When we were discussing ideas with them we found out that they both love canoeing so we found one in town and had them go for a little paddle. From there we headed up Coal Creek to the dirt bike track for some portraits prior to their ceremony. Once we completed that we hiked with the wedding party and used some of the terrain at the top of Fernie Alpine Resort before going on an adventure with Kelsey and Kevin out of town to an awesome waterfall we found the night before on one of our random scouting trips! I love our clients and their willingness to get off the beaten track, trust us to get out on a ledge, and do something completely different for their pictures!

We kept this next one a secret until their reception.  Most people probably think it’s a bad idea to stand in a canoe in a wedding dress before your ceremony.  I think if Kelsey’s bridesmaids found out they wouldn’t have let her out of their sight for the rest of the day!

Not a bad place for a wedding ceremony!  The sun was shining, it was relatively warm, and an overall gorgeous day!  Unfortunately on Sunday things were a little different and all the peaks in the background now have a fresh dusting of snow on them!

This portrait of Kelsey standing on the ledge is awesome!  We knew it was going to make a stunning shot the moment we saw it!

The reception was at the Corner Pocket Brasserie and their wedding cupcakes were made by Becky over at Sweetcakes!  We indulged in a couple each because they were so good!  (with permission, of course!)

Below is the shotski and it was a huge hit at Kelsey and Kevin’s reception.  Basically it’s an old ski with four holes drilled through that are about the size of a shot glass.  You drop in four shots, you find four people, and…well, you can figure out the rest.

Arin decided that he wanted a lighter tone for when he and his guys entered the ceremony…  …mission accomplished.

I was really impressed with Tracey and her crew over at the Sheraton Suites. They kept everything moving along really well, and seemed to anticipate everything well ahead of time. It was a very polished and seamless experience for all of Amber and Arin’s guests. 

I hope that I am out on the dance floor (all night long btw) when I am in my nineties…

Thanks for having us along guys! Make sure you check out the slideshow below!

A little background on Mary & Stephen first. Mary represents our first hat-trick as we have done engagement sessions (and weddings) for both of her siblings – Carolyn (of Carolyn & Jordan) and Don (of Sarah & Don). A while back we had a promotion when we were launching our Facebook Fan Page for portraits sessions and their mom, Anne, requested one. There was a slight problem though…she lives in Ontario and it was a little difficult to schedule anything. When they were planning on coming out for Sarah & Don’s wedding in July she thought it would be a great chance to use it for a session with her newly-engaged daughter. I really wish we could boast the hat-trick for wedding photography with the Finch family as well but unfortunately they’re getting married across the country in PEI.

We had a great time with you guys and wish you all the best!

Apparently Mary is well-known for this little maneuver…and it looks like Stephen has seen it a few times!

Yesterday riders left downtown Fernie and rode up Coal Creek to the summit of Porcupine Ridge for a fast descent down Porky’s Blue.  From there they hooked up with the Coal Discovery Trail to Hosmer, crossed Highway 3, and looped on to some logging / fire roads to the finish in Sparwood.  Kevan, Matt, and Aaron all rode strong and each of them finished the 71km stage in under 5 hours.  Below are a few pictures from the day – the rest can be viewed by clicking here.

Mass start in downtown Fernie with 450 riders prior to heading up Coal Creek.

Aaron was first to pass us and looked a lot cleaner than the day before!

Matt wasn’t too far behind him though!

This rider is riding the full TransRockies which is a 2-person team event and goes for 7 days.  He and his partner were the overall leaders in the +100 category which means their combined age is over 100.  I only hope that when I get to be his age I’m still as fit!

Kevan cruising along, again, only a few minutes behind Aaron and Matt.

Once the guys passed us on the trail we packed up and headed for the finish line.  It was 12:00pm when Kevan passed us and they had another 35km before the finish so we figured we had at least a couple hours.  Our plan was to arrive at 1:30pm to give us  a little time to pick a spot close to the finish line and get set up for them.  We showed up and were really surprised when Aaron came through not 5 minutes later, being the first to cross the line with Matt and Kevan both on his heels!  Tyler wanted to play with the camera so once I got it dialed in (with a strobe of course!) and he shot the finish while I held the flash.

