Unique Images Photography | Weddings | Portraits | Fashion » Wedding, Portrait, and Fashion Photography Blog

We are excited to be featured on the Wedding Obsession blog! We had one of our Banff weddings feature there earlier this year, which was very cool, and this time we have a very small mix of some our images from a handful of weddings around Canada—Kelowna, Toronto, Banff, Taber, and Crows Nest Pass.

If you are planning your wedding, make sure to take a look around the Wedding Obsession blog! There are so many awesome ideas for couples to draw from, whether you’re after a cool retro vibe or something modern and different.

Thanks for having us on your blog again, Melissa!

We have recently had two shoots featured on the wedding inspiration blog, Beyond Beyond. If you are a regular blog reader here you may remember our previous feature on Beyond Beyond and it’s always an honour to have our photography displayed with them. This time round we have a Calgary engagement session and a Banff bridal portrait session.

Beyond Beyond describes their site as “wedding inspiration for daring bridesters, hipsters, and individuals who dare to be different” and they definitely fit that description! There are so many wedding-inspiration blogs and web sites out there and so many just chase after whatever the current trend happens to be, but Beyond Beyond really does have a very cool, eclectic mix of tasty tidbits and funky photos that stands out from the crowd. Click on the links above to check them out.

We photographed Julie and Jake’s engagement at the start of this year and after meeting them I knew that their wedding was going to be a one-of-a-kind!

We started the day at Julie’s parent’s house, taking photos of the dress and other details, before Julie arrived from the hair salon to get into her wedding dress. Julie was an absolutely stunning bride and her dress had beautiful and ornate decorative stitching throughout, which looked really cool.

Jake and Julie’s wedding was at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in downtown Calgary in a ceremony with smiles and happy tears. After the ceremony and family photos, we went to the high school where Julie and Jake first met, on the south side of Calgary, to start their portrait time and then we drove up to Inglewood to finish the portraits there.

The reception was held at Commonwealth Hall in the north east of Calgary and the decor for the reception was amazing. There was a huge tent set up in the main hall area with bright-coloured up-lights along the floor and a chandelier hanging from the centre of the tent. And check out the cake! That is such an amazingly stylish cake!

Julie and Jake had a game of tossing a big dice to see if they would kiss or whether some other fun event would take place. Each side had a different outcome, but it seemed to land on the kissing side quite a lot.

The reception was a really cool party, with belly dancers who performed and kicked off the dancing. I love it when everyone gets out on the dance floor! Before we left we did some more portraits, because it makes for a great way to wrap up the story of their day together. Here are (quite) a few of my favourites:

A little over two years ago I photographed Mark and Melissa and their dog, Luke, and they recently got in touch to tell me the exciting news that they have gotten another dog! Oh, and they also had a baby. Their baby boy, Ryder, is super cute and has such great expressions.

We started their family photography out in Fish Creek park in Calgary, which is where we went for their first portrait session, though this time we used different spots. It’s a great place for photos, with wide fields for the dogs to run around in and a little stream running through not far from where you can park your car. After this we went back to their home and photographed in Ryder’s room. I love the bright colours they’ve chosen for his room!

Here is a small selection of my favourite images from their photo session:

I recently got a call from Corey and Krista asking if I would photograph their newborn baby, Conner. Of course I was honoured to do it! I love being able to record new additions to our clients’ families.

We photographed Corey and Krista’s wedding back in 2008 and their engagement session in 2007, before this blog was even born. I did the portrait session with Corey, Krista and Conner in their house in Calgary, which has lots of nice big windows to let in the sunlight. Some babies will let you put them into certain poses while they sleep, with their head resting in their hands and that kind of thing, but Conner was determined to sleep in his own positions! Lol! I actually much prefer these shots, because they have so much personality to them. And he may have a modelling career ahead of him, with those Blue Steel expressions.

As well as getting wedding portraits in Banff, Guannan and Renee asked if we could do a second day of photography that would be more casual and would show a different aspect of the Southern Albertan landscape. So on our way back from Banff we stopped in Cochrane, just outside of Calgary, to create images that capture a taste of the rolling fields and rural life in Alberta. We ended up on a family farm on the outskirts of Cochrane and climbed through a barbed wire fence to sit on the fields and get our photos. The horses in the field were really curious and came right over to see what we were doing, hanging around until Guannan, who had stood in an ant’s nest and gotten stung, sprayed himself with bug spray. They didn’t like the smell of that, apparently, and wandered off to the other side of the field until we left, even though we tried to win them back over with apples.

For their Romantic Fashion Session (aka Trash The Dress, Day After Session, Bridal Session, etc.), Guannan said he really wanted photos that would show some of the Albertan landscape, so that their relatives overseas could get a picture of the place they have made their home. We both agreed that Banff was a must! It’s such a beautiful location, with the Rockies and lakes and forests.

We started our day with some photos of Renee getting ready in the hair salon, just like I would for a wedding. Renee had a very cool birdcage veil that looked awesome with her dress. Guannan had asked for some photos with his car, so we did those as soon as everyone was ready, because the weather looked a bit iffy and I didn’t want the car to get rained on or muddy—it was so shiny! The sky was very overcast, so I went with it and created dramatic-looking images with the dark clouds.

Since stylish imagery was a big priority for Guannan and Renee, we mainly did posed photos, so this blog post is almost like a Unique Images Photography guide to posing couples! The goals for our session, apart from getting great images, were that the photos have a stylish and somewhat romantic feel, that the time be relaxing and not rushed, and that the photos show off the Banff area.

Thanks to Guannan and Renee for being such a wonderful and hospitable couple!

When Elizabeth called to set up the time for their engagement session, she told me about their love of gardening and immediately had an idea that included something gardening-related. The three of us also share an off-beat sense of humour, so that crept into the photo as well. We actually ended up doing the photo—the first one below—in Jamie’s parent’s backyard, because it is so beautiful and verdant.

This was a very relaxing and enjoyable engagement session. We basically went for a walk along the river bottom in Lethbridge and whenever I saw something that looked like it would make for a good place for photos we stopped and hung around there for a while and then ambled off somewhere else. It was pretty loose and ad-libbed. And the light was so nice, too!

Here are some of my favourite images from their session. I look forward to photographing their wedding, which is very, very soon! Oh, and don’t worry Jamie, I’d never, ever mention that mysterious wet patch on your pants.

These guys were so much fun to photograph! They had a great sense of humour and were very easy-going.

Ryan and Shawna actually live in Edmonton, but we did their engagement session in Calgary. Like some of our other couples, their wedding will be in a beautiful outdoor location—in this case, Summerhill Winery in Kelowna—and so they wanted a contrasting urban setting for their engagement photos. We spent the afternoon visiting several locations around Calgary, including the Calgary Zoo (where they got to pat a python), some abandoned railway tracks (I don’t photograph on live tracks), and a couple of other places round the city.

Shawna asked me to get a photo of her engagement ring during their session. Her ring is a unique, custom-made design and it looks very cool! She said that she had tried to get photos herself, but they never turned out well. So hopefully I got something a bit better.

I’m really looking forward to this wedding! Not only are they a very cool couple to hang out with, but Kelowna is one of my favourite places to shoot weddings.