vancouver photographer // and this was 2013

So before you start - this post is packed with photos.  I don't even know how many photos it has, that's how many  there are.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

It made me smile to look back over all my 2013 sessions - so many amazing people I met and laughed with - families & couples & babies & moms & dads & stories, and each were beautiful in their own way.  I feel so blessed to have met them and been chosen to document their stories.  

I was recently doing a maternity session for a couple I've photographed before, and as I asked her to pose in some strange and uncomfortable position, I said, "I'm sorry - I bet you didn't come here expecting to have some crazy photographer tell you to do this!"   She looked at her husband and laughed and said, "Actually, it was the same last time..."

:) So thank you to everyone who let me photograph you & who put up with all of my crazy ideas.  Here's looking at 2014!

whonnock lake maternity photographer//a day at the lake

We spent this summer evening at Whonnock Lake in Maple Ridge & the light was beautiful.  Plus, this family (who is now +1 more beautiful little girl!) is just gorgeous!

langley engagement photographer // rainy day engagement session

Taylor is my cousin, and Esther is a beautiful girl with awesome hair.  He's known her all his life, but one day it suddenly hit him that he liked her.  So he asked her out.  And she said yes.  And they became boyfriend and girlfriend.  It was even facebook official!

However, there was a catch: this happened about two weeks before he was leaving on a year-long mission trip to Mongolia.  (MONGOLIA?  Yes, Mongolia.) Great timing, right?  It makes me laugh, because it seems so very...Taylor...to wait until the last minute to ask out the love of his life!

Anyways.  They survived long distance and he survived the extreme cold and grew a moustache, perhaps as a way to cope with the weather - let's not talk about that - and they were reunited at long last, and then, within a few months, they were married!

Before the wedding, though, I got to take their engagement pictures.  It was a day full of rain, with a predicted thunderstorm, but they were still up for it!  So we wandered to a field in the middle-of-nowhere-Langley and then raced to White Rock to catch the fiery-red sunset.  And I had lots of fun, and I think they're the most adorable couple, and I'm so glad I got to photograph them, and I know God is going to bless them in their new and exciting life together!

vanier park family photographer // pretty in pink

Amy and her beautiful daughter Averi (I love that name!) were such a joy to photograph.  It was a soft, overcast summer day and they were both wearing pink & the light was gentle and beautiful as we wandered around the beach at Vanier Park.

Vancouver engagement photographer // you can bring me flowers

I was excited when I received an email from Sara, because she does what I always wanted to do when I grew up: she's a florist.  It was very exciting to meet a real live florist.

It was also very exciting that her engagement session would involve flowers, flowers and flowers!  And old books.  And their love story of Canadian boy meets Australian girl and falls in love.  (A tale as old as time, and one that gets awesomer each time I hear it.)

Sara & Ryan knew the perfect location for their engagement session: an archway of trees at Stanley Park that they'd often walked through.  The morning was overcast and their outfits were amazing (seriously - I want her closet!) , and they brought along an afghan blanket made by Ryan's grandmother (how awesome is that?!) and the world was beautiful and so were they.

Congratulations again, Sara & Ryan!