Matt was intense coming across the line!

Kevan finished a few minutes behind Matt after suffering through mechanical issues throughout the stage, starting with a faulty front brake down the major descent, losing his rear brake along the road past Hosmer, and dealing with bent teeth on his chainring causing his chain to constantly slip off and get stuck against his frame.  Aside from having to run into a concrete barrier to stop once on the race, he fared quite well and posted a very respectable finish time!

Best of luck to the guys as they’re currently riding the final stage of the TR3 from Elkford, over the continental divide, and ending off the 65km ride at Etherington Creek in Kananaskis.

Day 1 was a time trial along some of Fernie’s spectacular single-track, climbing up and winding down Castle Mountain, riding through the Ridgemont Trails, and connecting into the Coal Discovery Trail back into town. It was the shortest day of the race with ONLY 31km of riding and a MERE 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) of climbing – a nice warmup for the rest of the race! While the forecast was looking good leading into the start of the race, things took a bit of a turn for the worse last night with a torrential downpour and steady rain all morning for the start of the race. It made for some extremely muddy trails and slick roots.

We did a final training ride together earlier this week and I scouted a few spots in the forest that I wanted to use to get some shots of them as well as some of the other riders in the race. It was a very different experience biking with 30lbs of camera gear on my back instead of my usual 2L of water and bike repair kit.  Kevan’s brother Dan came along with me to help carry some gear, hold some lights, and grab some shots of his own. Here’s a bit of what we came up with.  For any of the other riders that passed us throughout the day, you can check to see if there are shots of you by clicking here.

One of Dan’s shots from the start of the race.  Kevan has his game-face on just prior to leaving the gate.

Aaron just after leaving the gate and riding through town.

These next two shots are a couple of racers on the boardwalks of Eco-Terrorist in the Ridgemont trail system.  I set up a few lights and didn’t warn the first rider to go by me about them.  I think the flashes startled him and he ended up wiping out about 20 feet down the trail.  I felt really bad and made sure that everyone else knew what was coming!

Kevan cruising down Kids Stuff in the Ridgemont Trail system – about 1/2 way through the first stage in the race.

Aaron cruising through the forest – he even managed to catch some air for me.

A quick shot of Matt rocking it down the same trail.  Unfortunately he took a nasty spill early in the day that put him back a bit but still managed to push on and only finish a few minutes behind Kevan and Aaron.

This rider was one of the few whose face wasn’t covered in mud at this stage in the race.  I’m sure that changed by the time they crossed the finish line though!

Kevan about 1.5km from the finish line on the Coal Discovery Trail.

…and just for fun I tried a few panning shots at the end of the day.  This one was my favourite.

Unfortunately our  final location for shots was really close to the finish line and Dan and I weren’t able to pack up and ride to catch the guys at the end of the day.  Luckily my wife Karyn was there with her camera to grab a quick shot.  They were all in good spirits, a little dirty, and pretty cold!

Congratulations on completing Day 1 of the race guys and good luck on the next two stages!

Kathy getting tied into her dress. 

The girls on the way over to meet up with the guys. We are really looking forward to shooting Kathy’s sisters’ wedding next fall! 

The first look.

After the formals, it was time to head over to the golf course for the ceremony and reception. 

Huge props go to Sarah Mayerson for the decor and floral arrangements through the day! 

The slideshow had everyone cracking up!

Huzzah for the Real Deal! These guys are so good, and had the dance floor full all night long! 

Living on the shores of Koocanusa and having the water as a major part of their summers, Amy and Shane wanted to do something a little different.  They plan on sending out Save The Date cards and wanted the tag line to say, “Taking The Plunge.”  The picture below is the one they’re going to use for it.

Yeah…I guess it’s pretty nice on the lake in the evening…

With them being from Edmonton, we did not have the chance to connect with them in person until their engagement session so we sat down with them for a coffee prior to shooting. Kyla and Steve are those kind of people where you instantly hit it off and it felt like they were old friends. We had a great time shooting with them (aside from the bugs – good thing Kevan brought the bug spray!) and we’re definitely looking forward to doing it again in about a month!

