Angela called me to book a session as she and her family were moving from their beautiful “country” home and wanted some memories captured there.  I am so glad she did and since she has seen these, I can share and know that she has some lasting memories of her first family home.  Oh and a bonus… she is moving very close to me and will be my neighbor.  I am excited!

Here is her gorgeous family!  Mr. J and Miss L were gorgeous and very much into exploring and having fun.

Look at these eyes!

They were close to the river/stream I did my last session at so we walked through their back yard to get there and the kids had a wonderful time.

Awww!  And no he wasn’t going to bash her on the head with that stone!  I don’t think so anyways. 

And some bubble fun!  Well just plain fun.

Mr. J plays with his Thomas engines along the windowsill quite often so this will be a special memory for mom and dad!

mum and dad…

And the family!  Thanks Angela, David and the kids.  I had a blast!  Can’t wait to have you move close!

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I had the BEST time last night photographing Courtney who hired me to do her grad photos as she is graduating this upcoming year.  Is it already going to be 2011?

Apart from being obviously gorgeous, she was so relaxed and funny!  She had alot of people helping her out…well helping me out actually.  Thanks John (Dad), you were great with the reflector!  And Courtney does skeet shooting (not sure if that is the correct term) and so she brought her gun to the session!  Yes, that would be a semi automatic… not loaded of course.  Dad won’t have to worry about her when she leaves for college! 

A few for a sneak peek and more to come.  I just started proofing this session and have so many favorites so far!

Thanks Courtney… for going with the flow, trusting me and willing to be a bit daring!

gorgeous girl… gorgeous light!

Love me this old barn!  Yes, she could be a model I do believe!

And a cool Truck!

And yes… her and I waded in the water.  Not easy with those slippery rocks!  I still laughed and thought it was fun.

I will share more when I have shown her the gallery.  I think I may have it done earlier!

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Do you remember these two wonderful little ones!  I loved photographing them!

Well they have grown up a bit!  And I was so excited to get to see them again!

It is hard to believe how fast little ones grow!  But time flies!

Can you say “huge eyes”!

I continue to look forward to seeing them grow!

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Now that the weather is getting nice and the days are warmer the photo shoots tend to get more frequent.  I have to say I love it after a slower winter time.  Getting outdoors is so much fun.

I had a great week photographing twins, a sweet girl and her dog and a wonderful family.  Stay tuned for those images.

Since Lisa and her family have now seen all of their images I thought it would be fair to show a few more from their session.  I can’t tell you how beautiful this family is!  inside and out!  And wonderful to work with.

A collage to show off a few from the session.  I told you Mom is gorgeous!

and an announcement I designed.  Love this sweet image of baby K.

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I know I sometimes post things off the topic of photography but I try to maintain a blog that showcases my clients as well as who I am.  When my children were young, a very large part of who I was involved scrapbooking my memories.  I adored creating art, the paper, glue and ability to put it together, adding words and stories to make it a beautiful piece of art or memory for my child.

Since beginning my photography business the task of recording written memories and pages for my children have admittedly waned.  I miss it dearly and want to try and reintroduce it into my life in some way.  Scrapbooking, however, is much too daunting of a task for me at the moment and finding this site of Bev’s seems to provide an answer to the balance I am looking for.  Her site truly inspires and excited me in jump starting this.

I adored reading through her posts and plan to frequent Bev’s site often.  A photographer herself she has a wonderful blog named FRIDAY’S LETTERS and it is intended to

help us begin the process of recording our thoughts to our children with a letter each friday.

Go check it out.  I know I will try and make an effort to visit, and answer the little questions she poses in the form of letters for my children.  I hope I can give myself permission and time to do this.  My children are worth it and I think it is a form of therapy for me.

I will try taking some pictures that relate to my letter as well.  What a fun project for us mom’s or dad’s.  Let me know if you try this out and how you make out with it!

Happy Friday!!

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This morning was a fun morning, with a focus on earth day.  My daughters class is ensuring they take “litter free” lunches and they were to also bring in recycled items to build an art piece with.  It is wonderful that the schools are focusing on this but we have to ensure we look each day at what we can do to help this world we live in to be a sustainable, healthy environment for our kids.  The future is theirs but what it will look like depends on what we do today.  So do your part each day.  Recycle as much as you can, run the water less, compost your food, just pick one thing and begin to do it.  Soon it will become second nature.

To highlight today I wanted to spotlight one of my young clients who is graduating this year and has done more for the environment then most people put together.  He is also the recipient of the Toyota Earthday Scholarship as a result of his hard work for the environment.

I asked his father to write a bit about Jack and his accomplishments.  I was incredibly impressed.

“Jack has a love for the environment and has been involved in conservation activities since he was very young, cleaning streams and trails and planting trees. Since 2004, he has been committed to helping to re-establish a native tree species (the bur oak) in the Saint John River Valley. Jack now leads the group and they have planted over 600 trees in and around Fredericton and over 100km both up and down the river valley from Fredericton. His group has produced a brochure to help spread the word and they have made many presentation at schools and community groups. Jack has also presented the bur oak project in Ottawa, Sweden, Japan and the United States. Jack is currently working on a Youth Accord with youth from 10 other countries. It has now been translated into 14 languages and he will be part of a group presenting the Youth Accord and signatures to world leaders at COP 10 to be held in Handa, Japan later in October of this year.”

I can only hope to have my son turn out as concientious and as caring as this young man.

Congratulations Jack!!  You show us how despite age or geographical location, each of us can contribute to making this earth a better place to live!

