.

I have to admit, I never thought I would be able to keep it up regularly, but if anything, I am getting better at the process. I have realised that it is ok to not only post client sneak peeks, but also blog about my family, my beliefs and photography in general. It is so much more than a place to post favourite photos - it is a place to share my dreams, as well as stories of my family and any dramas that may unfold. All of it is me and I love this blog as a forum to express all the different elements of my professional and personal life.

Going forward, I very much hope to improve the layout by making the images larger and perhaps do a complete redesign. If anyone has any tips on how to go about doing that, I would love to hear, for I see other photography blogs with large photos and lots of categories but I just don't even know where to start.

I also want to start profiling some people whom I admire, especially healers, creative types, greenies, and those who are taking a less trodden path through life, so stay tuned for those posts to learn a bit about some amazing people and the things that they do to make this world a better place.

Here is Indigo celebrating in her happy-birfday-blog party hat!



Happy first birthday blog - thanks for being so good to me. And more importantly, to my loyal readers, thank you thank you for stopping by, and for your comments - I adore them and remind me I am not posting into space. So keep coming back and I promise to keep sharing... whatever there is to share that day. xxx

Half Day Workshop coming up

For those of you who have been asking about my last workshop but do not have an SLR, or are not ready to go manual, I am hosting my Snappy Happy workshop next weekend.

This half day workshop will be focused solely on lighting and composition, and not on the technical side of manual settings. I will help you to find the best lighting situations so that your images are exposed correctly, even if you are not the one controlling the settings. Learn what elements make an image interesting and powerful, and how to look for the ideal available light so that your subjects always look their best, and save time on post processing.

Automatic and SLR camera users welcome.

Sunday 14th March from 9:00am - 12:15pm - please email me for details and sign up.



Hope to see you there!

xx

Little yipee for i heart faces

I know it is a bit weird to get excited about placing in a competition that does nothing more than say good job. I mean, I haven't been sponsored by Canon, or won a trip to Venice, or even received a cool new camera strap.

But with the guest judge always being a photographer whom I respect, and tons of inspirational entries to check out, there is something about the i heart faces weekly contests that make me happy.

I am especially happy this week as my image of Oslo's and his friends' hands planting a cedar tree came in third place out of almost 900 entries. I have been mentioned before in the top 10 faves, but this week made it into the top 10 winners so I am flattered and thrilled.



They have lots of fun themes coming up so if you are into photography at all, I definitely recommend checking it out and playing along. And it is a great way to discover other photographers whose blogs you can stalk and even learn from.

xx

Full Day Workshop - Outdoor session - Rachael

The day before the workshop, one of my models canceled. This should not have been a problem since I had booked Maya for the indoor session, and the three sisters for the garden shoot, but I suddenly had visions that perhaps children might not be ideal models because, well, they are children. Maya is only four (almost five) and Florence is just six, so one can never really expect too much of little ones - it just isn't fair. Plus, I didn't know how many of my workshop attendees had children of their own, and I have to say, I remember being rather disinterested in kids before I had Oslo and Indigo. Suddenly I was worried that an all child cast might be a recipe for disaster.

When everyone first arrived last Sunday morning, I explained my plight of the missing adult model. One of the attendees, whose wedding I had photographed a couple of years ago, suggested his wife may be open to stepping in to be photographed. I was thrilled and asked her to come for the last half hour of the practice garden shoot. I remembered Rachael's incredible eyes from their wedding and knew that photographing her would be the perfect finishing touch to the practical part of the day.



Rachael brought their pup, Reuben, along which made for some fun shots. She is so beautiful and comfortable in front of the camera so I barely needed to pose her at all and once again, like with the session with Maya, I didn't get as many shots as I would have liked so that I could make room for the others.



Couldn't decide between the black and white or colour version of this shot.



Here I was showing how it didn't matter what the backdrop is like if you set a high aperture. Rachael was sitting in front of an ugly thorn bush with barely any leaves but when blurred, it doesn't matter at all - the only thing you notice are her stunning eyes.



Rachael - thank you so much for making the effort to come out to pose for us - you are beautiful and a joy to shoot. I can't wait to see all the images of you that everyone else came up with that day.