Be Mine |Edmonton Wedding Photographer|

February 14, 2010 Shawn and I sat on the beaches in Thailand. We had seen each other for the first time again after being apart for 3 months while Shawn was serving in Afghanistan. I will never forget this day, or many other memories made during our trip. It was one eventful, emotional, and amazing experience. I am so glad to have spent every second of it with Shawn.

My natural female instinct always loved some part of Valentines Day. I love being spoiled and showered with lovely gifts. But it was never a huge thing with me.  I still wouldn’t say it is a “huge” thing but this day means a lot to me. It reminds me of a place in my life where there was a lot of unknown. A place that I never imagined I would be in a life time.

 As Shawn placed the ring on my finger, I cried. I cried like I did not even know I could. So many things went through my head. Happy, sad, HAPPY, sad! Happy because WOW I am the luckiest girl in the entire world, Sad because there was still 3 months left in Afghanistan keeping us apart, Happy because never in my life did I plan to get married but now I had this amazing man in front of me asking to spend the rest of my life with him, Sad because there was still 3 long months left of the unknown.

As I cried, and I mean cried for a very long time, I knew this was it. This was the man I was going to marry. This was the one man in the entire world that I was going to spend the rest of my life with. I was going to plan a wedding with him, and buy a house and have kids. I was going to share all of my life long struggles with him and share all of life’s joy with him. He was it, and he loved me back. Someone in this world loved me enough to want to spend the rest of his life with me. Someone loved ME that much. I guess I should have already known all of this, but having a man on his knees declaring his love is a feeling like no other.

I love Shawn more than words can say. The things that we have gone through in the short 4 years that we have been together are absolutely amazing. Shawn grounds me when I need it, and lifts me up when I need that. He keeps me focused and he keeps me sane. He balances me like no other and he truly makes me who I am today. He has given me so many things in so many ways, I am pretty sure he doesn’t even understand all the ways he has completed my life.

A few weeks back I posted that I wanted to do a session. I was so in love with the idea I had that I decided to do it myself. Besides, I wanted new photos of Shawn and I. But this was my vision, my idea so we challenged ourselves. We attempted to shoot it ourselves. DISASTER! This was incredibly hard. It was so cold out, my eyes were watering therefor wrecking my make up, and 99% of the photos are not in focus. Not so good with a remote I guess. But still, the fact that Shawn stood outside in the cold and pretended that we could shoot ourselves was all I needed for Valentines Day this year. Seriously, what other guy would do that!

Thank You Shawn, I Love You!

And yes, I will be your life long Valentine!

Enjoy some of the shots we got that day (some still aren’t in focus but I used them anyway, bare with me it was a challenge and a half ha ha)

 

The Count Down Begins |Edmonton Wedding Photographer|

Only ten days! Just 10 days left. I can hardly stand it. It has been over 3 months since we last shot a wedding. I am going a little insane. My husband just keeps laughing at me because usually by the end of wedding season I am in need of a huge break, but now that I haven’t been shooting, seriously going crazy.

I cannot wait to start 2012 wedding season off with a stunning couple in a beautiful location, Canmore. We will be surrounded by fabulous people, a gorgeous backdrop, and a couple that is more in love than ever. On top of that, Pat and Ainsley have hired a videographer. In all of the weddings that we have shot, we have only had a videographer there for a small handful of them. They are fabulous to have around and great to bounce ideas off of during the day.

For our first wedding of the year we were intending to do a behind the scenes video, highly requested by you lovely fans. However with there already being a fabulous videographer there, there is no need for us to pretend we know what we are doing with the video portion. So we were stumped. We wanted to start the season out with something fun, something new and different. I thought about it for a while and came up with something I hope you all enjoy.

This season I cut back on the amount of weddings I signed up for. My mission was to only say yes to 10 weddings for the season. So far I have turned down 15 weddings, not including dates that I was already booked for. I have also went over my limit of 10 and now have booked 15. Okay, so I am terrible at saying no to fabulous things. Anyway, the point of my rambling is that we thought of something fun to share with you guys over the course of our wedding season. All of my weddings are very spread out running from February until November so I wanted to do something I could commit to doing each and every wedding.

Here it is.

If you have followed my work, you know I am here to help and love to answer your questions. My inbox fills up with questions from up and coming photographers and brides to be all of the time. I would say probably at least 6 emails a day are simply questions about photography and not inquiries. I love getting these. I love learning about people and their desire to be great at photography. I also think that it is really cool that they think they can learn something from me. I am still learning and growing every single day. I still have other photographers that I go to when I need help. So to open up my email and find out someone wants to learn something from me, it warms my heart. So, I am giving you the chance to ask. Ask me ANYTHING! I mean anything you want to. You could ask me what programs I use, or what my camera gear is, or how about what my favourite pizza is. Anything you want to know, I will answer. We will do small video blogs during each wedding we shoot and post them periodically throughout the season. All you have to do is ask me on my Facebook page or pop me an email (nc-photography@live.ca) . I already have a ton of great questions to be answered at the wedding next weekend.

I am very excited to connect with you guys and help out.

I hope you have fun with it and are as happy about us doing this as much as we are.

I look forward to hearing what you all have to say!

Much Love

~N~

Sending Some Love ~Edmonton Boudoir Photographer~

Frostbitten |Edmonton Photographer|

WHERE IS ALL THE SNOW? Okay, I will never ever complain about the lack of snow on any normal day, but man I do love a good winter project.

People always tell me how warm my photos are, and yes I love my photos warm so I knew this was going to be a challenge for me. I will remind you, this winter I was being selfish and doing things just for me. This shoot was just that.

Cold, think cold thoughts. That’s what I kept telling myself.

Melissa and I have been in touch for over a year now I am sure. Never did we really talk about her beautiful daughter Hailey, and when I say beautiful, I mean it. She definitely has a lot of her mamas jeans in her.

Hailey was also another challenge for me…she is 15. I have yet to work with someone so young, especially for this type of session. I got a little nervous wondering if there are rules for these sorts of things, or what if I slip up and let out a swear word. Little things like that went through my head. But the minute “douche bag” came out of Haileys mouth, I knew we were a perfect fit.

I absolutely adored Hailey. She is so beautiful, inside and out.The day was full of lots of laughing and having a ton of fun. Not to mention introducing the rules of modeling (which went against everything we were doing). NO laughing, NO smiling, and you have to suck it up. Even if that means laying in the snow and having icicles stuck to your back. Okay, those might not be the rules at all, but that’s what we decided to tell her. Thanks for being a trooper love.

I hope you enjoy these photos hun, and think about them on all of those lonely Friday nights (p.s. inside joke. I am sure after this there will be no more of those days)

MUA http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mookie-Salinas-Makeup-Artist/282644958451670

Miss C |Edmonton Boudoir Photographer|

This session was shot back in October of 2011. She finally put the images up on Facebook and I realized how much I adore this girl and the photos we took that day.