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This contest was sooo much fun!!  It soon becomes obvious when you look at the blog comments which two clients were going for the win here! 

So without any more delay the winners are….  AND I WILL SAY IT WAS VERY VERY CLOSE

First place winner… Miss S.  image “R”

Second place winner… Mr. M.  image “D”

Third Place Winner… The twins.  image “Q”

As for selecting a comment that would win the free session, well I asked my daughter to pick a number in her head between 1 and 128 the number of blog posts.

So the winner for a free session who left a comment is Lorraine Krall.  If you can contact me to arrange the session date that would be great.

And I will be in touch with each of the other winners!

A BIG thank you to all who took time to visit the blog and vote!  It is always fun for myself and the clients who play along!

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See, you can even celebrate Valentines day with a wall display such as this.  Using your images to form a heart!  Very fun.

I came across this on Flickr today and thought it was wonderful.  I think this is incredibly inspiring.  I would love to try this in my house, ummm…. Yah, well someday.  I have a million things I wish I had time to do.  Thought it may inspire you.  This person’s photography is also wonderful so check it out.  Or just go to Flickr to be inspired each day.

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Hey everyone… knock knock!!  Anyone even there?  :)  Well if there are people out there bored and checking out my blog then I thought I would let you all know that I will be on vacation for the next week and returning to work on the 10th of August.  If you are a client and needing to get ahold of me you can phone me on my business line and if you are wanting to book a session you can drop an email through this site or go to my site and contact me through there.

It has been busy this past few months and about to get a whole lot busier.  I do not have too many spots left for October and I am going to nail down the times for those who have requested a fall session when I return.  I will also be offering to existing clients 20 min fall session times.  Look for the Rankin Photography email on that.

Before I go on vacation I thought I would share a few of my recent favs!

Ms. “S” who is now a  sweet little one year old who I haven’t seen since she was just a week or so old!  My how she has grown!

And I love this one of her looking at her toes!

And a wonderful couple who have hired me to photograph their baby.  Shortly after she booked they found out that they are having twins!  Jennie thought I may back out after I found out…. Ummm… was she wrong!  I have wanted to photograph twins for the longest time and I can’t wait for them to be born!  And I think Aaron and her are also getting a bit anxious to!

I love the sign behind them.  Fresh Choice.  I thought it a bit symbolic with the two “fresh choices” she will have to care for soon!  OK… I’m weird!  But I still loved the sign.

Thanks Jennie and Aaron… more to come when I return from vacation.

I am launching my senior graduation session site in the next year and I had the pleasure to photograph my first 2010 grad this past week.  Jack was a bit unsure about this session and whether he wanted to get his photos taken, but I think he ended up being ok with it.  We walked all over downtown and chatted, shot some images and chatted some more!  Thanks Jack… you are very talented and such a smart kid.  Oh and I know ladies… handsome to!

More to come from his session when I return!

And if you are wanting to book a Graduation session please contact me to get my graduation session pricing.  I am booking now for September and October.

and this was very cool.  As we were walking by this wall Jack said… hey that’s my last name. But it said “OJ” Simpson.  So I managed to shoot it so the “O” was gone and it left his initials.  This was not photoshopped on the wall for him… but totally worked out to be very fun and appropriate for his session with his first initial and last name! Ah the things you find when you go on an adventure!

I hope you like them Jack!

Have to share a few more from my latest sweet newborn, Ms. E.  This baby had such gorgeous eyes… and she wasn’t having anything to do with sleeping!

A gorgeous one of Dad and his sweet girl!

And one where she shut her eyes for a full minute I think! 

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I photographed Amanda’s little girl over a year ago and I was excited when Amanda contacted me to shoot her wedding.  It was such a wonderful event, held at the Crown Plaza outside with just a few family and friends.

Amanda has a wonderful sense of style but loves to keep things fun and simple which just made for a wonderful wedding.

I loved her shoes.

and her dress was a shorter style, totally stylish and suited her perfectly!

the handsome groom before the ceremony.

Amanda and her daughter Avery.

Amanda and Derek had decided to have a time just before the ceremony to see each other.  I was excited to capture this and their expressions.

Amanda came up from behind so he didn’t see her right away.

He loved what he saw.

But why wouldn’t he!

and a few I love so far.  I still have a ton to go through but so far I am loving it.

one of my favorites of the two of them.

and i love this one!

And I asked them to go into the street and had Amanda jump up on him.  It is one of my favorites.  I love when a couple can just have fun.

A cute one of Amanda!

The hotel was right beside the art gallery but since it was after hours we were told encouraged to leave.

This is one of the shots of Derek and his best man Tony I managed to nab before they asked us to move on.  On the steps of the back of the building.

Later we were walking around the area and I thought this loading bay on the side of the building looked fun.  Not thinking about it being the art gallery (again) because, well I don’t think of those things, rather I just spot something and think…”what a great location for a shot”. 

So we were taking these shots when the same lady came around.  Another lecture about security cameras/ alarms we may set off… ummm and something about private property.  I know that we must have looked like a bunch of vagrants (insert sarcasm here) with Amanda and Derek in their finest and me with a huge DSLR slung around my shoulder.  It was so obvious to anyone what we were doing…. an elaborate scheme of course…to break into an art gallery on their wedding day.  Well who doesn’t need a good piece of art on their wall?  Kidding!

So we got a few more shots in before we left.

I told Derek to walk across and get her… Amanda is encouraging him!  LOL

Ok I promise to post more when I can.  Amanda… hope you and Derek enjoyed your day and the rock concert!  I loved working with you and Derek.  You are such an amazing couple and I wish you a life full of happiness.

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