Spring is in the Air | Calgary Photographer

I just got the most lovely email from this girl telling me how worried she was before her family’s photo session. She actually thought it might be a stressful situation hahahahaha! She was a bit surprised I think to see how much fun a photo session can be Her boyfriend was a wee bit nervous about having his picture taken, so I wanted to show him(and her) that there was nothing to worry about! And, oh–this family was about as nice a crew as I have ever encountered. What a wonderful way to start the spring!

~happy weekend everyone!

Dana

LA Kids | Canadian Children’s Photographer

While I was in Los Angeles, I had the pleasure of photographing these two lovely ladies at their home. Their mom is a friend of my good friend in New York. We thought that maybe we would have had the opportunity to shoot the girls in Manhattan last year, but it never happened. It worked out lovely for me as I got to photograph the girls in their home which is always my favorite place to capture kids. They had a lovely orange tree which had the most wonderfully sweet fruit on it which I got to sample as well. Plus, supper was made and a family visit happened after the fact. What a wonderfully homey way to spend an evening in such a big city

Enjoy this wonderful spring day!!!

~Dana

Personal Project | April 2010

This is my April family image It makes me smile a big soul filling smile April was a big month for us with our epic adventure and we were soooooooo lucky to have had our family images taken by the wonderful Tara Whitney while we were in Southern California. We were also soooooo lucky that it was the most beautiful day of our entire trip. The light was absolutely delish!!! She posted one goofy one on her blog earlier this week and I decided to use a more serious one for my personal project. I promise to blog more about the entire experience with Tara in a seperate blog post as it deserves a post all to itself!

So, April saw us pack up our car and our tent trailer and travel a whooping 7500 km in two and a half weeks. We saw mountains and deserts. Oceans and rivers. Big trees and tiny bugs. We had some concerns over how the kids would manage being stuck in the car so much, but they did AWESOME!!! They even grew tired of their video games and DVD’s and spent time creating their own games together which was heartwarming for us parents who spend way to much time listening to their disagreements. Jack drew some incredible comics. Georgia made up songs. And, we have family stories that we will tell for years to come.

One of my favorites came at our campfire one night. We were unable to enjoy too many campfires for a bundle of reasons, but at one of the few that we had, we decided to roast hot dogs for supper. The kids love doing this and Georgia wanted very much to cook Bob his second hot dog. There is a lot of talk about how to make the perfect campfire hot dog(or marshmallow or breakfast, etc) at our house which includes, often, talk of how much of it should be burnt. Georgia decided to burn Bob’s hot dog. And burn it she did!!!! Until it was a piece of charcoal–giggling the entire time!! When she finally did pull it out of the fire, she looked up and we all said ‘Perfect! Just needs ketchup!’ and roared with laughter. For the rest of the trip, Georgia would keep saying ‘Just needs ketchup’ anytime she wanted us to laugh.

One of the things that really stuck out in April was Georgia’s decision that not only was she going to be a chef(and an artist…and sometimes a doctor or a dentist, but not all at the same time)she was going to have her own ‘restaunant’ and it would be called simply ‘G’s’. For the entire trip, she was listing off the things she would cook for us at her restaunant-including a list of all of our favorites. Once when we went into a restaurant called The Mad Greek(imagine a place where everything Greek was delightfully crammed into every free space of the blue and white building) she was in awe! This was exactly how her restaunant was going to look when she grew up…only the bathrooms wouldn’t smell as bad We also spent an afternoon the the Portland Children’s Museum where they had a child sized restaurant complete with fake food and a phone that rang with take out orders…she did not want to leave. She could have played there for a week. In fact, she asks every day if we can go back there.

Jack’s favorite part of the trip was going to Legoland. It was like the mothership calling him home. Especially Miniature World with all the little cities made of lego. He was in awe. He had a $50 budget while on our trip and spent every last dime in the gift shop. He also learned to chop wood(much to my overly mothering fear) and could have spent hours exploring every square inch of forest looking for odd bugs and weirdly shaped trees.

I think Bob and I were just happy that we survived. We were excited to be able to prove to ourselves that we are ready for roadtrips with kids. Real roadtrips where we cover ground, see new things, and taste the local grub. We will also look back fondly on the people we met–the lovely Salt Lake City family who invited us to their home and fed us one night…the family in Kelowna who I captured through my lens–twice! And who’s son captured the hearts of both of my kids(Jack was sooooo sad to say goodbye and Georgia declared her undying love for him–who can blame her? he’s sooooo cute). And, the lovely Miss Whitney who took the most amazing images of me with my kids. Images that truly make my heart sing. What a great month…