We had her bring in pieces of her own wardrobe, I made a few fluffy skirts and, a couple days before her session, Romdoul and I made a trip out to Ellebay Bridal Boutique in New Westminster and hired 2 dresses for her session.  Ellebay Bridal Boutique is absolutely BEAUTIFUL!  Every dress is handmade.  I LOVED the way Romdoul looked at herself in the mirror in the red dress and it was so meant to be because she was exactly sample size!  We left with our dresses in tow and Romdoul was glowing.  

We had so much fun at her session and here are a few of the shots we got...

I will cherish these amazing photos forever and every time I look at them I will remember the special time we had together primping, posing and laughing.

Plus, this makes Christmas shopping for the family done since I am going to send each of them a print!  

Chance made us sisters.  Time made us friends.  I love you Kiki and Jessica!!!

Tobin LOVES women!  (in the NOT creepy but appreciative way)  He loves our nuances, our body language, our strength.  That’s why he loves to photograph women. 

As you’ve seen, when Tobin poses women he mirrors them down to the soft ballet hands and the twinkle in the eyes.  He truly transforms himself from a “dude with a camera” to a curvy, soft, feminine being.  Each woman, myself included, giggles  when we see the transformation in front of us and then I know everyone of them thinks, “wow!  If he looks good doing that then I am going to look FANTASTIC!”  Tobin has no problem getting in touch with his feminine side BUT he does have one request for me when I am putting together the calendar…

“Please book me one guy every 2 weeks!”

So, I try to give him his dash of testosterone a couple of times a month.  We have had the pleasure of having amazing men come into our studio with their wives and even on their own for portraits and most of the have sworn that they “have never had a photograph of themselves that they’ve liked”…well, until now!

HS Seniors, couples, gentlemen and, of course, women!

Tobin, Oliver, Isla and I are heading deep into the heart of Texas October 15th-28th to visit family and offer our photography services to the men, women and teens of the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Rockwall/Heath and possibly the Houston areas of Texas.

Our {contemporary portrait} sessions include hair, makeup, coached photo session, online proof gallery and a $100 credit to use toward the purchase of your portraits for $190.  We accept Visa, Master Card and cash.

We have a limited amount of sessions we are booking so give us a shout if you are interested so you don't miss out.

This week has been nothing short of amazing.  Eight women came together from 4 countries for 1 reason.  Jill Conley.  Jill is a radiant woman who is so kind, thoughtful, freaking funny and in a fight she can’t win against cancer. 

In the 4 days Sue Bryce, photographer, Hailey Bartholomew, filmmaker, and the rest of us were working on Jill’s shoot, Jill was amazing, vibrant and grateful.  And even though we were all there for her she was also always looking out for us.  She is a very special person.  She is not only and inspiration to women who are going through or survived breast cancer she is an inspiration to all women to love our bodies just the way they are. 

In January creativeLIVE is dedicating a day to tell Jill’s story.  Hailey will be there teaching a workshop on fusion video and will world premiere the documentary she made this week then.  That’s when you all will have the chance to see what an amazing girl Jill is and hear her story from the best person who can tell it… her.

I know I usually have exorbitant amounts of details and lots of thought diversions when I blog but I think this experience will take a long time to process in my brain.  The emotions (and boy where they a lot of emotions), the experiences, the friendships, the journey that this group of women took and will now continue, even though we go back to our 4 separate countries and lives, to be on together.  Jill will change the way not only women with breast cancer look at it and themselves but how the entire world looks at it.  You can be beautiful, sexy, radiant, full of life even after a double mastectomy and here is the proof.

more photos visit Sue’s blog

I will be forever grateful for being invited to join this journey and to now call Jill my friend.  

Good night from Paris.

