Matthew Macleod Froese
October 11, 2000 – August 14, 2010

“But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”
~Isaiah 40:31

We look forward to seeing Matthew run and hear him tell his family how much he loves them one day in heaven. He is Darcie’s cousin’s oldest child and we have photographed him several times. We would capture the best expressions from him when he was surrounded by his parents and children.

He touched many lives and has inspired Matthew’s House, a respite home in Abbotsford for children with severe disabilities. His memorial service is at 2:00 on Friday, August 20th at Central Heights Church in Abbotsford.

Here is an article about Matthew and his family that was in the Abbotsford News this week.

Jason spent five days at Imagine Explorations on Vancouver Island this summer getting trained and inspired by Aurthur Rainville. Aurthur has a studio in New Bedford, Massachusetts that specializes in fine art master portraits. A few things that Jason took away from the training was to continually look for inspiration in non-photographic genres, to explore various non-photoshop techniques to create altered images and to push himself to explore more personal and spiritual aspects of photography.

We make it priority to do several business and/or creative training activities per year, as well as regular coaching. Continually improving and being inspired is a priority with us and Jason was not disappointed with Image Explorations. Here are some of the photographs he took while at IE …

The training was opened with a welcoming ceremony from First Nations people.

Arthur Rainville teaching.

Main hall where people ate, had the tradeshow and also hosted joint activities.

All of the following images were done during joint photography times and were a combined effort between classmates, the teacher and models.

The other day, I visited my grandpa in the hospital and my grandma showed me a card she had given him the day before on his 82nd birthday. She had printed photographs from their wedding in 1954 and placed them in the card. Those photographs have always been some of my favorites.

My grandpa was beaming and dashingly handsome. My grandma was radiant and beautiful. I grew up looking at the images and marveling that there was a time that my grandpa had hair! I also grew up looking at their wedding photographs hanging in their entrance hall and wondering what my wedding would be like one day. Now my children look at the photographs and are confused by who the young people are and enthralled that they’re their great grandparents.

A visual legacy is an important part of a family heritage. I’m not sure how you could put a price tag on it. Professional photography is an investment that will become a cherished part of generations of a family.

What photographs have stood the test of time in your family?

Solitary
Merit, Judge’s Choice
Client: Private portrait for Abbotsford family

Congratulations to Jason on his most recent photography awards! At the Annual Image Competition of the Professional Photographers’ Association of Canada (PPOC), held recently in Mont-Trembant, Quebec, Jason Brown had 3 images accepted and exhibited in the National Print Salon.

This was Jason’s first national professional photography competition so we weren’t sure what to expect. It is an honor and encouraging to have the judges recognize the technical and artistic skills that go into his images. We value being continually challenged to produce better quality work which in turn means our clients have award winning art to display in their homes and to represent their businesses.

This year’s competition received 1047 entries and was judged by a selected panel of master photographers from across Canada. There are over 925 photographers who are members of the Professional Photographers’ Association of Canada (PPOC). With the recent proliferation of photographers, hiring someone who is a member of a professional association such as PPOC demonstrates that they are dedicated to their craft and committed to a high standard of excellence.

Each photographer is allowed to enter four images into the competition. Out of those images, we guesstimate that about half of them don’t even get accepted. There are four levels: unaccepted, accepted, merit and excellence. It is very rare to receive an excellence as it means that the image is virtually flawless. This year there were about 20 awarded to the top photographs entered from across the country and Jason received one of them. At the end of the competition, each judge chooses one image out of the 1047 entered as their favorite. Two judges chose images of Jason’s.

All three of Jason’s winning images were exhibited in the National Image Competition and will be published in a coffee table book. We are printing up samples of the winning photographs and will have them hanging in our studio later this week in the hall of competition prints. If you come through, we’ll show them to you and explain a bit more about the process of preparing an image for competition.

Azure Grandeur
Excellence, Judge’s Choice
Client: City of Abbotsford, The Reach Gallery Museum

Axis of Strength
Accepted
Client: The Goddess Movement

We are extremely excited to be living in our new home in Abbotsford with a basement office. It’s absolutely gorgeous and as I write this I am looking out the window at bees on the flowers, hearing birds singing and smelling the rain through the office door. After 5 years of working in a windowless basement, it is a little piece of heaven!

