50th Birthday Luau - Calgary Event Photographer

For the past few months there has been many a night of planning and organizing in our house and a few others too. Busy planning a surprise 50th Birthday for my Mother in-law, Shannon. This was one of the hardest surprise birthday parties to try to arrange, you see, Shannon knows everybodys routines and how they don't stray from them. So when Andy said he didn't want to race, Cody said he had to work, Jenn wasn't able to go to Edmonton to race and all of a sudden Melissa had to go to work on Saturday she had to have known that something was up.

Getting her out of the house was another chore.  How often does Shannon get a call from Val to go out and get her hair done and have some lunch?  Well lets say it doens't happen often she did finally agree to go but it was a lot later than we had hoped to  get started setting up!

Lots of people helped get all the things lined up during the day, coming out to Bearspaw to help set up tents, chairs, pull the pork, cut the buns, set up the tiki bar, pick up and set up the Maragrita mixer, put up decorations and limbo bar, water Shannons flowers and Valet all the guests cars outta sight so it could still be a surprise. 

The biggest tip off to her was when Andy called and said he was getting hungry and was wondering when she was coming home...that NEVER happens, he would work on the cars until midnight without coming in to eat if it were up to him!  She came home wondering what was up but had no idea that all her family and friends would be there with a Luau set up in the back yard!

We had a delicious feast consisting of pulled pork, Huli Huli chicken, a few different salads and a spinach salad inside a watermelon, lots of fruit and a few different desserts including one cake(well actually 3) made by none other than my awesome wife.

So was she surprised you ask?

I still think she was! One of my favorite things was when she said "Is that Ben and Donna here, you said you were racing!"

Happy 50th Shannon from all of us, hope you had a great time!
Here's a few photos from the night.  Enjoy.

Kylie's Maternity Teaser - Calgary Maternity Photographer

Finally! I have my computer back up and running so its time to get caught up on my editing and my blogging!

Here's a start,  Kylie and Darren's Teaser. 

Enjoy!

Baby Denali - Calgary Newborn Photographer

I recently got the chance to connect with an old friend.  That friend had just had a new baby who they named Denali.  I went and took over their home for a few hours so that we could capture these precious times and have them available longer than our memories will remember.  These times go by so fast, and by the time you realize what is happening you just may be calling me to see if I can shoot their wedding!

Babies always seem to look great in black and white it just feels natural to post all these that way. So here is my first all black and white blog post and I really like it! I might just make it a regular occurrence. 

Enough chatter lets get to the goods!

Meet Baby Denali and family!

These last two I am not sure which one I like better,  please leave a comment below to let me know which is your favorite!

Baby D Teaser - Calgary Newborn Photographer

Just another little Teaser for you all...

This little guy looks like he's a newborn but actually he weighs in at over 9 pounds and is already 7 weeks old.

Meet Baby D!

As always please leave a comment below...

Baby Nicholas - Calgary Newborn Photographer



Well what can I tell you about this little guy?

I suppose I could write about how I will be his Godfather after this weekend(saweeet), how he weighed in at a mere 820 grams when he was born at only 28 weeks.   That when I photographed him he would have been 4 days old if he were full term.  How you could consider him a miracle baby as his mother has a heart condition that she was told she wasn't 'supposed' to birth a child and now he has excelled in growth and has been passing all of his preemie tests with flying colors.

Those are some pretty crazy points right there and I could write a lot of stuff about them! 

But really I want to keep it short so you can get to enjoying the pictures, so I will say he's little but getting bigger, he's my God Son, and he is awesome!!



Kids are Awesome - Calgary Children Photographer

Last week I had the opportunity to shoot the Bright Explorations Preschool in Airdrie.

There are three classes, and about 18 students in each.  Class runs for about two hours, which when you do the math didn' leave me much time with each student to try to capture some of their true personalities as I usually try to do with these shoots.

The first day went really well, better than I had expected that's for sure.  Day two started out not so good.  The fire alarm went off just as class was about to start, and went on for quite some time.  For a while I thought I was going to have to reschedule that classes shoot for another day because just as soon as they got the alarm turned off and we were ready to go inside, it started again!  In the end we ended up losing almost an hour of the day because of it.  Day three went as good if not better than day one, so no complaints there!

I had all type of personalities to work with, some so excited to meet me and show me the classroom but then in front of the camera' they turned to the shyest you have ever met. Others started out shy and warmed up to me right away.  One little girl was so excited when I sat down beside her she pulled on my 'soul patch' (that tuff of facial hair under my lip...) It was quite hilarious!

All in all I had a great time, learnt a few things, met a ton of awesome children and had fun doing it!

Well enough of the talk lets get to the pictures already!

 As always please feel free to leave a comment below!

Nicholas Teaser - Calgary Newborn Photographer

Here's a quick image from my newborn shoot on Thursday.  Couldn't resist when he was making a kissy face!

Love this guy!