{blog in waiting...}

Dear sweet blogosphere...how I miss thee...oh let me count the ways! I miss the way in which you lure me to stay up way past my bedtime and the witty banter that you never fail to provide. But what can I say...my son is just irresistibly adorable and while it's true that you don't randomly pee on me the way he does, you also don't provide that same charming little smile that always manages to melt my heart. But I do miss you all the same...

So this is what it's come to ladies and gentlemen; me, talking to my blog as though it's an estranged lover that I've abandoned so that I can run away with my family to the foothills of some far off mountains!!!! And I can't help but wonder if we'll ever be the same?!?!

The truth is, we've been busy here behind the camera...very busy. And blogging, while I've longed for the return of our special love affair, has had to take a back seat for a little while to the real work. We are full swing ahead in what is proving to be an amazing season and once the dust settles a little bit, I look forward to sharing it all with you here...in our little piece of cyberspace!

In the meantime though, we are plucking away, a day at a time, slowly but surely, and enjoying some well deserved time with each of our clients. Not only are we booking for the 2011 season already, but we'll also be heading on our second client inspired road trip in August for another out of town wedding. I can hardly wait!

So, as we bid farewell to the month of June very shortly, know that there is lots to look forward to in the coming weeks! I'll be blogging about Brooke and Alan's engagement shoot, Kari and Lee's maternity shoot (who happen to be in the hospital as I type this!), Lesley and Bill's engagement shoot, Jocelyn and Dan's engagement shoot, and of course, our 2010 brides and grooms!

But for now, as you patiently wait with me a little bit longer...here's my favourite reason for my blog absence {and really, can you blame me?!?!}...

{the new generation...}

Hudson: "I'm a PC {on mommy's mac!} and Windows 7 was my idea!!"

{sylvie & denis: wedding...again!}

Being a wedding photographer, I obviously love weddings. I love the joy, the happiness, the excitement and most of all, I love the romance. Simply put...I love love!

My husband and I will be celebrating our five year anniversary this coming August and I just love looking back on our wedding day; the beautiful weather, the time spent with our closest family and friends, everyone looking totally amazing and of course, my husband. My man, my best friend, my most handsome of sights...my beloved.

But, when you put all of the beauty and romance aside, I think that it's worth mentioning that a wedding is not the same as a marriage.

I believe very strongly in marriage. I believe in standing before God and committing your life to another human being. I believe in the act of consciously choosing to witness another person's life. I believe that in a world which is lacking so much conviction, marriage opens us up and challenges us to give the most vulnerable and sacred part of ourselves to another.

Having said that...marriage is not always easy. It isn't always easy to compromise. It isn't always easy to share your goals, your dreams, your finances, your remote control. It isn't always easy to make the effort to grow through life along side someone else instead of on your own. It isn't always easy to show true humility for someone you love.

But it is always worth it. It's worth the effort...the compromise...the passionate love affair that comes with knowing someone so intimately. It's worth every moment.

When my God mother called me and asked if I would be willing to photograph the ceremony celebrating her 25th wedding anniversary, I was overcome with honour. I was the flower girl when she first got married and now, twenty-five years later, I'm pleased to say that not only has my style in hair cuts improved immensely but their marriage is also going stronger than ever!!! The silver anniversary is a rare occurrence in this day and age that tends to take matrimony fairly lightly. To witness two people recommit their lives to one another is beyond magical, beyond inspiring, beyond beautiful.

With their three amazing children by their side and all those that they love looking on, Sylvie and Denis renewed their vows in the same church that they originally did twenty-five years earlier. As I watched and captured with completed admiration, I also concluded that there was simply no better way of starting of my new season, both as a photographer and as a mother...than this very place...with these very people...

Sylvie and Denis...congratulations on 25 years of making magic!

I love you! xoxo

{rockabye baby...}

For my Hudson...
The littlest rocker in my life...

{when words fail...}

Her name was Nancy and she came to visit me at our house just after Hudson was born. She had been a nurse for nearly her entire life and was exactly the face that I needed to see after the week that I had just experienced. She was gentle. Non-judgmental. Calm. She was all of the things that I wasn't at the time and she was there to tell me that everything would be alright.

I answered the door that morning in tears. It was my first day alone at the house with Hudson and the world looked very different to me at the time. She very graciously assured me that I was certainly not the first new mother to find herself in such a state. We sat down in our family room, Hudson asleep on the couch, and began to discuss what had triggered this onset of tears. She, of course, already knew because she had seen and heard it countless times before...but it was a first for me.