Thanks for a great evening the other night Tammy & John – looking forward to doing it again in a few months!

Joni and Jason were definitely up for the adventure part, and they hatched this plan to do most of their wedding itinerary early in the day so that we could have the rest of the evening to drive through the mountains to chase the light. It’s one of our favourite ways to shoot – have a rough destination in mind (in this case, Peyto Lake) and allow lots of time to be distracted along the way! We had no idea what we would find – we were like kids in a candy store. It’s funny, because Duane and I will often be out driving or biking and see all sorts of locations where we would love to put a bride and groom and we just sigh because there is very little chance that we would ever have the opportunity to get a bride out there. Well, Saturday provided exactly that rare opportunity!

On a personal note, it was so much fun to shoot this wedding. Joni was part of our circle of friends back in the University days (Leah even roomed with her at one point) and it was great to be able to spend a day hanging out with her and getting to know Jason. Solidly good people and we’re looking forward to catching up with them again very soon!

The rain and lightning on the morning of the wedding knocked out the power out at her parent’s acreage so Joni ended up doing her makeup by window light. She took it like a pro though – laughed it off and kept on with the plan! 

I asked him after I took this shot if he was going for a new look. You know, the suspenders hanging down look… 

Did I mention that it was raining? 

But c’mon! How many brides get a shot like this as they walk out for the ceremony!? 

Bring it in tight! 

These guys were awesome – as we got down to the shores of the lake, Jason just looked at us and said, “You want us to hike down to that outcropping there don’t you?” Sometimes I think we are a little too transparent for our own good!

If you’re a regular here, you’ll recall that we were in Red Deer a few weekends ago for some engagement sessions (Cristal & Brad’s and Joni & Jason’s) and, since we knew we weren’t going to have a chance to scout when we got into town on Saturday night, we took the opportunity while we were there to pick some spots we wanted to use with Micaela & Jeremy.

Here’s what we came up with.

We did their engagement session on her great aunt & uncle’s farm west of Red Deer. While we weren’t sure what to expect not having seen the location prior, it turned out to be a great spot – some interesting old buildings, some cool trees, and almost perfect afternoon light.

For some reason Jason always wanted to stick his tongue out at the camera.  I gave him fair warning and told him that if I caught it in a picture it would go up on the blog.  We also got one of Joni that you can see on our Facebook Fan Page but that was a shot specifically requested for her.  :)

Besides being excited about being able to shoot on top of a mountain, we are also really excited about working with Cristal and Brad! Cristal was in the wedding party for Jenn and Mick last fall, and had a pretty good idea of how we shoot, and the approach we bring to a wedding day. Brad brought along his car that he has had since he was a teenager. It was fun working it into a few of the shots! We haven’t done the parking garage thing for a little while. Probably because there aren’t a lot of them in Fernie…

Our first engagement session was in Calgary with Amber and Arin and we headed up to SAIT to do some shooting.  Things have really changed on campus since we were there last!  Amber and Arin probably got a few chuckles out of us because there were so many great locations to use and it probably seemed like we had A.D.D. moving from one spot to the next.  It was one of those sessions were we both really felt we had a great connection with them and that we were just hanging out and snapping a few pictures along the way.  We’re definitely looking forward to the opportunity to get together with them again later this summer at their wedding.

For any of our wedding couples who are planning on getting married in Fernie, we’d love to go out there and do wedding pictures! All you need to do is build an extra hour and a half of travel into your day so we can get there and back!

Here’s a few of my favourites from their engagement session.

Jeff isn’t your average DJ – he doesn’t just stand around and play songs. He is a natural entertainer and has an innate ability to read a crowd, play music that will keep them entertained and dancing, and keep the evening moving along. He adds life into his show, conversing with the wedding guests, donning a variety of costumes that fit the style of music that he’s playing, and most importantly, he has a great time with it.

Today we met up with Jeff to do a quick photo shoot to update some of his marketing materials.  It’s hard not to have a smile on your face when Jeff’s doing his thing.  He had us in stitches while “modelling” his various costumes, posing for the camera, and cracking jokes in between.  Below are a few of the shots.

