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Yay for us!

Our studio recently won the Canadian Bridal Network’s Best Wedding Photographs contest of this year, beating nearly 500 other entries. Actually, after the contest results went live I heard that the judges had short-listed a dozen of our photos for the winning spots, but in the end they decided to just use the one image below to represent our studio.

I met the couple in the winning image when I was looking for a wedding dress. Not for myself; for a bridal fashion shoot in B.C. The bride, Caitlin, works in Ten Fashions Bridal Boutique and when one of my models didn’t show I asked her to fill in. She brought along her fianceé, Kelowna DJ Dan Freeman, and so my fashion shoot turned into a real engagement session for them. Because they are an actual couple they brought great energy and true emotional connection to the shoot. Their wedding is in 2010 and will be awesome.

Thanks very much also to Trent from Eye For Detail Photography! I actually found out about this contest after receiving an email from Bride.ca saying that Trent had contacted them and told them to check out my work for the contest. Thanks, Trent!

For those of you who are not pro photographers, WPPI stands for Wedding and Portrait Photographers International and is the largest such organisation in the world. Every year they hold print and album contests, with entrants from everywhere having their prints judged by some of the most respected photographers in the industry. This time I finally got around to entering some images! I wish I had had the time to prepare more images, but I’m happy with the scores these received. Three of my images were awarded Accolades of Excellence and I have put those images below.

Allan and Wendi, the Global TV Wedding Wish winning couple, were a very cool couple to work with.  Of course, I would expect nothing less from them after knowing their antics in trying to win the Wedding Wish contest. You can read more about them and their masked adventures on their Facebook page.

Allan and Wendi saw one another before their ceremony and I set up a romantic meeting for them.  Then we did most of the rest of their portrait images before the ceremony around town, including inside Henotic restaurant, which has become my favourite place for indoor photography in Lethbridge. The decor and ambiance is probably the best in Lethbridge. The owners are friendly and accommodating, too.  I was first there for photos during Heidi and Clark’s wedding last January and I’ve been back a few times since then.

Allan and Wendi’s wedding was on the grass at the top of the coulees just behind the Galt Museum here in Lethbridge on a nice sunny day without too much wind—for Lethbridge, anyway.  Allan and Wendi both wrote their own vows and you could tell immediately how much love they had for one another. Their words were so touching and meaningful. I have a photo of Wendi wiping away tears during Allan’s vows. This was the most well-videoed wedding we’ve been to, with a big news camera from Global TV as well as two, only slightly smaller, cameras wielded by George Gallant, a instructor who teaches video production at Lethbridge College, and his son. These guys all knew what they were doing and we had no problem with them getting in our way or anything like that. I’m hoping to get some footage from George to put up later as well to show you how I shoot at weddings. Stay tuned for that, too.

The reception entertainment for the evening was provided by J.R. Matthew, Entertainer Extraordinaire. His show was fantastic! If you’re ever looking for someone who can keep things alive at your reception, he would be on the top of my list. With his wife Lyn working the sound for the evening they did a very fun game show that had everyone madly competing in crazy events to win points. I will be posting some of those images in the slide show, so make sure you check back at the end of the week to see some hilarious photos of the wedding party guys in drag, and more.

The first dance started out normally and then there was a brief moment where it looked as though Lyn and JR had messed up the music, but it was all a prearranged stunt and Allan, Wendi, and Allan’s brother and his wife all launched into the Evolution of Dance routine. This was something that was going around YouTube a little while back, but it’s the first wedding we’ve been to where anyone has done it. They did it really well!

Here is a slideshow of some of their images. 

Early this year I joined a professional photography association called the WPJA (Wedding Photojournalist Association). The WPJA is an interesting place for me, because they focus very much on candid, ‘photojournalistic’ images from weddings and they have quite strict requirements and guidelines when it comes to what you can do to the images in Photoshop and that sort of thing. Not to mention the fact that some of the best wedding photojournalists around the world are members!

I tend to do whatever it takes to get the image and a lot of the time that means a little finessing in Photoshop afterward to finish the vision I had for the image before I even pressed the shutter. I do try to get everything done in-camera, because even though I’m good with Photoshop I’d rather spend my time being creative than fixing mistakes. So I did have a few images to submit to their contest and I’m pleased to say that the below image got a place in their Creative Portraits category. This image of the groom and groomsmen came out of the camera pretty much exactly as you see it now. Of course I Photoshopped it as well, but I only did basic stuff to it and didn’t alter the original scene. I love doing this kind of different imagery and at every wedding I always try to come up with at least one image that looks like nothing I’ve ever done before.

I just found out that the annual Wedcomp photography results are in and we got three of our images placing in the top 20! That’s awesome, since the competition included incredible photographers from all over the world. I’m not usually big on contests and so forth, because I think they can be very subjective, and who is to say that one person’s tastes should dictate whether your image is better than another image? But when I saw who the judges were I decided that this was a contest worth entering, since I respect all of them for their talents and the fact that they are all people who have worked hard to create their own style of photography. The judges are:

Rachel LaCour Niesen

Cliff Mautner

Jen Bebb

Zack Arias

Of course, they didn’t actually award us the top place, so they still have some things to learn.

Here are our placing entries:

You can see the rest of the entries HERE.

I’ll tell you at the end of the post. 

Thanks to everyone who voted for us in The Sun Times newspaper Best of the Best of Lethbridge contest!  We came in second out of the many photographers here in Lethbridge and we are quite honoured at that placing.  For anyone interested, the first and third places were taken by Randy Neufeld Photographics and de Jourdan’s Photo.Graphics, respectively.

We photographed Kristy’s wedding back in 2006 and off and on since then Kristy and I had talked about doing a trash the dress type of session. We finally got a chance to put some of our ideas into action!  I had wanted to do a “bride on a snowboard” image for about a year now and when Kristy said that she owned one and asked if she should bring it with her I leapt at the chance.  The temperature was around zero celsius and Kristy kept warm with a winter jacket and a thermos of coffee in between shots.  She was really brave though, because I was pretty chilly even with a jacket on!  We spent a little while outside and then headed to the Lethbridge Lodge where Kristy changed out of her wedding dress and the shoot morphed into a regular portrait session.

Sharon Ulrich from the Sun Times had just interviewed me about trash the dress sessions and you can read her excellent article by clicking here.

And here are some images from our session:

I think this was the first time a man has ever brought me flowers.

We were just chosen for CKVN radio station’s business of the month and DJ Mike LeBlanc came around and presented me with some nice gifts including the basket of teas and coffees you can see in the photo below, which I took on our dining room table.  We also won several other cool things that you can read about over on their site (click here to visit the link).

CKVN is the Christian radio station here in Lethbridge and they’ve done some great things with the station in the year or so that they’ve been running.  So thanks to CKVN—and to the other businesses in town who gave us our prizes. Now Sherri and I will have to arm-wrestle over who gets the hour-long massage. Uh-oh.