WOW!  Wow is all I can say about life right now.  I’ve been wanting to share with you my week in Seattle at creativeLIVE and now that I am sitting down to write it, it feels like a life time ago.  Crazy enough when I went back to the calendar to see how long it’s been I was floored when I say that it was only 3 ½ weeks ago that I nervously walked onto the magical set of creativeLIVE.  Terrified.  Terrified I would fail, terrified that I would be found out as a fraud and terrified that the internet would tear a strip off me.  But George Takae had a great quote posted.  It simply said: IF YOU ARE NOT SCARED THEN YOU ARE NOT STICKING YOUR NECK OUT FAR ENOUGH.  (Oh, this is going to be a long post so go grab a tea or coffee and a cookie.  You’ll need it)

That really resonated with me because for over a decade I was in the same job, a job I loved but it was safe.  I literally wrote the rule book so I really didn’t have much to fear.  Then I got comfortable in “mommy-marterdom” mode for the past 5 years and in the past 6 months I have completely reinvented myself.  Well, not so much reinvent as reintroduce myself to the me that I locked away about 16 years ago.  So now I challenge myself to be vulnerable, to try new things that scare me and to give people the opportunity to say no instead of assuming the answer will be no so not asking.  Anyhoo, I digress.

It was truly an amazing week on creativeLIVE with Sue & Simona and now it’s all a blur in light of recent events (more about that soonJ). 

The first two days were Hair and Makeup with Simona.  Not only were we doing makeup but we were doing makeup on set right behind Simona for all the internet to see.  Well, if I was going to fail I was going to fail BIG and at that point I got comfortable with failure.  If I failed then others who would make the same mistake could learn from my failure.  At that point I embraced the possibility of failure and the fear left and that made way for the excitement. 

I was a learning spounge.  I was not going to squander a moment of this amazing opportunity I was given.  My makeup before the workshop was good, some even said great but I would always look at it and not know what was wrong but there was something off.  Now, because of Simona, I know not only what was wrong but how do either fix it or just not do it in the first place. 

The next day was hair.  Oh goodness, I curled hair for 3 hours straight on the internet.  Any client coming in with naturally curly hair I’ve got you covered!  Hair, I feel, had been my weakness.  Mostly because I have a completely unrealistic expectation that hair when done right is flawless.  Like in the magazines.  So not true!  After setting, backcombing, curling and zushing (zoo-shing) a.k.a. revitalizing hair buy rubbing the scalp, about 10 girls in the whole week and seeing the way Simona and Tiffany (Sue’s other assistant and all around awesome girl) zooshed and placed hair for Sue to shoot my ah-ha moments were a million a second. 

Now I am confident in my hair and makeup ability.  It does help to have been stamped “Sue Bryce approved”.  After all, she is the leader of this genre of photography. 

The next three days of the workshop were a bit of a blur.  Simona, Gigi (another makeup artist all the way from Ontario) and I were in charge of the 23 models Sue was going to shoot over the next 3 days.  It was a whirlwind of fabulous girls, flying makeup brushes and hairspray highs all the while Sue was teaching the class.  We were still right there on set.  By Thursday night my dreams had Sues voice in the background posing people.

Not only did I have the pleasure of meeting, learning from and working with Sue & Simona, I got to know the students of the class as well.  Bonnie, from 2 Birds Photography, said it best when she equated the creativeLIVE experience to photo camp.  In the evening the students would get together and practice and learn from each other’s experience and I was lucky enough to be invited to join them.

On Thursday Tobin came down to join me.  Sue totally called it, there was no way he could stay away.  Also on Thursday we got wind of a shoot Sue was doing on Saturday of Kenna Klosterman (of creativeLIVE), Isi Gaga (one of the students) and Krista (a beautiful drag queen).  Well, I HAD to see that!  Tobin and I always wanted to shoot drag queens using Sue’s posing guides so watching her do it was even one better.  I didn’t think we could stay because hotels were booked and childcare for the wee ones at home but it all worked out and Tobin and I got to be there and help and observe.  It was a true gift to watch Sue do what Sue does best. 

It was such a gift to have joined Sue & Simona, the students, the models and the creativeLIVE crew for that whole week in Seattle.  I came out of it more experienced, more knowledgeable and with new friends.   

Now, as I sit in the airport, writing this post I am even more grateful for that week in Seattle.  I am on my way to Paris to join Sue and an amazing group of women on a very special passion project.  Here’s how the adventure started.

Next stop Paris!!!

I (Sarah) grew up in the States.  Down there, senior portraits are like a right of passage.  I remember each of my sisters going in for their sessions when I was young (they are 9 and 5 years older than me) and I was so excited when I was 17 and knew that my turn had come.  Now, at 35, I look at those portraits of my young self with the whole world ahead of her and love that I have that moment frozen in time forever.

I have decided that it is my personal mission to make Senior Portraits a "thing" here in Canada.  So, without further ado here is our fusion video for HS Senior {contemporary portraits}...