If you want to learn a little more about Jeff and how he approaches wedding receptions please check out his profile under Aries Entertainment over at FernieWeddings.ca. If you’re planning a wedding, either in Fernie or in Calgary, and still haven’t decided on your evening’s entertainment definitely give Jeff a call at 250-423-4346.

We were pretty impressed when Leanne agreed to sit on the railway ties for these shots!  I am told that this was the intimidation dance that they use before rugby…

This is one of those ‘accidental’ shots that happened to work pretty well. Duane and Leanne were up in the stairwell trying to grab a shot of the veil being grabbed by the wind. I happened to look up as it was floating around and grab this one frame.
The ‘hardman’. I didn’t ask too many questions, but apparently he has made appearances at every major life event for Pewh. He has even been buried under the pitch while the All Blacks Rugby team thundered over head! Kind of the equivalent of the Canadian loonie under the ice at the Salt Lake Winter Olympics I guess…

Watching and listening to a speech that a family member from New Zealand had recorded for them… 

Check back soon to see their slideshow!

Thankfully, Holly and Joe were pretty laid back and willing to do a little exploring with us. Good thing they were not in a rush either, because by the time we finished lunch with them it had turned into a four hour commitment! I think the time spent was well worth it though!

The first set of images was taken in some old abandoned buildings, and we decided to change things up a little bit by setting up some of our lights on stands and moving a little bit slower. It’s one of the reasons that I really like the engagement sessions – they are paced a lot slower, and offer a lot more flexibility than the busy pace of a wedding day.

We also had an opportunity to grab a refreshing beverage with them on the beach while we waited for the sun to to get in the right spot. The staff at Senor Frogs was pretty funny as you’ll see in the video below. Apparently it is the ‘Happy Wedding’ song. Who knew that we’ve been singing it wrong for all this time? And for the record, at the end of the video I am not flailing my arms because I am a spaz, but because I was worried about a wave coming up and swamping me and the camera which was totally unprotected.

They were married at the Barcelo Maya resort just south of Playa del Carmen. It was quite the place!

I love this portrait that Duane got of Shannon!

Because they chose to do their photos before the ceremony, we had lots of time to wander the property with them. I love how relaxed the day always seem when the pictures are done ahead of time!

The ceremony was done later in the day (around 5) and we lucked out with some clouds passing over, which made for soft even light!

Before, heading down to the reception dinner we asked if we could steal them for a few moments. They said sure; although I think they thought it was funny when we headed for the rocks instead of the sandy beach.

I really like the way the light plays off Leanne’s face in this next one!

We are in full on spring here in Fernie and this hill was spectacularly icy from the freeze-thaw action. It looks idyllic, but I am pretty sure that they were pretty intently focused on not wiping out!

We came back into town for a little bit at the end, just to vary the look a little bit. As we were wandering around in one of the back alleys, we noticed that the guys over at The Royal had the doors open as they were prepping for a concert that night. We asked if we might be able to use the space for a couple of minutes and they were happy to let us in. They even turned on the smoke machine for a couple of minutes, which was great for adding a little bit of weight to the light!

Excited much? Heading into the church…

I don’t think that Sharla was really listening to her parents all that much at this particular moment…

Got to love those talented people! Not too many people perform a duet as part of their ceremony… even fewer do it as well as they did.

Our favourite Fernie DJ – Jeff McCrae, from Aries Entertainment. He always puts on a good show and keeps the crowd moving! He travels all over (including Calgary) so if you are looking for a solid DJ for your wedding then give him a shout!

Tina is officially the reigning champion of 6:8 Photography’s ‘Most Smiley Bride’ award. We may have to shoot another 100 weddings before someone is able to unseat her. Greg is the reigning champion of our “Rennaisaince Man’ award. Let me tell you – it is going to take something pretty spectacular to bump him and his homemade butternut squash soup that he made for everyone following the ceremony.

