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Featured!

Exciting!!! My photo was featured in a photography challenge for back lit photo!  Honored to be among such other great talent.

http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/2013/06/22/mcp-photography-and-editing-challenge-highlights-from-this-week-6/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mcpactions+%28MCP+Actions+Blog%29

...only occasionally

Not just families :)

I had the pleasure of photographing a read though for the Rose Theatre's Summer presentation of 12 Angry Men.  This is the first of a series I am doing for the theater, a sort of behind the scenes view - beginning to end. I am very excited to be a part of the project!

New Props

And little miss E was very cooperative in modelling them all.  They look darling on her but I can't wait to see them on a new born baby girl too.

give me your best shot - wordless wednesday

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Dream Come True

It has been a year since this photo was taken, and what a year!  She has grown so much but my favourite part of this photo is how much you can see her personality shining through.  Her confidence has grown so much this past year. 
This was my first entry into Sunday snap shot, and now I am a year later in my photography journey, new blog, budding business.  I can not think of a better image to celebrate the official birth of this new adventure.  I am going public later this week and I am excited and nervous at the same time.  Here are some more photos of my beauty, it is so fun to play around with this fantasy set up, we both had a blast!

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Vaughan Family Photos - 4 month old and toddler

We had a lot of fun out on the trails and in a home studio set up.  I played with some fun textures as well to vary the moods.

All Dolled Up in Vaughan

This was a mini shoot we did to create a custom thank you card for her upcoming christening.

The Money Shot

Some times all the magical elements of light, emotion and camera settings collide and I capture "the money shot".  That shot that takes your breath away even when I see it at one inch squared on my camera view finder.  I get a few of these each session.  More typically though I get toddlers and who are shy, squirmy or just plain uninterested, basically they are normal kids.

Moms let me start off by telling you, this is so typical and does not faze me one bit.  I am after all the mother to a little girl who comes by the nickname tornado honestly.  Shooting her is like capturing a firefly in flight!  I actually have found my self commenting on how still your children are compared to mine.
  
One of the biggest secrets of the trade it that I use a technique called composites.  Basically I will ask you all to stay in one pose with the same back drop and lighting until I get a shot with each person smiling.  I will ask mom to break the pose and tickle baby to get that smile, that one only she can get baby to make, next we get dad to make his toddler son laugh at a fart joke, finally I ask mom and dad to let the kids wander off and just give me their own 20 watt smiles.  I then blend all the photos with a little bit of faerie dust and voila the money shot.

When we remove the pressure to have every one looking at me and smiling at me in unison the stress of the shoot melts away.  I will achieve that look for you behind the scenes and you can just relax and have fun.  Usually as soon as I explain this process to the parents, they are so relived and I see the real smiles come out of every one, you look less posed as a group and your children enjoy the session more, and that translates yet again in to better photos as the shoot develops.  Its's a win-win situation for all of us, and I can tell you that I would never want to photograph a group of people any other way again.

As you browse though my portfolio you may be thinking to your self, that looks so nice but I could never get my kids to do that for me.  Every family tells me this, and I also felt this same frustration for years as I saw beautiful family portraits and I felt there must be something wrong with my family because we could never achieve that sort of photo.  Let the mommy guilt go ladies because I am telling you now those photos you envy are 90% composites.  Your less than perfect family can also have a photo of equal beauty, serenity and joy on your wall!

Here is a before and after composite shot from a recent family session:

Before Faerie Dust

Final Product

Location, location, location

Finding the perfect location for your photoshoot can be a daunting task.  I used to think I would need a lot of space to get the right look.  Although I still do prefer a setting that gives me a lot of topographical variety I gave myself the challenge to stop ruling out spaces just because they seemed too small.  There was this small patch of grass so tall and wild on the side of the road that kept catching my attention, I had visions of a vintage flower girl with grass as tall as she is, this was the grass exactly but it was not a rolling field just a few feet deep.  I accomplished my vision with these tips:
Watch your background and get creative with your angles.
I had to make sure that one of the several road signs did not appear in my background and ruin the illusion of space I wanted to create.  With so many obstacles I had to get low, get high and get into also sorts of perspectives that are not my go-to regulars.  Good news is  these changes got my creative ideas flowing.
Keep your focal length short.
This gives us the nice bokeh and also helps to create an illusion of more depth then I truly had.

 

This is the location where I did this photo shoot, right between the two large yellow street signs :)  I am telling you, that ditch up the street that is full of daisies, is starting to call to me now!

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Georgetown Family - 6 month old and toddler

What a pleasure this family was to photograph.  There were smiles galore as we explored the flowers and frogs of Willow Park.