Moments in Design: September 2013

I often look through all my photos from over the past 8 months and can't believe my eyes. I am not one to "toot my own horn" or anything, in fact I prefer to blend into the background of things and get easily embarrassed over praise, but the improvement in my photography is so amazing I can't help but notice. Thinking back on things I realize one of the major reasons I have improved so much is because of an idea my sister and I had. We decided to start filming the announcements for our Church and along with this came a request from Carley; she asked if I could snap some photos of her because she wanted to start a fashion blog. So we headed out to various locations, her "not quite DSLR, but more than a point and shoot" camera and tripod in hand. I won't bore you with details, but the fact of the matter is that Carley is a large part of the reason that my photography is where it is. She lets me try new things and use her as my guinea pig on a weekly basis. She lays in the dirt for me, climbs mountains in heels and constantly inspires me to get better! Check out our journey...and check out Carley's blog - www.littlebirdlee.com

Last Wednesday evening my sister Carley and I took our dear friends Emily and Peter out to beautiful Neck Point to capture some engagement photos. It was my first time shooting and engagement, and I won't lie - I was NERVOUS! But Emily had seen my photography both on Facebook and through Carley's blog and so when she asked Carley to style her and Peter, and me to capture the moments, I couldn't say no! We started the evening off by heading to the salon to help Emily "get her gorgeous on"! Her sister styled her hair and Carley touch up her make-up while Peter got his hair trimmed as well. Carley and I had been together most of the afternoon and we were both really happy about how the weather was turning out that day, it wasn't clear blue sky but the sun was shining through the clouds and the light was just right. But, when we left the salon and the sky started to turn black with storm clouds and big fat rain drops started to fall as we raced towards Neck Point. Now, if I admitted I was nervous before I can't even tell you how I was feeling now! We arrived at Neck Point and I told Emily and Peter we would do our best, and if we had to, reschedule on a nicer day. We raced over to the first location I had in mind and luckily the rain stopped, but the light was fading and it was fading fast! Emily and Peter were total rockstars; they climbed over railings and cliffs while we chased the light and never complained once. Just when we thought we would call it a night this breathtaking sunset broke through the clouds and we dove back into action, shooting until the sun dipped below the mountains and it was dark. We parted ways and Carley and I headed back to our moms for a late night dinner and to start going through all the shots I had gotten. At this point I was still thinking I was going to have to reschedule the shoot for another day, worried that I hadn't captured enough, but boy was I wrong! Narrowing down my favourites for this post was near impossible...