As I’ve mentioned previously, when I’m not taking pictures, chasing after my kids, or playing hockey, there’s a good chance you’ll find me chasing after a frisbee. About 5 years ago, I put together a team of friends – mostly new parents who after parenting all day needed a physical outlet. To our surprise, not only did we end up really liking Ultimate, but we also found that we were fairly successful! This despite being a collection of mostly “old and slow” moms and dads.

One defining trait of this team is that other than a few sad departures and a few welcome additions, there’s been great continuity – we’re pretty much the same crew over the years. The other defining trait is that just about everybody who plays with us will promptly breed children. You can usually tell it’s us from afar by the mob of babies, toddlers, and youths that buzz around on the sidelines.

This particular shoot was of Jacq and Will and one the newest members of our team: Ethan. I may be biased, but I have to say Chinese babies are soooo cute. Ethan was like a little buddha. I thought he looked pretty good in the team jersey too, though I’m not so sure he was as convinced.  Otherwise, it turns out that among his favorite things are fans. So to his delight and ours, we turned the studio fan on and I snapped away.

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Go Canada!  That was a most satisfying way to cap off the Olympic games.  And now that that’s over, it’s time to catch up on some of these shoots.

This particular one was about, oh, 5 years in the making.  Living on the same block, I can’t remember the number of times we’d talked about doing a shoot – while passing each other shoveling our walks, or mowing our lawns, or picking our kids up after a play date at the other’s house.  Well the stars finally aligned and Christina, Anya, Big Thomas, Little Thomas, and I managed to make it down to the studio together.  Each of them is such a distinct personality and hopefully I was able to capture some of that…

Healthy Start for Mom & Me is a program that’s offered out of downtown Winnipeg to provide support to young mothers and their children. The government agency that funds the program is going to be putting out a book on its funded projects, and Davorka who is one of the longest serving dietitians in the group gets to be featured!

An environmental portrait assignment is always interesting – trying to capture people in context is a creative challenge I enjoy.  Props are fun too!  Shooting in a church gym and in black & white wasn’t necessarily ideal for a “food/diet” based shoot, but it was nicely lit in there and I got to play around a bit with my new Nikon gear during this quick and fun shoot.  Props to Healthy Start and Davorka!

Even though I’ve lived in the North End for quite a while now, I’d never heard of Gordie’s Coffeehouse before I arrived to shoot the first of two new episodes for the Artist Next Door series.  Granted, you wouldn’t suspect from the outside of the big Gordon-King Memorial Church that there was a coffeehouse nestled inside offering concerts every Thursday night.  Once inside, you find yourself in a cozy little room full of chairs, tables, knick-knacks, and just enough room for a stage up front.  If you’re into live music in an intimate setting with an attractive price of admission (free), you might want to check it out sometime.

Local duo Prairie Jewel opened the evening with a folky set featuring some great harmonies.  They were followed by artists Ray Dirks (who had some fascinating paintings inspired by his travels abroad) & Tom Andrich (who has painted not a few of the murals we see around Winnipeg).  Sister Dorothy capped off the evening with a lively and upbeat performance.  One thing that stood out for me on this shoot was the choice of footwear on stage – it must be a pretty different experience singing in front of a crowd barefoot vs. stomping around in vibrant red boots.

My apologies for the slow pace of updates to the blog. There are lots of pics to post, but I’m tied up with workflow and teaching workshops these days!  One improvement I have been working on is displaying the blog images in slideshow format.  Makes for less scrolling and a cleaner presentation in my opinion – hope you enjoy it!

Here are a few from a studio session a few weeks ago with Klaus & Christine, and their two little daughters. Elena was a very new baby (about 2 weeks old) and she was sooo small in her parents’ hands. Her older sister Martha is about 2 and was a little whirligig in the studio, puttering around and talking in a mix of English and German. Considering her age though, she was amazingly cooperative for pictures – my favorite thing was how instead of saying cheese she would say “uh-oh!”. I think the first picture in the series captures that quite nicely…