We met up with Sarah and Don this week for their engagement session. If you’ve been following our blog for a while you might recognize Don from Carolyn & Jordan’s wedding back in 2008. It’s neat because we’re going to be hanging out with that crowd twice this summer as Don is Carolyn’s brother and Jaryn is Jordan’s sister. When they arrived we noticed they were driving a 4×4 truck. Now, I clearly realize that when you ask a guy whether or not he wants to take his truck off-roading it’s a rhetorical question but we felt compelled to, just to make sure. Sarah and Don were more than up for an adventure and we spent the afternoon exploring a few of the logging roads in the area. The light was perfect and had a really warm tone to it, almost a spring-like feel (which might explain the lack of snow!).

Here’s a few of my favourites!

It was hard for me to pick a favourite from their engagement session but I think the image below is a top contender!

We were introduced to Tina and Greg through a coworker of my brother Steve.  Their wedding is coming up here pretty quickly (this weekend!) in High River and I think it’s going to be a blast!  Both of them are pretty laid-back and it didn’t seem like they were at all stressed about the fact that their wedding is just around the corner.  They were more than willing to walk around with us through a couple alleys, sit on a rickety old bench with a broken leg, and lay down on the entrance ramp of a parking garage for a few pictures.  It makes me wonder whether or not our clients are afraid to say no to us when we come up with some of our ideas!

Here’s a few of my favourite shots from their engagement session.  Be sure to check back next week to see some of their wedding pictures!

I think this last one is my favourite.  I love how all the lines in the picture lead your eyes right to Tina and Greg.

I had a potential bride ask me the other day about why we include the engagement sessions with all of our wedding commissions, and I thought that there are probably a few other people out there who have had a similar thought at some point.

You might laugh, but the reason has very little to do with the actual photographs! It’s mostly about having a chance to connect with our clients once prior to shooting one of the biggest days of their lives. We believe that it is so important that our clients are comfortable with Duane and I and how we operate when we are shooting. It gives us an opportunity to learn about the day and how our clients envision it unfolding.

Duane and I are often along on wedding days for a lot of hours, so it is so important that you feel comfortable that we are going to be a positive addition to things! If the photographers are a drag it can really bring the whole day down.

Finally, we want our clients to be relaxed about the photography going into things. The last thing that they need to be thinking about it whether the photographers know what they are doing! It’s one thing to see great pictures of other people and hope that we can create something similar again for, and its another thing altogether to have the proof. If we’ve done our job right then they are excited for what we can create and what the experience will be like!

We met Jaryn fairly early on in our business when we covered her brother Jordan’s wedding (Carolyn and Jordan) and we were super excited when she contacted us last fall about her and Steve’s Banff wedding in September.

They have this awesome Great Dane, Lexus, so we decided to head down to the dog park (where there must have been a million people and their dogs enjoying the nice weather.) I’m pretty sure that Jaryn and Steve never stopped laughing the entire time during the session!

It was a lot of fun for Duane and I, because we used the session to break out of some routines that we often fall back on. We spend so much time looking for clean, even light (nothing wrong with that!) and we decided going into things that we were going to experiment with some strong directional sunlight to see what we could come up with. I’m glad that we did – it was a lot of fun to force ourselves to see things a little differently!

I’m really looking forward to their wedding this September.  It will be the first wedding I’ve been to in the past three years where I am attending as a “guest” and not a photographer.  I’ve been given explicit instructions that I’m not to touch a camera that day (Kevan is the official photographer for their wedding) but I have a feeling I might be drafted into holding a light now and then!  Enough talk though, below are a few pictures!

This one is one of the most legitimately dicey positions that I have ever seen clients go to during an engagement session! If you’re a member of the facebook fan page, you’ll see that it has unofficially been dubbed ‘Sketchy Ridge” which is fairly apt! Let’s just say that the drop off on either side was fairly intimidating and full of lots of things that you wouldn’t want to bounce off of! I think it was worth it though!

Thanks guys! Have fun at the Olympics!

Our end-of-the-year contest is back!

It was like deja vu last night as we tried to narrow down all the images we took this past year to get our top fifteen shots.  The process was just as long and arduous as I remember it from last year!  Tonight was spent in long debate about why we strongly felt that certain shots should be included. There was sadness from both of us as we went through and removed some really good shots from the running to get it down to just fifteen. We realize that this is always a highly subjective thing – invariably we have chosen something that you might not have; such is the nature of things in choosing favourites though!

