We love Leah Holmes’s approach to interior design. She realizes that everyone has different ideas of what they like and she will help you discover your style. We recently had her over to help us lay out our long, narrow living room and choose some new paint colours. We’ll show you before and after pictures when it’s done in a month or two.

Leah just launched a new website for her business designed by Triple I Web Solutions (my brother + sister-in-law) for her business Your Designer. She needed some classy new headshots so here’s what Jason came up with …

Gary + Penny of GP Recovery Services in the Cariboo region of BC have a business that inspects, researches and recovers underwater items. From finding lost wallets and dam inspections, to body recovery and underwater environmental filming, they do it all!

While we were staying at my parents’ cabin at Green Lake, they pulled up a tractor that had been on the bottom of a Loon Lake for 5 years. They also showed us some amazing footage they’ve recorded of the freshwater microbialites in Pavilion Lake where NASA and UBC are now doing extensive research on them.

They needed some higher resolution photographs of their new ROV so Jason set up a makeshift studio from a piece of plywood, an old bedspread and a patio umbrella while we were on vacation. Here are a few of the pictures he took:

Kate + Neil had a couples photography session with us the day after they arrived in Canada. They live in Australia and will be getting married next weekend. They wanted something fun, hot and west coast. We came up with the idea of using a waterfall Jason shot at when he was taking a class from Ken Pugh. The location is absolutely gorgeous. A bit of west coast, waterfall heaven. Here are a few of our favorites …

Leslie contacted us to do family portraits to celebrate her husband, Alex’s birthday. She had been referred to us by White Rock Gallery where one of our loyal clients has been bringing in portraits regularly to get framed. We went to their beautiful home surrounded by old growth trees and here are a few of our favorites …

We just returned mid-week from a 10 day vacation at Green Lake in BC. It’s near 70 Mile House and my parents have a cabin there that used to be my grandparents’ that we’ve been going to since I was a teenager. The kids look forward to it all year and gauge the passing seasons by reciting all the birthdays and holidays in a year followed by “…and then we’ll go to the cabin” for summer.

I posted a bunch of pics of the trip on my Facebook profile and my cousin left a comment under one saying that she set it as the background on her computer. I thought that was a great idea! So we put together a selection of our favorite scenics for you to choose from. Feel free to use them on your computer’s background. If you would like to use them for something else, please contact us.

Just click on the thumbnails to view the full, 1024px x 768px screen size image on a new web page. Right click and select “Set As Desktop Background”.

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If you are looking for some art for your wall, we will be selling gallery canvas wraps of these photographs. They start at $130 for 18″ and go up to $725 for 60″. Our gallery canvas wraps are gorgeous and on a stretcher ready to hang with satin lamination for protection and a 2.25″ side wrap. Please phone 604-864-6339 or email for more information. This is a limited time offer until August 10th.

Meet Coola the raccoon. Duane, one of our Cliq participants, recently let us know that he had a baby raccoon that he was working with.

When he’s not in school or with his beautiful wife and kids, he works on film sets as an animal trainer. This was one of Coola’s first outings and she was a natural. We have many more pictures of her but haven’t had time to work on them yet.

Seeing as we’re away on vacation and know many of you are still checking our blog, we thought we’d post one for you to enjoy …

We spent last week with an amazing group of teenagers teaching them about photography at The Reach. We had four days of activities planned and then decided as a group to do a project together on the last day.

We initially were going to do portraits of each of the participants without including themselves physically in the picture. After coming up with too many great ideas that included people, we decided to change the rules. Each one of these pictures was designed to capture what the person in the picture is interested in. We worked together to come up with the concepts, locations, clothing, props and lighting. Jason got to take the final pictures. It was great working with so many creative people on one project!

The pictures will be on display soon at The Reach Gallery Museum in Abbotsford.

Growth
Michelle, 14 years, is an eco-friendly artist who is interested in sustaining the environment.

Dansymmetry
Maria, 16 years, enjoys modern ballet.

A Bright Future
Cassidy, 13 years, enjoys photography, reading and drawing.

Unexpected Rock Star
Lorraine, 14 years, is a musician.

Bringing Joy
Mariah, 15 years, is actively involved in humanitarian and missions work.

Follow the White Rabbit
Brooke, 14 years, is an animal enthusiast.

Phantom iPod
Matthew, 14 years, enjoys computer games.

This was our last class before fall. We will post our fall teaching schedule on our blog and Facebook when you are able to register for classes.

While we’re waiting for clients or I’m chatting with people, Jason often wanders around and takes extra pictures at our sessions. Usually these pictures end up on a hard drive and never get looked at again. I’ve started sending them out for processing with our client work in the hopes that they will be saved from a future of obscurity. Here are some from the last couple weeks:

Field of fall rye in Abbotsford.

Blackie Spit in South Surrey. I think it’s in a bird sanctuary.

Crescent Beach in South Surrey.

Vancouver.

Totems in Stanley Park.

Flowers on Montrose Street in Abbotsford.

Raspberries at Neufeld Farms in Abbotsford. This is where I (Darcie) picked berries as a kid and teenager.

More fall rye in Abbotsford.

We met Susan Carraretto of Pedal Cars and Retro at a Meet and Tweet in Surrey. She is full of energy and ideas! We were excited when she contacted us to take pictures of a pink, jalopy pedal car. Her daughter was a little star model and enjoyed riding the car. Lexi also came along to model but she decided to only give her serious scowl and then refused to share the car. *sigh*

Susan, along with her twin sister Janice, run a serious of blogs with great information and contests on them. The main one is 5 Minutes for Mom and has links to their other sites on it. They’re running a contest right now where you can win a Balance Bike for your toddler so be sure to check it out and enter.

Here are a few pictures from the pink jalopy session:

We met Alexia + Kevin at Stanley Park in Vancouver for their engagement photography session. Their wedding is going to be on the east coast later this year and they wanted some west coast pictures done before then. We had a great time wandering around the beautiful park in the drizzling rain which is a must for genuine west coast photos. Here are a few of our favorites …