When he shouted out on Twitter that he wanted to do a shoot with ME in front of the camera, I was pretty excited… but I was also nervous because a) I’d never met a stranger to take my picture before and b) I didn’t know what to wear or how to do my hair. There’s a cute thread of comments on his blog about the hair…It seems my stress was for nothing. He made every shutter click count in this set and I love every single picture!

I didn’t realize it would be so easy to get to know other local photographers and then find out they’re welcoming, warm and will share their thoughts on everything from life, family, friendship, the city, the world and even photography. Sean has that quality that every photographer needs just as much as they need the right equipment and technical know-how; he has the ability to connect. And you can see it in every single photo he takes and in every single blog post he writes. This kid’s going far (and he knows it).

No offense about the kid remark, Sean. So here’s a sample of his work with yours truly!

I call this photo “Candy with Candy”. My family knows I have very high metabolism and Jeff has a strong sweet tooth; otherwise why would they give us such a huge stockpile of candy this Christmas? How many boxes of Pot of Gold can one possibly consume in a year? Chicken Bones! (Ew, right!? They’re pretty tasty actually.) After Eight! Toblerone x 3! Fruitfulls — my favorite! Maltesers, straight from England. The X-Large marking on the package is laughing at me now. Lindt. A Chocolate Orange. What’s Christmas without Ferrero Rocher and Bailey’s chocolates? Heaven. Pure heaven. I have a long, and very happy road ahead of me.

I won’t dare do a progress report on the candy because I fear it will be embarassingly shorter than it should be.

One of Jeff’s young cousins got a nifty Nikon for Christmas so we went on a walk, enjoying the light from the falling mid-afternoon sun on Boxing Day.

And now that we’ve got our presents wrapped, our bags packed, groceries bought, we’re heading to partake in 3 days worth of Christmas cheer with the family. I love this time of year.

So see you all on the other side of Christmas!

The first few photos were before I knew what was going on. I was just sassy, by myself, in front of the camera. Then the couple shots. There were some pretty good shots for the Christmas cards. Before we really had time to change locations or angles or anything to make the photos more interesting, our friends kept saying, “We need more poses!” This had all been planned down to that last line and before I knew it, my guy was on his knee asking me to marry him. PRO-posing. Shutters clicked, I cried, his hands shook (just a little) and we were engaged. Champagne flowed briefly before we headed in to celebrate with our friends.

It couldn’t have been more perfect.

Earlier this year I had a full time job, a part time job, another part time job, full time course load at school, was making plans to buy my first place while keeping the place I did have in order. All the while I was dreaming of photography. It’s like everything I was doing was backwards. What I really wanted was just out of my reach and what I actually was doing was driving me crazy. Backwards.

When I quit my part time jobs in the Spring I didn’t care about the money anymore. I just wanted peace. When I wrapped up the semester at the same time I vowed to take the summer off and I did! It was amazing. I got out and did as many photo shoots as possible and that turned into a very wonderful part time adventure that’s getting better and better every day.

I have a hard time saying no. I get overbooked, I get overworked, I get overwhelmed. I get is whole lotta stress from saying yes. I’m sure you can give me an, “I hear ya!” for that. This has been happening lately with the day to day and it’s time to refocus (delicious pun!) and snap (mmm, better!) out of it.

I carved the fat out of my life and I have turned what’s left into more stress than its worth. Do…I…crave…chaos? Who does that anyway? More than one of you just put your hand up, didn’t you?

Let’s see if I can’t take my own advice and start living a less stressful life. Here’s a song that makes me happy so I’m going to turn the volume up…

Punky’s YouTube Channel

Here’s some pics of my “Bean Dog” I’ve taken over the past couple years.

As if to say, now you can celebrate it’s all over, the clouds vanished and the sun was out full force today. It was beautiful! I haven’t felt the urge to reach for my sunglasses in weeks. Of course they weren’t in my purse because my umbrella has become my accessory of choice. To top it off, I finally get to come back to blogging since I’ve been so wrapped up in studying these past few days. What a great way to start December!

As promised, I’m posting some pictures of my very bestest friend and partner in crime, Trisha. I snapped these on one of our Photography Missions this summer up the hill at Simon Fraser University. She’s tiny but she’s fierce, isn’t she?

One day we decided to take our cameras up to Simon Fraser University to do a photo shoot to practice posing and directing people in front of the camera. Who needs models when we can photograph ourselves! We shot in the open air of the Quadrangle for most of the afternoon. Basically, the Quadrangle is a big square outline on gigantic stilts with dozens of classrooms inside. Dreary inside, beautiful outside. Trust me, I took many-a-class in that building. We tried to act like models in front of the camera, and hot shot photographers behind the camera. One do-gooder student walked by us and told us he made money taking pictures of people and it was useless to have the flash on in daylight. He wished us well and carried on. Such helpful people wandering around! However, the flash was to subdue some shadows on the face. Thanks though.

We had a great time goofing around! Oh my friend was a bossy little thing but I loved every second of it. She was a natural! When we started to get people staring at us it made me nervous but she did a wonderful job helping me relax. I love the shot where I’m “holding onto the wall for dear life, but must look soft and feminine while doing it.” Nailed it.

My photos of Trisha will come in a later post. Here’s some of her 40D love.