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Lethbridge Firefighter Pipe & Drum Band

Mark — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:03:17 +0000

I’ve had the pleasure of photographing these guys a couple of times now for their charity calendar. The first time was on St. Patrick’s Day and we did a lot of candid photos as they tuned up. (Does tuning bagpipes make a difference? ) Then we did another photo session with a vintage fire engine on a stormy afternoon. They are a real bunch of characters and were fun to work with. They will be selling a calendar at some point to raise money and it’s a worthy thing to support. Contact the Lethbridge fire station for more info.

Kendra & Ryan’s Engagement Photography

Mark — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:56:49 +0000

I had a fun engagement session the other day with Ryan and Kendra, just outside of Lethbridge. We started out at their home in Coalhurst and just kinda hung out, with me taking photos of the kinda things they do as hobbies. They had this mostly-finished jigsaw puzzle where all the remaining pieces were almost identical and while I was photographing them they had a burst of inspiration and managed to complete some more. But for the sake of client confidentiality I won’t say who won their foosball match. Your secret is safe with me, Kendra. After a few quick photos of their energetic Jack Russell terrier, we took off down to highway to a place just outside of town for their portraits.

Ryan has a super-cool Harley Davidson bike that we worked into a few of their shots. I had to get him to turn it around a lot for the photos, though. Apparently they’re not light or easy to turn around on small dirt trails. We finished with a sweet, romantic time. Well, they did; I just watched. Wait, that doesn’t sound much better . . .

Here are a handful of their engagement photos.

Bridal Fashion Shoot at The Norland with Once Upon a Bride

Mark — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:40:39 +0000

Now that’s a long blog title!

I got together with Lethbridge boutique bridal store Once Upon A Bride and wedding venue The Norland for a bridal fashion shoot. Some of the staff of Once Upon A Bride were involved in the shoot and they were so awesome to work with—and that’s just in helping me during the photos, so the customer service in their store must be incredible! And the Norland is always a great place to shoot at. It is the nicest outdoor venue in Lethbridge and they are always friendly there as well.

I won’t be putting the images on my wedding site in my portfolio, because although they look like getting ready photos from a wedding, they were taken in a more controlled environment, but I wanted to share some of my favourites here on my blog.

Ignition Concert Photos

Mark — Mon, 03 May 2010 23:34:56 +0000

Last Saturday we had a whole bunch of performers and speakers come through Lethbridge for the Ignition event at the ENMAX Centre. The performances were organised by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada and as well as a line-up of great bands and illusionist Brock Gill, Will Graham was there to talk about the gospel.

First onto the stage to open the night was Eyes of Isis, the only non-christian band of the night. Then another local act, Phao took the stage. They were followed by illusionist Brock Gill and then rock band Stellar Kart. After an inspiring message by Will Graham, the headlining band, Kutless, played their set.

There was such a positive atmosphere during the night it’s awesome to see larger Christian rock acts coming through Lethbridge. Last year saw a real growth in the Lethbridge music scene, thanks to smaller venues such as Henotic, The Slice, and others, and hopefully this is also a sign of more good things to come for Lethbridge’s Christian music scene.

As well as this quick blog post I wrote an article for the Lethbridge Living Magazine blog—which will launch later this week—to compliment their printed article on Eyes Of Isis in their current magazine issue. In my article is a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes info and more photos of Eye Of Isis. When their blog goes live I’ll come back and update this post with a link to it for you to check out. Meanwhile, here are a handful of very hastily-edited images from the concerts, posted in the order of how they appeared. I have a ton of images from this event, so if any of the bands want to see more, please Contact Me. Also, a personal thanks to the film crew from Miracle Channel and to Romi from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada for being so easy to work with. There’s not a lot of room up front!

EYES OF ISIS:

PHAO:

BROCK GILL:

STELLAR KART:

WILL GRAHAM:

KUTLESS:

Luigi’s Restaurant Food Photography

Mark — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:12:07 +0000

I got a call not too long ago from Panos, who was the groom in a wedding we photographed about a year and a half back, asking if I did food photography. I told him that, yes, I had taken photos of food before. Which was true. I mean how hard can it be, anyway? Panos’ family owns the Luigi’s restaurant on the north side of Lethbridge and they were wanting to update their old photos for their upcoming website and get some prints for their walls.

I did two shoots in the end. The first one was of some of their menu items, which I photographed late at night, mostly after they had officially closed. I shot everything there in the restaurant as the chef made the food. Due to some bad organisation on my part, I had not had dinner beforehand and so I had to photograph all of these mouth-watering dishes—and desserts!—one after another, all on an empty stomach. Not that they wouldn’t have let me eat something, but we were trying to keep things rolling. At least Panos sent me home with cake.

The second shoot was in the kitchen. It was all photojournalistic photography, shot during a busy lunch time as the staff did their thing. I have a new respect for everyone who works behind the scenes in restaurants now! These guys are awesome—and fast. They were really easy to work with, too. I might post some of those photos later—they turned out really well—but for now I just wanted to show you a few of the food images.

P.S. you wouldn’t believe what I used as a backdrop.

