As most of you know, I’m taking off to Italy for the better part of September. Which couldn’t be worse timing business-wise because fall portrait season in Calgary is the busiest season of all. So to make sure I am able to fit all my clients in, I am opening up two full days of mini-sessions. This year there’s a choice to what kind of setting you’d like – on September 5th we are doing colorful and “urban” style sessions at Eau Claire Market and on October 3rd we’ll be at Baker Park for some beautiful and cool looking nature backgrounds. So choose the best date and session type for you and register now, spaces WILL go quickly! Spots have already been booked by newsletter recipients, so make sure you sign up if you want first crack at things like this!

Now, onto the details!
Each mini session lasts 20 minutes and you will receive a gallery of approximately 10-15 images.
The session fee is $250 and includes (drumroll please) ONE digital file of an image you choose!
Digital files are not usually sold individually and are priced as a set at $3500, so this is an AMAZING opportunity!
Prints, canvases, storyboards and holiday cards are also available at regular price, and a full set of digital files from your mini-session is $1250. It’s a great chance for a quick taste of the Fresh Sugar experience, great for family portraits, maternity images and child photographs! Just email me at info@freshsugar.ca to book your mini-session spot before they are all gone!

Spots available:

Sunday, October 3rd at Baker Park

10:00am
10:30am
11:00am
11:30am
1:00pm
1:30pm
2:00pm
2:30pm
3:00pm
3:30pm
4:00pm
4:30pm

Now don’t get me wrong, it gives me all sorts of great pleasure to have nice things said about me, to be featured somewhere and to win awards. But writing about it is a totally different story. I don’t really know how to do it with out feeling like a big annoying show off.
We are taught as kids to be humble (especially us Canadians, eh?) and that it’s not really nice to sing our own praises. When you are a small business-owner though, it kind of becomes part of the job. If you don’t tell people how awesome you are, who will?

So here goes. Deep breath. And before you all think that I am blaming this on my awesome PR friend Reese, I should let you know that I do like attention just a teensy bit. Or I wouldn’t have a blog. Or a Facebook page. Or probably be a very good photographer. So you can leave comments for me if you like. It will probably make me smile like a goofball, kind of like I did when all these other things happened.

Cool Thing #1
I won a couple more awards! The National Association of Professional Child Photographers recently had their first International Image Competition. I snagged two first place awards, and let me just say the competition was fierce! There were many beautiful images and I feel very much in good company with the other winners. It sounds cheesy to say, but it is a really amazing honour to be regarded highly by my peers.
Check out the Image Competition here!

Cool Thing #2
The same great organization asked me to be their featured member this month, and I got to talk lots about myself, show some of my favorite images and even give a peek into my office.
You can read the spotlight on the NAPCP site and find out maybe something new about me.

Cool Thing #3
I was also featured last month in the Shootsac newsletter. Shootsac is a great product that I love, and if you’re my client you’ve probably seen me with it at our outdoor sessions. It’s a lens bag that has interchangeable covers, and I swear I am addicted to buying those darn covers!
They probably just featured me because of all the money I’ve spent with them! You can read yet another interview with me if by chance you are not already sick to death of what I have to say, lol! Shootsac July Newsletter

Cool Thing #4
Back when I won the WPPI Fresh Faces contest, I got a congrats from Mompreneur magazine. They asked if they could put a little blurb in the magazine about the win, so that came out this past month too.

Cool Thing #5
I was asked to photograph a number of families for the Alberta Children’s Hospital – a place near and dear to my heart. I spent last Thursday photographing some of the cutest and most inspiring kids you will ever meet. It was a HUGE HUGE HUGE honour to be asked to this, and it was incredibly humbling and uplifting. I will share more about this on the blog later on, but I had to mention it because it was such a special day.

Cool Things #6 & #7
Boo, I can’t talk about them yet because they haven’t fully happened. I don’t want to jinx anything, so I will just say that I promise to share with you all as soon as they do.

Just a couple of last things to mention. I’ll be away for most of September, I’m going to ITALY and I’m VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT!!! What that means for you though, is that I am booked up for most of the fall already. I have a couple of spots during the long weekend and a couple in October, and will also be doing two days of mini-sessions this year to help try to fit everyone in. The first date will be Sunday, September 5th and the second date is Sunday, October 3rd. Hopefully one of those dates will work for everyone. I’ll be putting the appointments up on the blog this week, but newsletter readers get first crack, so make sure to sign up above if you want in!