Even before we found our new home Lexi was praying for it and has referred to it as “Our angel house with lots of room for lots of people.” Xander has plenty of room for his Lego collection and has a secret closet in his room that makes kids squeal and adults exclaim how much they’d have loved it as a kid.

We’re pretty much set up for now and will be sending out a special studio warming session offer to our clients ASAP. We will also hold an open house but don’t know when yet. As a blog reader or Facebook follower, you will be invited! In the meantime, if you’re up on Eagle Mountain and want to stop in, just drop us a line. If we’re not photographing someone, we’d love to give you the royal tour.

I’m extremely behind with blogging and am looking forward to spending time catching up rather than packing! Keep checking back this week as we have lots to share.

Revival Arts entrance. My (Darcie) desk is behind the bottom right window.

I apologize for our latest embarrassing lull on our blog. By now, I hope that you faithful blog followers realize that this is not because we are sitting around with dusty cameras trying to come up with creative ideas. Our reality is that we have so much awesomeness in our lives right now that we are unable to keep up with blogging.

In the past few weeks or months (it’s a bit of a blur) we have listed our townhouse, sold our townhouse, looked for houses, fallen in love with a house, made an offer, watched the house go into receivership, looked at more houses, fallen in love again, bought a house and are now preparing to move in 9 sleeps. All this while trying to keep up with regular life with two kiddos and a busy photography studio. Phew!

So now we’re waaaaaay behind with blogging but the entire house is pretty much purged and we’ve started making progress with packing. I know there are an increasing number of you who are patiently waiting to show your friends and family images from your recent portrait and commercial photography sessions with us. Thanks for being patient. We will make sure that we catch up on our blogging once the dust settles.

We can’t wait to show you our new home and studio. We have some exciting promotions coming up for our clients and their friends and family. And Jason just won some more awards that will officially be announced in the next three weeks. We’re super excited. If we weren’t so tired, I have a feeling we wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.

Thanks for stopping by and we will be back blogging again hopefully soon. Perhaps another early morning at 1:00am when I no longer feel like packing ….

We are cleaning out the office in preparation for our move and will post photographic supplies we no longer need on our blog. Here is a rotary paper trimmer by Rotatrim that will cut up to 18″ photo paper and cardstock. $70 or best offer. We know many photographers who use this exact model who rave about how awesome it is.

We will be updating our samples with our new studio. If we have had a sample of you on display in the last 5 years, feel free to contact us to see if it’s available to purchase for a minimal fee.

The Professional Photographers Association of British Columbia (PPABC) had the awards ceremony for their annual salon last night and Jason Brown won Best in Class for two categories again this year! There are over 200 of British Columbia’s top professional photographers in the association and this year there just under 300 entries in the photography competition. Here are his winners …

High Voltage
Best in Class – Fashion

Azure Grandeur
Best in Class – Architecture

Both of these entries are examples of our commercial photography work and you can see our commercial photographer website here.

It irritates me when bloggers point out that they haven’t been blogging and then make an excuse blog post about why they’ve been slacking off. Now I feel compelled to do the same! I am in the process of writing about 30 posts and we’ll set them on timer to post over the next few weeks so hopefully I won’t feel guilty enough to make another post like this.

So what’s been distracting us? We’re on the hunt for a new home and studio! We had Leah Holmes of Your Designer come through our home and give us a list of things to do to prepare and stage our home for sale. Then Jason took awesome photographs of the place. And finally we listed it with our Realtor for Life, Rod Lockhart of The Lockhart Group. It sold immediately which was a huge relief but now the clock is ticking for us to find a new home.

Thanks to all you loyal blog readers and Facebook followers for coming back regularly to check out our latest photography. We love it when we meet people and they boldly declare, “I stalk your blog all the time!” You are also welcome to connect with us on Twitter and Facebook. You are always invited leave us a comment on our blog or through Facebook. It makes us feel special. (hint hint)

We are about to sell our home which proved to be motivation to print the piece of art we’ve been meaning to print for months. This is a photo Jason took in July 2009 at my parent’s cabin at Green Lake. We go there for a week or two each summer to unplug from our life and recharge our souls. Now I can flop down on the couch for a few seconds and recharge just by looking at the photograph. Ahhhhh.