Eyes of Isis Concert Photos

Mark — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:08:32 +0000

Last Friday I went along to check out Eyes of Isis playing live at Lethbridge’s Moose Hall. The band had invited me to come by and hang out, but I brought my camera just for kicks. These guys put on a really good show! I’ve been to quite a few concerts and at most of them I’ve been kinda bored, because the band didn’t get into it or develop any rapport with the crowd. Live playing is a skill that not a lot of studio bands have. It takes a lot of on-stage energy to keep a crowd pumped up past the first three songs. What I really liked about the Eyes of Isis performance was that they really had fun on stage. I’ve seen too many bands spend all their time trying to look cool and just end up being boring. Even though the images I chose for the blog are the more rockin’ out kinda shots, there were lots of times when the guys were smiling and just enjoying themselves. I think that’s pretty cool, especially for a band that plays fairly heavy rock. These days hardly any rock bands know how to have fun on stage anymore, but I remember way back (showing my age now) when Van Halen, for example, would be running around the stage and having tons of fun. Of course, they also wore spandex, and we really don’t want to see that again.

Here are a handful of images from the concert.

Jill & Clint’s Winter Wedding

Mark — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:59:04 +0000

Congrats to Clint and Jill, who were married in Lethbridge on a cold winter’s day. After dropping my assistant photographer Jessica off to stay with Jill and taking a few images of her having her hair done, I took off to cover the guys getting ready, arriving just as Clint got out of the shower. That’s always the time you want your wedding photographer to show up, right? (Jill, we’ll talk about those photos later). After this I drove back to where the girls were getting the final touches done to their hair and makeup. The girls were—how shall I put it?—so wonderfully self-entertaining. They laughed and joked around constantly and were definitely a blast to photograph.

Their ceremony was held at the Southminster United Church and after the ceremony and some quick family portraits we headed to a new location just outside of Lethbridge itself for the rest of the photography. We stayed here for all of the portraits and I cycled through different people and arrangements so that everyone could take turns warming up in the limo between photos. It was cold! I can’t believe how well Jill did, seeing as she was so lightly dressed—wedding dresses aren’t really made for Canadian winters—and how long we were outside for. Apart from myself, she was outside the longest. And I was wearing a winter jacket and two pairs of socks! Well, and other stuff, too, but I don’t really want to list absolutely everything. Anyway, we had a lot of fun with the portraits, getting some cool fashion-style images as well as fun ones of people messing around and the wedding party roasting marshmallows.

The wedding reception was held at the Grandstand and it was decorated in a tasteful winter theme. We stayed until just after the first dance, also covering the speeches and cake cutting before we had to leave. By the way, Clint, I have heard that the last person the bride cuts the cake with is destined to be their soulmate forever.

I had a hard time narrowing down all our images to a few faves for the blog, but here are the ones I chose.

Oh, I gotta zoom in on what is on the TV screen in that last shot! Check it out:

Best of 2009 – Wedding and Bridal Photography

Mark — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 21:43:26 +0000

Happy New Year!

Thanks to all our clients from 2009! I have put together a very quick little slideshow of some of my favourite wedding and bridal session images of 2009. I tried to keep it down to only three images per wedding—which was really hard!—but this is meant to be just a glimpse. More images from each wedding can be found on the blog under the weddings category. The one exception is the very last set of wedding photos, because this is a recent wedding that I haven’t even blogged yet, so I thought I’d give them a few more photos in the slideshow. I’ll be blogging the whole wedding soon.

There are three photos from Jessica and three from James Day and the rest are from me. I also need to thank Sherri, Trent, and Doug for assisting and shooting with me this year as well; their help was invaluable to me. There are a lot of portraits in this mix, because I put so much work into them that it’s hard to not choose them as my favourites. And there aren’t really any detail photos in here, either, because this is all about the people!

Click on the play arrow below to start the slideshow. Have a great 2010.

Christmas with Family

Mark — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 01:21:48 +0000

This year we were fortunate enough to be able to have some of my family from Australia come to visit us here in Lethbridge. Actually, they came right before Christmas, but close enough that we celebrated together while they were here. Last year my mum and dad came over at the end of autumn. This year my mum, sister, and my sister’s kids visited us. Lucky them, they came right at the beginning of the cold snap we had where the temperatures plunged to down to -50℃, with the wind chill. Considering that when they flew out from Australia the temperature there was around 28℃ that’s a bit of a difference! So we stayed inside a lot. It was simply too cold to spend more than a couple of minutes outside at a time, so most of the photos I took were fairly candid ones inside with natural light, though I won’t post those, because mostly they’re just people eating and playing games and stuff. And they’re fun images, but they’re more personal-type stuff for our own memories. I did get a few quick posed images inside though, just to have them. On the warmest day, when it got up to around -24℃ we took the kids tobogganing for a couple of hours at the Sugar Bowl. I’ll put a few of those images up.

So, happy Christmas to everyone! And, starting with just one image from when my parents came last year, here are a handful of personal snapshots from this year.

Mandy & Craig's Family Portraits

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:24:46 +0000

I had Mandy, Craig and their two kids booked in for a family portrait session, but when the day came it turned out to be one of those very windy Lethbridge days. The wind was howling! So we went into an empty barn/storage area kind of place in Coaldale for most of the session. Actually, I’m really happy that the weather let us down, because I loved it in there and I’m always happiest when I get to explore something new—new places, new ideas, or whatever. The space really lent itself to a modern, grungy sort of look, though with my lights I was able to control the existing light for almost any kind of look I wanted. I went with a low-key feel for most of them, just because it felt right.

When we came outside I spotted a wrecked old truck, with peeling paint and rusted metal and we used that as a prop for some quick, fun images. Mandy and Craig were very easy to work with and their son was especially happy when he got to play around in the leaves outside and throw them at me. Ah well. Whatever it takes, right? Here are some of my favourite images from their session.