We sat and talked for nearly two hours. Mostly about the baby and motherhood but also just about life because our new baby had just become our life. As she quietly sat across from me, she began to ask about our future...the life that would inevitably build once this day of endless tears finally passed. That's when she asked me if I was planning on going back to work.

Work! What a strange concept that had become over time now that I was holding a tiny little person whose very survival was dependent on me. Wasn't I already in the midst of the most difficult work that I'd ever do? But I had also left another kind of "work"...the work that I had known for over a decade that didn't involve spit up and changing diapers. Then there was also my camera; the one thing that stood alone in this discussion...

I was planning on returning to my photography less than three short months after having Hudson. Certainly not with the same time consuming schedule that I would otherwise commit to but I was going back nonetheless. And I was excited for it. I had weddings and engagements and maternity shoots all set up; I was meeting with clients about bookings for 2011; I had classes and exhibits registered for, and all the while, it didn't feel like work.

As I began to hear the words come out of my mouth, I found myself defending my choice as though I was defending my honour because somehow, in the midst of our conversation, I had caught myself questioning whether or not this made me a bad mother; whether or not my desire for something beyond motherhood meant that I wasn't cut out to do it in the first place? But my nurse just sat there with the most compassionate of expressions on her face as she listened to me battle it out with the demons in my head.

Because here's the thing...

There are no words for how much I love my son and my husband. There are no words for how much I love being a wife and a mother. There are no words for how grateful I feel to have these men in my life. There are simply no words. And so I give. I give every single fiber of my being into loving this child and the amazing man that sleeps next to me every night. And there are no words for how much I love doing so. But being the woman that I am, I can lose myself in all of the giving. I'm notorious for it.

And so I need my camera to help me be me. I need it to help remind me of the person that I was before I became a wife and a mother. And though I wasn't a photographer before either of these things, I was a person who used her artistic side as her outlet; her passion as her therapy. I need to create in order to find my sense of balance; I need the time alone, behind my camera, to breathe and re-boot. I need to visit those places in myself that are not linked to my son or my husband because in a strange sort of way, I think that doing so helps me to be a better wife and a better mother.

Or at least I hope it does because this past weekend I went back to work; back to my photography; back to my business; back to creating and most importantly, back to building a better mother for this little guy...

I think that my nurse would approve!

{by any other name...}

So...my sister-in-law introduced me to someone the other day as a photographer. This was weird. I actually kind of cut her off mid-sentence and tried to throw a word or two in there to correct her. Instead, the mumbling idiot that I can be only managed to muster up something resembling "uhhh...well, not really...I mean, it's more...you know..." And on the misery went!

This prompted an interesting question afterwards though; why did I feel so uncomfortable actually being considered a photographer?

When I started running about eight years ago, I experienced the same challenge. I would run five or six times a week, trained for various races, participated in running groups and even completed a full marathon...but I never felt completely comfortable calling myself a runner. This would bother my husband to no end. "Anyone who gets up early on a Sunday morning in the middle of winter to run twenty kilometers better either call themselves a runner...or come back to bed!", he would say. He had a valid point! For me though, I always felt like I had to earn the title of being labeled a runner. As far as I was concerned, being called a runner was reserved for those who ran seriously...not someone like myself who run fifteen kilometers straight to the nearest poutine stand! Most of all, I was always waiting for that specific finish line, that specific and perfectly run race that somehow deemed me worthy of being called a runner.

Sure enough, I woke up one day and decided that I was indeed, a runner. I may not have been a good runner or a fast runner and least of all, a "serious" runner...but I was a runner! I would run through the rain, through the snow, through half marathons, through full marathons, and most of the time...I would run my way right through the front door of a Starbucks! What couldn't be disputed though was the fact that I did indeed run....and I loved it! So that became my criteria for being called a runner, once and for all!

I've been trying to apply the same logic to this new {and somewhat larger than life} title as photographer. I've been spending the past year trying to earn my way into these ranks but I never really stopped to ask myself what I considered to be the finish line. I've been continuously looking for that one photograph or that one shoot or that one moment that would carry me over through the realms of worthiness. I suppose I should be realistic enough with myself to acknowledge that my perfectionist nature may never really consider myself worthy of being called a photographer. This can be detrimental or this can be what challenges me to constantly push my creative boundaries. The choice is mine. But what can't be disputed is the fact that I do indeed take pictures...and I love it!

So by that logic...my name is Gen...and I am a photographer!

{the million dollar question...}

I've been having a debate with myself as of late over which is cuter;
babies...or handsome men with their babies...??

I received my answer this morning while brushing my teeth!