So, just like last year, this contest ends with a prize!  At the bottom of this post there is a survey that we’ve set up so that you, our loyal blog readers, can make the final decision on what you think was the absolute best shot of 2009.  The couple whose shot receives the highest number of votes by midnight, December 31st (Mountain Time) will receive one of our fine-art canvases of their favourite image from their wedding.  The voting is open to anyone so please, encourage your families and friends to vote.  Last year we had a lot of people leave comments trying to convince others of why they thought a specific shot should win so please don’t hesitate to let your voice be heard!

We want to thank all of our clients, their families, and their friends for another great year and look forward to doing it again in 2010! We met a lot of cool people and made a bunch of new friends. If you’re not connected with us on Facebook we’d love to have you join our Fan Page simply by clicking the link.

PS – You’ll notice that we are busting out our new logo in the images below. It’s just a pre-cursor of what is to come in the next little while here! Stay tuned!

Sheena and Kyle came home from Dubai to have their wedding in Fernie and were determined to have their wedding pictures done outside despite the 75 degree temperature difference from what they had grown accustomed to!  You would never know from this shot that the temperature that day was a brisk -36ºC with the wind chill!

While shooting at Maiden Lake in Fernie for Rebecca and JJ’s wedding we bumped into a couple of people playing hockey and asked them to borrow their sticks for a few shots.  As it turns out, JJ played quite a bit of hockey when he was younger and you can see the competitive spirit in his eyes as soon as he got his hands on the stick.

Carmen and Mike’s wedding reception was at the Banff Springs Hotel, one of the nicest venues in Western Canada.  It’s full of history and there’s an elegance in the air when you’re in the building. They got permission from the hotel to light a few sparklers during the dance, but I don’t think that the hotel anticipated nearly 50 being lit all at the same time. We’re sure glad that it worked though – the natural light in this shot really gives it a neat character. We’re also glad that the sprinklers didn’t go off!

For those of you who have followed our blog for a while, you’ll know that Leif appeared on our blog twice, the first time in 2008 at his brother Quinn’s wedding, and the second in May 2009 when he and married Laura at the Pine Brook Golf & Country Club in Calgary.  We stopped on a side-road on the way to Bragg Creek to get this shot and it was one of six times throughout the year where we had to cross a barbed-wire fence to get to where we wanted to do our shooting!  Our couples are awesome!  I love the starkness of the field behind them in this picture with the dramatic light on Laura and Leif as a storm passes by in the background.

When we showed up to Aleefa’s house in the morning when she and her girls were getting ready we came across the first dress we’ve seen that required TWO hangers to hold it up.  It was a pretty heavy dress, weighing in at close to 20lbs!  Aleefa told us she had been working out prior to their wedding in preparation of having to wear it all day!  She was more than happy to take a few moments to sit down with Ellis at Hotel Arts in Calgary while we set this shot up in the lounge and it’s one of our favourites because it’s so simple and clean.
This next one gets an honourable mention.  During Aleefa & Ellis’ ceremony Duane was changing angles and happened to walk past a nearly empty row near the back of the church.  We are pretty sure that the nun in the picture was simply attending the ceremony and is deep in prayer.  It’s one of those shots that you would expect to get in a cathedral in Europe, not in downtown Calgary. As a side note, we’ve decided that if this shot wins we will give a donation to the local food bank and give the fine-art canvas to the second place finisher. Choose wisely though, because you can only vote once!

One of the emotional high-points of a wedding day happens right as the couple is walking down the aisle after the ceremony is over as it starts to sink in that they’re actually married.  I love Madisen’s expression as she and Cole exit the church and she’s able to make eye contact with one of their friends.

This is by far my favourite reception shot from 2009.  We were given the heads-up on the morning of Ashly’s wedding that they were going to do something a little different for the father/daughter dance.  Apparently it’s tradition that Ashly and her dad do a little Blues Brothers routine during family events – you should have heard the room when they busted out the sunglasses!