I am not usually an over persistent person.  I have become very "Canadian" in that way but this year when I took over running the business side of phoTobin photography I decided to unleash my inner "American" and ask for what I want.  Not in a pushy way; I always give permission for whoever I am asking something from to say "no", but I am at least giving them the opportunity to say "yes" instead of just assuming the answer will be "no" so why ask.

I had the great pleasure and honour of being invited by Sue Bryce to come down to creativeLIVE to learn from and assist Simona Janek with hair and makeup on 33 models that Sue booked for the 5 day workshop.  I'm sure a few of you are wondering... how/why did she get picked? If you read Tobin's blog post last week you heard the story about my pink bag.  I didn't now how it would come together but I knew if I got that bag it would be coming with me to cL to do makeup with Simona for Sue but how I got there is also an interesting story.

Tobin had the pleasure of joining Sue and Simona in Seattle for the first workshop in March and as you are aware, it was life changing for us.  We dropped all other aspects of our photography business and focused all of our energies on "glamour".  Also in that time we became cL addicts.  We now own over 29 courses (we will write about all that in the future) and of those 29 had the pleasure of being on set collectively 5 times.  Mostly for the "local calls" but we figure the drive from Vancouver is worth the knowledge from the teachers let alone hanging out with the amazing people behind the scenes.  So when we were down for Tamara Lackey's Work/Life Balance workshop we heard that Sue and Simona were coming back.  We blocked that week off instantly and just assumed somehow we would be down there.

We made our submission videos and when they announced Sue's 6 students I would be lying if I didn't say I was disappointed...for a couple of hours.  Then I reminded myself that just because I didn't get to join them in the studio didn't mean  I didn't have access to the knowledge.  I mean, that is what is so amazing about creativeLIVE!  Then Sue did a call for models and I thought, "Okay, I may not be a student but I can learn a lot of what Simona does by having her do it to me and OMG! I will get over my insecurities to be shot by Sue, even if it is in front of 1,000's".  I sent my model submission.  It was short and to the point because I know Sue gets a lot of emails and I wanted to be considerate of her time because I also know that she does truly read each one.  I even sent it before I signed it.  Oops.  I figured, "well, if it's meant to be then it's meant to be."

Then the next morning I realized something.  Instead of being over concerned about Sue's time to read my email I wanted to share with her the impact she has had on not only our business but me personally.  So I laid it all out on the line and got and very sweet but still a rejection email back from Sue.  "Okay," I thought to myself, "no regrets and a ton of gratitude because now I won't wonder...what if".  I was planning on writing Sue a quick email thanking her for her time and consideration once I got the kidlets to bed.  Now usually I don't have my email on "push" but I had just notified our clients that their prints were in so I wanted to make sure I responded to them quickly if they wrote and while I was giving Isla a bath my phone whistled.  Tobin grabbed it to pass to me and his face dropped.  Now, any of us who is a fan of anyone will know that to receive an unsolicited email from said person makes your stomach flip-flop.  From: Sue Bryce.  My jaw dropped too. The email started...Sarah, since I didn't choose you as a student and I didn't choose you as a model, would you be interested in coming to Seattle for the full 5 days and assisting Simona?  I had to read the email a could more times to make sure I wasn't dreaming.  In my mind that meant fetching coffee, watching masters at their craft and helping wherever I could but never in a million years did I think I would be doing full hair and makeup let alone on camera...  but that is another blog post all together :)

Several months ago while Sarah was picking up hair and make-up supplies, she saw a pink make-up bag and felt she had to buy it.  Sarah is not a pink person, her brushes and other supplies are mostly black, but she felt she had to have this one because one day creativeLIVE (cL)  would invite Simona Janek ( Sue's makeup artist/ assistant on her last workshop) to come back and do an extensive hair and make-up workshop and Sarah wanted something girly for when she got to attend.  This was not assumptive; this was her manifesting a dream. From the week after Sue’s first workshop we had been writing and suggesting and petitioning that cL would create just such a workshop. After all, with Sue’s following how could they not, and Sarah was determined that she would be a part of it. Then 2 weeks ago, with Sue’s invitation for Sarah to join them, it has become so.

As you are probably well aware we have extensive love and gratitude for Sue Bryce  and the influence she has had on the direction of our photography.

