Amanda’s second baby is on the way soon, and she wanted to do a stylish photo shoot to celebrate! We turned her house in a mini-photo studio and she picked out an amazing, flattering wardrobe to show off her tummy. I’m also proud of her for balancing in her high heels because that can be challenging enough when you aren’t packing a little person along with you :)

Carter, like all two year olds, only wanted to be in the photos if it was his own idea, so we were only able to sneak him in when he crashed our shots :)

I am veeeeery late on editing and posting these, but thrilled to finally get them up here. Back in September I alluded to working with a Utah photographer who could easily be David Bowie’s lovechild (everywhere he went, anyone who met him would exclaim how much he looked like Bowie, which I imagine gets pretty tiring after a while!). Adam met up with me for a fashion shoot in the lobby/bar at THEhotel in Las Vegas, and we got a solid 35 minutes in before security put a stop to it. Considering I’ve been told to move at least every 10 minutes to prevent that from happening, I think we fared pretty well!

THEhotel is gorgeous and when I first saw it a few years ago I instantly wanted to work with a model in there. Adam was a perfect (and very dapper) match. I was hoping to likewise model for him, but we ran out of time. Hopefully at next year’s Photoshop World!

As I mentioned in the previous entry, when doing the photos for the last issue of ArtsBridge I was asked to shoot within the theme of the interaction between the environment, arts, and science, and immediately the big windmills throughout Southern Alberta came to mind. I dragged Marie out towards Cardston just before sunset and made her repeatedly jump for me :)

Though the publication was in black and white, the colors that evening were so rich and saturated, so I’m excited to show the color versions of the images.

Thank you Marie for being such an awesome model!

Cameron came along to assist, so I snapped some photos of him while Marie was changing in the car.

The light was so gorgeous, so I just had to get some non-jumping photos of her as well :)

Cam demonstrated that he also had excellent jumping skills…

The weather may have forced us inside, but I had a great time taking graduation photos with Zack and Amanda, as well as Zack’s mom and dad. Zack has exceptional taste, as is evident by his white tux, and Amanda’s tastes are quite outstanding as well with the choice of her gorgeous sparkley blue dress. What a good looking couple :)

Last year when I went to Vegas to attend WPPI, I was standing in line waiting for Jerry Ghionis’ platform class and started talking to the girl in front of me. What a small world it was; she was from Calgary! I hadn’t seen Stephanie since meeting her then, but we agreed we’d definitely get together in Vegas again this year (don’t worry, I’ll have a post coming about that soon enough!).

This year found her with a baby in her belly, so we decided some Vegas maternity photos were in order! The Vegas strip has a million fantastic photo locations that always get the gears in my head going, but I just couldn’t make it past the hallway to the convention center at MGM! The colorful walls called to me…

Stephanie was willing to strip down in front of all the other photographers walking by, and it was fun stopping for everyone who was chimping the back of my camera to see what we were up to! It was so much fun and challenging working in a totally different environment for maternity photos; usually I prefer to use a lot of natural light and give the photos more of a soft feel, but if you’ve been in any of the casinos in Vegas, you know they are very dark and very dramatic! My mom acted as my lighting assistant with my single strobe (I wanted to travel light – no pun intended), which made the shoot much easier, seeing as how I didn’t have a light stand with me ;)

Check out what a cutie Steph is…

It took some planning and a crew of people to get the artistic vision perfect, and I was happy with the results of turning Cassandra into her own version of Blind Mag from the movie Repo. This is a bizarre, wonderful dark rock opera, so if you’re into quirky things like that, be sure to check it out! I was hoping to do some evening light painting with this shoot, but the temperature dropped quite considerably and our fingers went pretty numb, so we stuck primarily with strobes.

Sara (who is new to the photo scene; check out her link below!) was a huge help with moving my lights around and manning the flashlight so I could get the focus right, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without her. This was also the first shoot I had Bonnie do makeup for, and I hope there will be many more because that girl is talented! And if the zombie makeup is any indication of what those two can do, you shouldn’t be too surprised with this costume.

The talented cast…
Hair: Cayley Moncrieff, Chatters @ Park Place
Makeup: Bonnie Ferguson
Assistant: Sara Giséle
Costume: Cassandra Pollock & Jeremy Nordstrom

For reference, this is Blind Mag:

Some behind the scenes makeup:

To keep Cassandra warm on the way there, she dressed like a crazy punk teenager ;)