This last weekend I was reunited with two of the Rice boys and their families. I did both of their weddings, and now they have brand new little blue eyed boys to add to the family! We did the photos in Prince’s Island Park in downtown Calgary, and were able to easily get around all the Calgary Folk Festival attendees. I put Cassandra behind the camera this time as my assistant to generally jump around, wave her arms, shout crazy songs, and dance like a monkey for the babies. As you will see, Cassandra makes a very amusing monkey, at least according to these boys. I’m not sure I have ever seen such smiley babies. There weren’t even any meltdowns!

WARNING: Lots of blue eyes ahead!!

Cassandra must have done something shocking behind me!

Alright, now that I am done weddings for a while, I can catch up on a few weddings I second shot on! (Though each time I think I am done, another seems to pop up…) This one was shot with Michael Warf waaaaay back in August in Calgary. We accompanied Frank and Val to Calgary to celebrate their special day… at the Calgary Zoo! Unfortunately the weather was so cold and miserable that day, so our time spent outside was not as pleasant as it could have been, but we made due!

On my way into Calgary, I stopped in Okotoks to get some shots of Frank and his guys getting ready (while Michael was with the girls in Calgary). This was a challenge as I hardly fit in the hotel room with the guys, and I’m pretty skinny!

The guys had these great hats, but they were under orders not to wear them during the wedding, so we made sure they got some use earlier.

The ceremony and reception were in the African Lodge at the Zoo, a gorgeous room with big vaulted ceilings.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone to the Zoo during the summer, so I was surprised (and thrilled!) at all the free range peacocks they had… even if large birds are a little terrifying.

After some family photos on the Zoo grounds, we took the bridal party across the bridge into Inglewood.

Very glad to have trailed along :)

p.s. The cowboy hat was a gift from the organizer to welcome him to Calgary :)

Onto the photos!

After lunch, we went outside for a demonstration shoot of how he works with his couples.

He shoots very fast, but Jan and I weren’t totally sold… I might still shoot a little faster from pose to pose! (I always apologize to my second shooters, don’t worry.)

A few of us creeped over his shoulder (or in my case, crept on the ground!) to steal a few shots of the couple.

Jan gets her headshot taken

At the end of the shoot, we each got a famous Becker headshot :)

Yay!

Ripple Man!

Click on this one to see the larger version. Super pano!

And thanks to fancy technologies like self-timer, here are the two of us!

On Sunday Michael and I did another collaborative shoot with the lovely Elaina, who you might remember from The Hotel Arts shoot last month. Elaina is always a dream to work with, so we called on her to model a few gorgeous pieces from a Mckenzie Couture line. Mckenzie is a brilliant Lethbridge fashion designer and lent us some really colorful and funky work she has done.

We took to the old brewery in Inglewood in Calgary for our photos, and couldn’t have asked for a better day, or a richer location. Aside from the dirtiness and scary pigeons flying out of holes, the one location had such a good variety of backgrounds and textures that we never changed locations the whole afternoon. Usually Michael and I end up with really different frames when we share a shoot, but this time we were both feeling the brewery the same way, and came up with some really similar shots even though we didn’t look at each other’s cameras and reposed Elaina whenever we switched. The lone tree you see at the end of this post just had to be framed that way!

We were assisted by Michael’s friend Satnam, as well as Elaina’s crew, all of whom were good sports as we tiptoed admist the pigeon poop :)

Finally, I can show a little more than my Hotel Arts teaser from a week ago!

We started the shoot by doing some promo photos for the Hotel’s lounge, Raw Bar, and then took to the gorgeous lobby areas to do fashion photography. The hotel was also gracious enough to lend us a room, so we had a chance to do boudoir work as well. I would have loved a two day shoot out of this as I ran out of time and was only able to extensively work with one of the models… At least it leaves more ideas for the next time!

There’s no full nudity in the photos, but if you’ll get in trouble looking at girls in corsets or barely covered in showers except for steam on the windows when you’re at work, make sure you only check these out when you’re in private!

I’d also like to point out I love doing boudoir work, so if you are interested, please contact me! I’ve been doing it for a while, but only recently with models, so I haven’t been able to show it off before these last few shoots!

Elaina was totally channeling Marilyn, but unfortunately I didn’t have much time to work with her – we are definitely planning another shoot in the future.

While Michael shot in the women’s bathroom, I took the urinals! Us girls can justify it since my assistant for the day, Torin, was there :)

Miyuki Divine is also a burlesque dancer, and she had a ton of fabulous outfits.

I don’t know if this one counts as “fabulous” but it makes me quite happy! We couldn’t stop laughing during this part of the shoot.

I love Rydell’s versatile look… I didn’t recognize her from her photos when I first met her. She is one classy chameleon :)

Model LaceyLux had a corset done in body paint by makeup artist Kada Issa, who did an amazing job. The other photographers got photos of Lacey in the makeup, and I got photos of removing the makeup!

Conveniently placed steam is great.