Also, I’ve been super swamped this summer with some really great clients. I’ve fallen behind a bit on the blog, but I promise there are lots of sneak peeks to come VERY soon! Thanks so much for your patience.

I’m excited to share some of these because she was just glowing. I know it’s a cliche for pregnant women, but she really was! You’ll see. Oh, and the body? She was exactly 10 days away from her due date in these photos. FOR REAL.

I’m reallllllly behind on the blogging, and I am so sorry to all my wonderful, patient clients that are waiting for sneak peeks. I will be working like a demon for the next week to get blog posts up, so stay tuned!
I’m also realeasing the dates for this year’s mini-sessions – and newsletter clients get first crack at the dates, so make sure you sign up above!
As always you can visit www.freshsugar.com to book your full session.

I adore this family, you all probably recognize little Izzy by now. She’s the happy little girl with a loving family and a fabulous closet.

We ventured out on a drizzly day in Calgary and had the BEST time! I was so excited about these images because Izzy was just such a sweet and happy girl that day. Ahhhh, when the stars align!

One of the themes for the week was “Be Brave” and for me, it was a mantra for my entire trip. I was supposed to head down with another photographer but she wasn’t able to make it, so all of a sudden I was solo. I also didn’t have a room booked, and had to ask a perfect stranger if I could share with them. Yes, I seriously did this, much to my husband’s chagrin. I flew there by myself, taking the red eye and changing over in Montreal. I had to take a puddle jumper to Boston – it had PROPELLERS for pete’s sake, but I survived. Once there I rented my own car, and DROVE MYSELF AROUND! I am shouting this because I hate driving here at home, and have never, ever, ever driven in the United States. I had a meal at PF Chang’s because I was hungry, and I went to a giant mall because I wanted to go to Anthro. All on my owny-loney. If you can hear the pride in my words, it’s because I definitely got out of my comfort-zone and it was fabulous. Anyone who knows me well knows that I can be a bit of a scatterbrained child. I like to do things with others and I often rely on my friends and family to be the grown-ups.

My roommate Jess VanLue and I hit it off straight away. We immediately bonded and spent hours talking the first night. I don’t think the other people at the workshop even believed us when we told them we had never met before. We were total peas in a pod. We also met a bunch of really cool people at the workshop. It was held at the Wayside Inn, which is the oldest working inn in the US. It’s only miles from Sleepy Hollow and Louisa May Alcott’s house. It’s an area that is steeped in history and you can definitely feel it.
The workshop was intimate with only 10 people and that was perfect. Again, with being brave – I was able to talk with strangers (even though I have a big blabby mouth, I’m actually very shy with new people) and was so thrilled to meet other admirers of Jenn’s work.

We did things at the workshop that I would never have thought to do at home, but now am excited to try again. I printed my VERY FIRST photo ever. With a darkroom and chemicals and everything. Coming into photography only 7 years ago, I have been all digital and have always used a lab to print my work. There was something absolutely magical about spending those hours working on a single print, holding your breath during that final rinse to see what will be there. We also made collages – it was like grade school art class and we all loved it. Jenn taught us how to make couture gowns in 5 minutes, how to build a tank to shoot subjects in water, and we did figure studies and learned the patience of getting your posing just right. We watched an amazing film called Ashes and Snow, had hours of really neat conversation, made our own filters, learned lots of Photoshop tips that I never knew (command+Z!) and one night laughed so much that my stomach was still sore the next day.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was one of the most incredible, humbling, inspirational and motivational experiences of my life. I am so happy that I went, my life will be forever changed. As cheesy as that sounds, it is so 100% true.
And now, I will “be brave” and share some images from the workshop that I took, processed in a VERY different way than my norm, but that I love in such a unique way. I give the setups and posing props all to Jenn though, she is a master at her craft.

Did I mention she has flair? A flair for the dramatic, hahaha!

Ok, seriously. How smokin’ is he???? Love this one.

Annnnnnnd now you know where she gets her beauty from . . .

Wanna be on top? Nanananana, nanananana . . . (if you don’t watch America’s Next Top Model, I must just sound like a crazy person.)