While Sarah’s guest blog post gave you an insight into how we were introduced to her, I thought I’d share about the significance of this week and how it brings everything together.

About six months ago, I had the privilege of being down at creativeLIVE for Sue’s Glamour workshop.  I believe I mentioned earlier that my intention was to learn from Sue and bring her styling to my corporate, commercial and family photography, but we fell so in love with contemporary {glamour} portraiture that instead of bringing it into our business, we made it our business.

Well of course learning the posing is only one element of the recipe for contemporary portraits.  As we began our transition, Sarah practiced and practiced and worked on bringing back the make-up skills she had learned a decade ago. She also brought in a hairstylist for tutoring and watched a lot of YouTube, and while her skills are above and beyond other stylists we even auditioned, they were still not to the level that we expect of ourselves.  This isn’t a ‘be better than the competition’. This is a ‘be better for yourselves’.

Our photography and business have gone through a drastic change EVERY time we have attended a cL workshop (because yes, we have been blessed to attend several times now) but certainly the biggest change was Sue’s Glamour workshop.  I can only imagine what will happen after this week.

While the kids and I will be partying this week (it’s Isla’s 2nd birthday on Tuesday), you can be sure we will be tuning in to witness the next evolution of phoTobin photography, where our goal is to transcend the everyday.

The workshop is FREE to watch live and I invite you to join us on this journey as Sue and Simona bring their decades of experience and knowledge to a world wide audience.  It’s 'working with hair and make-up’ on Monday and Tuesday followed by 3 days of Sue taking us further ‘Inside the Glamour Studio’.

Join Sarah on her amazing week on FB and Twitter.  Behind the scenes photos, anecdotes and some personal reflections.  Can't wait!

We had the pleasure of teaming up with Bloom Essentials to celebrate their 15th Birthday and, boy, did we have fun!  It was 15 days of giveaways that ended with the grand prize of a phoTobin photography {contemporary portrait} session and 6 image folioBox being awarded to Marla Ryan.

We had such a wonderful time getting to know Marla and helping her transcend the everyday.  Here is 3 of the 6 portraits she selected for herself.  To see the other 3 hop over to Bloom's FB page and have a look.

Thank you Marla!  Not only for your joy and excitement with the whole process but for allowing yourself to open to allow us to share your amazingly beautiful portraits with the world.

Want to hear about Marla's experience in her own words?  Visit her blog!

A few months ago I had the extreme pleasure of attending my first creativeLIVE workshop with the endearing Sue Bryce. It was an incredible experience. It has not only changed my business, but to be completely undramatic... it has changed my life.

In the year leading up to Sue’s course, I had watched about 15 of creativeLIVE’s courses and bought 10 of them. Some I bought because I wasn’t around for the weekend to watch. Some I bought because I wanted my wife to see them too so we could discuss and then grow our business together with unified vision, but others I bought because I saw the value of what I had received. When organizations like creativeLIVE do what they do, it’s important for us to support them, especially when they deliver. I know, I know the courses are free to watch live so “why should I invest financially in them?” Maybe you will want to watch it again... maybe you won’t, but either way I encourage you, if you feel you have received value, to purchase your course of interest. In this way you will have a wealth of information accessible to you at any time to revisit AND creativeLIVE has the opportunity to grow and delivery even more content to us... the creatives.

Already this year they have vastly increased the number of courses they are taking on and with great variety too.

Having now seen behind the curtain, I can say there is A LOT that goes on behind the scenes and each one of the individuals I met had at least two things in common: A love for photography... and a big heart.

If you watched Sue’s Glamour workshop, no doubt you heard the call from many viewers to have her back, as well as to have the ever so talented Simona return for a make-up workshop and just announced last week, they will be back (and you know Sarah and I will be submitting). This is a clear indication that they listen and respond. A clear signal to demonstrate your desire for more, is to do more than tune-in. Tweet them, like them, status them, +1 them and if you can do yourself and your business a favor, invest in them.

This year my business has forever changed and I will be forever grateful. Sarah and I will be posting regularly on twitter about an aspect of a creativeLIVE course that we have incorporated each day and we encourage you to join in the conversation.

Thank you for taking a moment to read my little love letter for creativeLIVE. Now head over there and enroll in a free course. It may just change your life too.

(This post was unsolicited. Just a note from a watcher, re-watcher, supporter and attendee of creativeLIVE)

Kim and Nicole Critten of Bloom Essentials. Sisters. Business partners. Friends.

