I am still behind in my blogging….

But I HAD to share images from this session.

Janelle, is one of the most easy going, relaxed momma-to-be that I have ever met. She is also one of the most stunning women I have had the oppertunity to photograph.  She was up for anything – and that is one of the best attitudes to have when your getting your maternity portraits taken. 

Her super cute honey, was also a great pleasure to work with.

I know that they are both going to be amazing parents.

Nothing is more beautiful than the shape and form of a pregnant woman.

One of my new favourite couple’s shot. I think they just look so adorable together : )

{thank you Janelle for being so amazing. Thank you to Adam for being so caring and attentive.  It was a great pleasure to photograph your maternity session and to photograph little Ella! I can’t wait to share her images with you guys.}

A fantastic photographer and inspirational speaker Dane Sanders was in town speaking to photographers at The Exposure Photography Symposium a couple of weekends ago, and he has inspired a couple of my closest photographer friends to tell their story….so I thought I would tell mine….

I have been interested in photography for as long as I can remember. I remember playing with this old 110 film camera I had sitting in my toybox for hours on end. I remember opening up the back and watching the shutter open and close as clicked the button. I also remember always wanting to take pictures with my parents camera on vacation. It didn’t matter what the subject was or who the subject was, I just wanted to take pictures.

In junior high and high school my friends and I would dress up, do our hair and make up and take black and white photographs of eachother outside. Some of my favourite images of myself are the ones my friends and I took when we were just playing around being kids.

In high school, I took my first offical photography course. Where I learned how to load my own film, develop my own film and to create my own prints through the enlarger and chemicals. It was an amazing process. There is nothing like seeing your first printed images emerge through the chemicals –with nothing but a dull red light to guide you along the way.  It was while attending this photography class I got my first taste of the photography bug that would soon become my career.

After high school I was pretty unsure what I wanted to do. I loved photography, but never really thought about it as a career. I knew that I wanted to do something with kids, but didn’t really know what avenue to take. 

It wasn’t until I met,  the man who I would later marry, that I decided to take the plunge and see where photography could take me. I enrolled into a program at Nait to upgrade my high school marks….cause only going to photography class and phys-ed really didn’t allow my other marks to be all that competitive in a very competitive program to get into –Nait’s Photography Technology program.

Once in was in the program, I honestly thought that I would become a wedding photgrapher who photographed kids on the side. I never would have thought that I would want to specialize in just photographing maternity and babies because no one specialized back then.  But one event changed my life and career plans forever…

A couple weeks after graduating from my Nait, my dad passed away. He had been sick for a long time, and it was expected to happen one day, but not when it did. Even if you know one day it’s going to happen, you are never ready for when it actually happens.  Did I mention, that the day he went into the hospital was almost 4 months to the day, that I was getting married.

Not having my daddy at my wedding was excruciating. All of the wedding photos I had in mind were of me and my daddy. (cause I knew that deep down, he wasn’t going to be around for very much longer…but I never thought that he wouldn’t make it to the wedding.)

Being a wedding photographer at the time, really killed me. I had the hardest time photographing the bride getting ready at their parents house, the bride and the dad before the wedding, and the bride walking down the aisle with her dad. The daddy and daughter dance was the absolute hardest. (cause everyone always seemed to play the song I was going to use for my dance…with my daddy.)

I thought that my feelings of resentment would go away and photographing a wedding would become easier, but it didn’t. I photographed my last wedding in November of 2008.

It was a hard decision financially to stop taking weddings, but I know deep down inside it was for the best. I wasn’t able to give my clients what I believed they deserved out of a great wedding photographer.

January 2009 I moved to a new studio location and decided to specialize in just maternity and babies. Photographing these special moments in my clients life, didn’t make me feel like I lost out on something. Photographing these moments filled me with joy and excitement not just for my clients and their lifes ahead, but for myself and my future. I know that one day I will experience the same joy and happiness that my clients are feeling in the moments I capture for them. I never walk away from a session, feeling down or feeling like I missed out on something….. like I felt photographing weddings.

Capturing moments and connections with people is what drew me to photography in the first place.  Having the ability to freeze time is the most amazing ability. 

Being able to share memories from one generation to the next is by far the greatest things in the whole world. Years from now parents can show their now 5 year old or 10 year old or 18 year old photographs of that child as a newborn –how cool is that? 

People can look back at themselves at the moment just before their baby arrived and see themselves as just a couple who were about to embark on one of the greatest  journeys in life – raising a child.  Remembering the unconditional love they felt for this tiny little being from the moment they found out they were expecting.  Feeling with their hearts on their sleeves the dreams and hopes for their unborn child’s future.

Capturing these moments….these memories….these feelings…… is why I am a photographer.

Beautiful baby Stella arrived in this world a couple of weeks eariler than expected.

She was a pure delight to work with. She posed like a veteran supermodel at 6 days old.

Her daddy owns and operates Velocity Cycle . A local bike shop here in Edmonton. 

In his showroom he has on display a old style bicycle complete with front basket and since bicycles play a such important role in their lives, we had to incorporate it into Stella’s session. (I couldn’t resist!)

 Look how tiny she is in the basket!

You can’t deny it, she is beautiful

{thank you to Kristina and Calvin!  I seriously could have kept her.  She was so amazing, and so beautiful. I can’t wait to share the rest of her images with you.}

I have been a bad little blogger lately  

I have been slightly busier than normal, it seems like bellies and babies are popping out of everywhere, and I have been shooting and editing like a crazy woman. (I am definitely not complaining since I have had the oppertunity to meet some amazing couples and newborns.)

Here a  couple of images from some of my recent sessions….More to come soon, I promise

This image was inspired by the one and only Carrie Sandoval from Captured by Carrie & Baby as Art. She is one of my biggest influences in my photography.  Her image that inspired this shot was one of the first Captured by Carrie images that I ever layed my eyes on. It was this image that made me fall instantly in love with her work. Her newborn work has also played a roll in my newborn photography as well.  Her influence as also inspired me to put away my studio strobes and give natural light photography a try…. IF only I had some windows in my studio! (next studio, I promise)

This beautiful momma-to-be and her hubby, were amazing to photograph. Each frame was captivating….(this is their serious, we are about to have a baby face!)

I am so in love with the above image.

I also love very simple belly images. Capturing the belly in true form –there is nothing like it.

{ Thank you to M & G for being up for anything, and bringing my inspiration to life. And D, I hope your valentine’s day surprise was a hit!}