Thanks For A Busy Year!! | Chilliwack Newborn Baby & Commercial Photographer

Phew! This has been a crazy busy Fall/Winter... and it hasn't slowed down for the Christmas Season with 2 Newborn Sessions, a Business Headshot Session AND a long Commercial Session to shoot in just this week alone! My January is already mostly full and with enquiries coming in all the way to March, I am excited to see what 2015 brings...

Well, in case my schedule keeps me from hitting the blog before New Year, I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you a happy & healthy 2015, and to say a BIG thank you to everyone who has helped or supported my business in 2014. I love what I do and the people I have the pleasure to work with in this business - who thought grafting to pay the bills and put food on my family's table could be so rewarding in so many other ways?!

Thank you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Don't Put Off What You Can Do Today | Chilliwack Family Photographer

How often do you say to yourself  "I should get some up-to-date family photos done" but then life gets busy, you forget and another year rolls on without it happening? How often do your family albums look like a member of the family (the photographer!) is missing at most events?

Well, if you still need some inspiration for a great New Year Resolution or a goal for 2014, then I have a little suggestion for you... get those photos done, and get in some photos yourself! If you really need to, you can pretty much juggle ANY schedule, but you CANNOT turn back the clock, and you have NO idea what is coming round the corner tomorrow.

Take our wedding, for example... we have 1 group shot that I adore... it is not anything special or particularly unique. It is not an award-winning photo and not everyone is smiling or posed perfectly. It is just a simple shot of everyone who came to our wedding... but within 18 months of that photo, 3 of those people had passed away (and 2 were very unexpected). Sadly, that is the harsh reality of life.

OK... so, I have a confession - I was the worst offender for not being in photos or putting off our own family photos. Yup... pot meet kettle! (Phew... that was a relief to get it out there!) At the end of last year, I decided that I should listen to my own advice and get our own family portraits done. I hooked up with my fabulous photographer buddy Pam (Pam Dykstra Photography) , who had the exact same problem and thought, and we did a session swap! It was our turn first...

Photograph courtesy of Pam Dykstra Photography

I LOVED our shots and am SO glad we did them. I now exist in photos and we have 3 canvases proudly adorning our walls. It was also a great learning lesson, for me as a photographer, about the stresses of outfit picking for the family!! (Watch this space, as I now plan to add a pinterest board to help!)

A few days later, it was Pam's turn!

So, you can make many excuses why you can or may not get photos done, but I am pretty confident that you can also find a solution for each one. In the words of a wise man of the South, "get er done"!

Apples, and babies, and weddings... oh my! | Chilliwack Photographer

Wow, it's been a busy month... and it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. (No complaints here tho!)

My new Summer resolution, to blog more, seems to be as successful as all of my New Years Resolutions... i.e. not very... so I thought I would chain myself to my desk until I had at least 1 post done. A few weeks, a few commercial shoots, 2 weddings, 2 online courses, a couple of baby shoots, and a lot of Summer activities later and here I am back again to try to get at least 1 post finished!

Of course, all the photo sessions and Summer fun means that some home duties get abandoned. Last weekend was the first chance we got to stay home and catch up with all the jobs we have just talked about for weeks! First up - apple harvest! Our poor heaving apple tree could take it no longer... after 2 years of poor or no apples, it was making up the difference with a mega-crop! So, we dropped everything and launched into a mass harvest and freezing session...

My husband wasn't overly impressed that the workflow slowed down every now and then so that I could record the memory and "pose" the apples (hey, I'm a photographer... what does he expect?!)... but he soon became distracted by the discovery that he could use the apple corer/peeler to make curly fries! (Boys with toys!)

Thought of the Day...

Yes, I am a material girl! ;-)

Happy Long Weekend Friday!

I know that, for many Photographers, the weekends are not really considered a real weekend because that is when we are usually at our busiest... especially for Wedding Photographers... (long weekends are definitely no exception!)... so why do I still always get excite to see Friday??