This weekend I’ve been out working with my father of Hargreaves Photography at the 30th Annual Nepean Girls Hockey Tournament here in Ottawa. It’s been a busy 3 days, starting from the first game at 8am until the last game finishes at 10pm! Who ever said us photographers had it easy! The games have been very well played, with close 1 goal games for the most part. If you missed us, check out my father’s website for updates on where we will be next and to check out more photos

Among the many sessions we attended at the DWF Convention this month, one of our favorites was the Dynamic Location Lighting seminar taught by Cliff Mautner. For those of you unfamiliar with his work, Cliff has been a professional photographer for over 25 years, has photographed over 750 weddings, and is known as being able to create amazing images regardless of the lighting conditions.
He has been named one of the world’s top photographers, and prides himself on being able to produce photographs that are technically strong and has no need to edit them afterward to produce a beautiful product. We had the pleasure of learning from him, up close and personally…if you notice, we’re so excited about being small town Ottawa wedding photographers on stage with a big city photographer of his caliber, I’m staring at Cliff with a big goofy grin on my face!

Last week while in Nashville, I had an amazing opportunity to shoot a boudoir session with a local burlesque dancer. She was not only gorgeous, but brought some of her stage costumes with her to the studio, which made for some fantastic retro style images!

This week, while in Nashville this week for the Digital Wedding Photography conference, we had the honour of attending a fabulous education seminar taught by the one and only Critsey Rowe of Couture Boudoir. I was eager to try out some of the new techniques that she presented, and had the opportunity to photograph a few sessions at a studio that evening.

The thing I find most rewarding about boudoir photography is seeing the confidence that builds in a client during a session. Most women start out with nerves and jitters, but once they see their true beauty highlighted, the rest of the session goes flawlessly because they positively glow.

We had a great night out last night with Ivanette’s old friend Jon and his girlfriend Melanie. Ivanette and Jon both grew up in Nova Scotia, but with life taking them to different schools and paths, they haven’t seen each other for over 10 years! Both Jon and Melanie are music artists living in town, and we were thrilled to head to a cool little dive for one of their shows.

Ivanette and I have been looking forward to this wedding photography conference for months! We hope that everybody back in Ottawa is keeping warm and that they enjoyed the Wedding Palace Bridal Fair. We’ve heard reports that the crowd was great!

The main conference starts today, however the organizers threw a party last night to welcome us and it hosted by none other than world renowned Australian based wedding photographer Jerry Ghionis and Pro DPI . We are certainly looking forward to a full day of teaching and photography by Jerry on Tuesday. His work is awe inspiring and inspirational.
To start the party off, Jerry sang a few tunes, here is a video if his first performance. It’s the first time we’ve used the new video capabilities of our Nikon DSLRs and it was a little impromptu so please excuse the quality:

With January off to a great start, I figured it was a good time to sit down and thank all of the amazing people who have helped to make this last year so successful.

To our wonderful wedding clients, a warm thank you for choosing us to capture the most important day of your lives. Being recently married, we know that making choices during wedding planning is not always easy and we are so incredibly thankful to have had such fantastic folks to work with. It is always fun for us to be integrally involved in each wedding, and we’ve had the pleasure of photographing some amazing weddings in 2009.