Love is All Around: An engagement session in Calgary
Love Is All Around: An Engagement Session In Calgary
Coming up with the photo idea
Love, innocence, wisdom, humor… a few of the things I enjoy photographing. Several days ago I had a photo shoot where I got to capture “love”. This young couple are engaged and wanted some photos captured before their wedding. As soon as the session was booked, my creative juices started flowing. This is the perfect season to capture love with all the spring blossoms creating a beautiful backdrop. I envisioned those old movie scenes where two lovers ride a bike and fool around. I thought it would be a perfect engagement photography theme.
Planning the photo shoot
To turn the vision on my head into reality, I needed a vintage bike with a basket, a treed pathway with spring blossoms, a good weather with no clouds and sunset time. As my couple has been working from home since the Covid 19 outbreak, date and time wasn’t a problem. The most difficult part was the Cherry blossoms. I had to go to our shooting location and check the blossoms every day. Spring time in Calgary also comes with rain storms, so we also had to watch the weather and avoid any storm clouds. While checking with mother nature regularly, I started looking for a vintage bike to borrow and I was lucky enough to find one in my neighbourhood just a block away. It’s nice to be surrounded with people who generously offer their help. The bike was exactly what I was looking for. It even had a basket in the front!
We decided the day and time of shooting last minute based on the weather and blossom status. It requires a lot of effort and cooperation to put everything together for a fine photograph. I have plenty of passion that fuels me to go through all those due diligence and preparations.
The power of team work
Working with people who listens to you and cooperate during posing, makes a world of difference. As a photographer, you get to focus better on your job, pay more attention to little details and be more creative. My style is not imposing my ideas, but rather share them with my clients and see if they like it too. I do this during the planning stage of the session, way before the shooting day. In addition to the theme we agreed on, I also listen to their requests during the photo shoot and let them lead the way when we’re done with staged poses. I like that the bride-to-be brought a pair of high heels for some specific poses as it looks much more flattering with high heels. If we didn’t discuss the theme, mood and style before, she wouldn’t think of bringing extra pair of shoes.
As we started our photo shoot right before sunset, we had opportunity to get some shots with the most beautiful light of the day making your skin glove with a warm hue. In the end, it was a fun session for everyone.
If you are looking for a special engagement session with attention to detail, give me a shout. I would be happy to help realize your dream engagement photos.
www.alpinaphotography.com
It was also my first outdoor cake smash session. Little McKenzie just turned 1 and her family wanted to celebrate this big milestone with a fun cake-smash. Since it is the most beautiful season of all, with the weather warmed up and trees turned to green, I wanted to give it a try and use the nature as my backdrop instead of paper or fabric backdrop and the sun as my main light instead of studio strobes. I was so excited. I started working with the color scheme based on the outfit mom wanted to use for cake smash. I prepared matching banners and made a whole new flower hoop which would go perfect with spring theme. I put together some other settings for different looks during the session. Even though it is a photo shoot with a focus on baby smashing and eating cake, to make it more versatile I always add different props to the scene before introducing the cake to the baby. In a park setting it is easier to change background by simply moving from one place to another. For an outdoor birthday session, 
I chose Edworthy Park and set up my studio at the meeting place before the clients arrive, so we could start as soon as they come. Babies at this age don’t stay up too long and get tired easily, so I don’t want to waste any of this valuable awake time.
Since this is a photo shoot conducted with Covid safety measures it was a touchless photo session, wearing a face mask.
It was a very fun photoshoot for everyone. . Instead of sitting in the studio, we were enjoying outdoors in a picnic mood. Those cute 1 year old hands covered with cake icing will always be remembered with these photographs.
Spring is here, it’s a good time to start flower and garden veggie seeds indoors as well as garden/yard clean-up. We have planted some tomatoes, sunflowers, basil and daisies in tiny starter kits. Looking forward to transplanting them to the community garden a few blocks away. It’s also a healthy leisure activity for kids to visit the garden once in a while to water and weed.
Calgary Public library provides its members with free access to Lynda.com with tons of learning videos with exercise files you can download from their site. Here is the link to access Lynda.com through your library membership: 
People are still using Kijiji to sell stuff, practicing social distancing when pick up stuff or just do porch pick up. I’ve been working on organizing my photography equipment and props in an IKEA Pax wardrobe in the basement and try to get rid of the items we don’t really use to make more space for my studio.
As a result of the Coronavirus lock-down or social distancing, we all became much more inactive. When you add eating out of boredom to it, it is not going anywhere good. It is fortunate that this pandemic coincided with good weather, so we can at least go out for fresh air and some activity. As a family we are walking around the neighbourhood everyday after breakfast. As the weather gets better, we will add more rounds to these short walks and biking.
After switching to digital world, we all compiled thousands of photos in our discs without revisiting, arranging or printing them with the comfort of knowing that we “have” them. It is as much difficult to browse through so many similar photos as it is easy to take them. Lock-down time is perfect to go back to old photos, delete the bad ones and organize the good ones in separate albums. On top of that getting a few photo books to share on the coffee table would be great! Online print places are still servicing.