We had been looking forward to Mariah and Greg’s wedding all summer as it gave us a chance to go shoot at the University of Lethbridge where we both got our degrees.  This image is a great example of how we approach our portrait sessions by focusing on creating a space for our couples to connect, while we then work from the sidelines.  I love everything about this shot!

Gail and Dwayne had one of the most unique weddings we’ve ever shot.  Just their parents and kids, their pastor and his wife, and us at their wedding on the shores of Lake Koocanusa.  For their portrait session we jumped in their boat and went exploring and couldn’t help but stop to grab some shots of them with the light streaming in behind them through the trees!

Sometimes it just takes a different perspective to tell a story. It was so fun to shoot Kirk and Amrita’s day – with two ceremonies, a Christian and a Hindu, it was full of colour and culture.

It all starts with good light, and that is what this shot is all about. If Angie and Stu win this contest, they’ll have to choose a different image than this one for their canvas, because they already have this one hanging in their home. I wish I could convince all of our clients to get their canvas in black and white – they look so good!

We always strive to capture authentic natural moments in our photography. But every now and then it’s fun to take a concept and explore to see how we can make it happen. In this case, Lisa threw out a general idea of what she was envisioning, and we all chatted it around for a few minutes before we came up with this. Because we were on a narrow, winding road at the time we even had Cam’s daughters playing traffic police so that we wouldn’t get run over by one of the wedding guests heading up to the Lodge!

We actually pre-visualized this shot about 5 months prior to Tiff and Ian’s wedding, when we happened upon it during a training ride for Kevan’s bike race this summer. We knew that we had to have a 4×4 to get there, and we knew that Tiff and Ian would probably be game to make it happen. Ian was excited like a fat kid for a smartie when we told him that we wanted to go mudding on his wedding day! =)

I love this shot of Dani and Devin. They eye is naturally drawn to highlights, so in this shot your first instinct is to go straight to the couple. But if you let your eye stay for a moment and explore you will see that there is a lot more going on in the periphery than you might have first thought.

]]> http://68photography.ca/2009/12/a-contest-top-shots-of-2009/feed/ 14 http://68photography.ca/2009/12/kirstin-and-troy-fernie-bc/ http://68photography.ca/2009/12/kirstin-and-troy-fernie-bc/#comments Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:25:26 +0000 6:8 http://68photography.ca/blog/?p=4253 Yikes! Scathing emails abound in the past few days about our atrocious lack of blogging activity! Well, we received at least one email anyway. It’s hard to say anything in our defense. Our strategy of late has been to sheepishly look at the ground wondering how it got to be a month between posts. We’ve got a whole bunch on the go right now, including a project here in Fernie to promote it as a wedding destination. If you are a potential Fernie bride check out: www.fernieweddings.ca – it’s not a finished product by any means, but we are slowly getting there. We’ve also been working really hard on another project that we hope to unveil in the next little while here. Stay tuned! Anyway, pictures – that’s why you came here right? Well, yesterday Duane and I had the opportunity to do a quick photo session with our good friends Troy and Kirstin from Lethbridge. It was friggin’ cold out so the session didn’t last quite as long as normal, but I think that we got some good stuff anyway. It was really neat to do this session because we go way back with these two – I actually crashed their wedding reception, nine years ago, as a pesky first-year University student. Leah and I even ended up buying their apartment in Airdrie when we moved there after University and they were moving back to Lethbridge. Even though they are not that much older than us, Troy and Kirst have always been mentors to Leah and I; and we always cherish opportunities to connect with them. It’s always a privilege to be around people who have a really strong bond and deep friendship. The fact that it is this evident, even nine years into their journey together makes it that much more special. Love this shot that Duane grabbed!

Marni came all the way from Eureka for her senior portraits. She was awesome and had no qualms about wading through the brush, climbing up on big rocks, or hiking down to the river in her dress shoes. At one point during the session I jokingly told her I wanted a shot of her wading in the river (the water is pretty cold this time of year!) and she was ready to take her shoes & socks off and jump right in.  I guess some people just take me too seriously!  Anyway, thanks for coming all the way to Fernie Marni!  A few of our favourites from your session are below!