Sisters

I read a blog this morning by The Peak of Chic about sisters appearing in portraits over the centuries and it got me thinking.

I am the youngest of 3 girls and even though age (they are 5 and 10 years older than me) and distance (one is in Texas and the other is in England) separates us, I have always felt a powerful link to my sisters.  We may not talk as much as we could but when life lifts us up or test us to breaking we rally together and are each other’s pillars.  A constant.

After doing Kim and Nicole’s sister’s {contemporary portrait} session I got very excited to have a session with my own sisters and since we are planning a family reunion in October I won’t have to wait too long either!

Kim and Nicole have been my Vancouver sisters for the past 11 years and we had such a wonderful time with them in the studio.  I think we were all a little nervous since I know how much they dislike being in front of the camera and since we don’t allow liquid courage (it shows in the eyes) none of us were sure if they could let their guard down and their true inner glow out.  Needless to say they were AMAZING!  It was so much fun to watch them blossom right in front of the camera.  Nicole even made  a  “behind the scenes” video and posted it to their blog share their experience with the Bloomiverse as a promotion for their 15^th birthday online celebration.

Funny enough, I was going to wrap up by saying, “since there isn’t a sister’s day like mother’s day…” but then I googled it just to make sure and lo and behold there is a sister’s day and even better it’s coming up on August 5^th.  How perfect!  There is something amazing about sisters.  It comes from a very deep connection you have with someone that you are able to be your authentic self with.  Who has known you through the ups, the downs and everything in-between.

So whether the sisters in your life are by chance or choice or both try to remember to make a special point of letting know how special they are to you on August 5th!

Hi!  This is me, Sarah.   The shot on the left is the very first {contemporary portrait} Tobin ever shot.  We had about 45 minutes total for me to do my hair, makeup and the shoot.  He had our 19 month old daughter in a backpack and Sue Bryce's posing guide on the iPad.  The other three shots...well, that 4 months of practice and honing of photography and makeup skills.  What an amazing 4 months it's been!

Finding our calling

So, when it comes down to it Tobin has always been a “portrait” photographer.  When he first got his DSLR, when he would go out and explore and play he would call up actor friends of ours and shoot portraits.  Now, our thinking was, yes portraits are fun but can you pay the rent with that? We thought he also needed to shoot families, weddings, corporate, real estate, products, pets, engagements, babies, bellies, events, headshots… well, you get the picture.  Tobin would shoot anything for anyone who hired him.  Tobin enjoyed shooting all these things for the past 7 years but since I took over the business in September, I was going crazy trying to market us.  Then, at the beginning of March, our whole world changed.

Tobin was selected to go to creativeLive and learn from Sue Bryce (Australia’s Portrait photographer of the year 2011 & 2012, among many other prestigious awards) in person.  I watched from home and at the end of the second day we both knew that THIS is what we are meant to do!  When we were on the phone that night I was so excited because Tobin has a gift of capturing peoples’ essence and if he can get that connection out of a grumpy toddler then getting it out of a willing adult wouldn’t be a problem and after 10 years in the world of esthetics I’ve got the client handling and makeover skills to help our clients transcend the everyday.

He came home and we hit the floor running.  We made a plan of attack, moved all of Tobin’s computers from our office into our bedroom to make room to shoot, and set up 3 days that Tobin’s mom could watch the kidlets.  We did 9 sessions in 3 days and we were amazed.  We could really do this and do this in the space that we have, and people were really enjoying themselves and loving their images.  We were hooked!  Not only were we taking pretty pictures, we were actually changing the way these women were seeing themselves.

Over the last 16 weeks we have shot and learned, shot and learned, shot and learned some more.  We have had over 25 sessions to learn and grow from.  We have dissected each image to see what could be improved and what was right.  We will always be the harshest judges on our images and always strive for better but honestly, the images are only a part of the equation.  The experience that people walk away with is just as important to us as the images we produce.

You get a free phoTobin photography {contemporary session} that includes hair, makeup and photo shoot for up to 2 people (a $190) value for free*.  Also, just to sweeten the pot we will throw in a $100 credit you can use toward the purchase of your portraits from your session.

Prints range from $200-$1000 and handcrafted FolioBoxes with 6-15 matted images range from $1000-$2250.  Check out our complete price list.