On Saturday we packed up our cameras, but not for a wedding! Instead we made our way to the Campus Community Garden near the University of Alberta. They were having an open house and we were covering it for them. More and more we are realizing the great importance of becoming involved in our community, and giving back as much as we can. This was a perfect opportunity to use our skills for an absolutely wonderful organization.
Today I’ll show you Rob’s Moving Portrait of the event. It’s lovely :) Photos to come! And if you’re looking for a way to learn more about gardening, or just get outside and enjoy the rest of the summer, the Community Garden is a beautiful and very productive way to do just that! I can tell you first hand that the veggies that come out of here are absolutely delicious!!
Just wanted to share Rob’s most recent Moving Portrait with you all this morning! There is more to come from this session with one of the world’s most adorable families, but for now, enjoy :)
Well, they just entered the next amazing stage in their adventure together, and that was welcoming a third member to their team. Her name is Tegan and she’s incredible. Spending a morning with these three was relaxing, engaging, and energizing (even though we had to take a nap afterwards, as we usually do with newborn session, haha!) We are so excited to share the results!
First up, I have to show you the Moving Portrait that Rob created for them. We really find that stills can’t fully capture the nuances of a newborn, and that these Moving Portraits show so much more. Hope you enjoy!
And now for the images from the session!
Tegan gave us a few smiles during our session, and they were truly heart melting. Look at that little grin!
When S first emailed me and asked if we’d do a boudoir session, my knee-jerk reaction was “Nope, we don’t do boudoir!”. But rather than responding right away, I stopped and thought about it for a bit. Was there a way to do boudoir, but in a way that would really reflect our style? We’ve always been the type to take on a challenge, especially if we’ve never done it before. So we agreed, and gave it a go! I’m truly bowled over by the results, and so much credit goes straight to S for rockin’ it so hard, and being so confident and beautiful.
And as I created the majority of the stills, Rob produced yet another stunning Moving Portrait.
We really hope you enjoy this work! And for anyone interested, we’ll be taking two boudoir bookings this year, and then booking for next year. Give us a shout if you’re interested!
S, thank you so much for sharing such a beautiful evening with us, and endless props for doing such an amazing job. And congrats on marrying the love of your life :)
Lauren
P.S. For the photogs who are curious, all of these images are processed using Lightroom alone, as usual. We’re loving it!
Recently we spent an afternoon with our friends Mark and Andrea, and their little girl Lila. Andrea is a fellow photographer, and we’ve been so lucky to get to know her over the past couple of years. And Lila is just one of those babies that you become addicted to. Seriously. Addicted.
During our shoot Rob created his first Moving Portrait of a family, and I think it’s one of his best yet. Check it out:
And here are some of the stills. I’ll probably end up sharing a ton more with you guys in the next couple weeks, but I wanted to get some up for these guys to peek at :)
Lila is such a poser. Check her out!!
What a seriously seriously beautiful family. We’re so lucky to know them!
During this shoot I realised I have a bit of an obsession with flying baby photos. I’m ok with that.
Ok, I need to get back to work! So many other amazing portrait sessions to edit. But Hankis, thanks so much for spending the afternoon with us. We love you guys a ton.
We go on bike rides sometimes just before it gets really dark. Its amazing how a short bike ride from our house can take us to a place where we feel like the only people in the world.
I feel like things are changing, that I’m beginning to see the world in a completely different way. I wonder how the details of the world have so easily passed me by until now. There is persistent, quiet beauty all around.
Kingston doesn’t care too much for schedules. Even though the whole world had planned to meet him at the end of this month, he decided to come 4.5 weeks early!! There went our plans for a maternity session ;)
In the end though, we’d much rather meet this little man early. And I’m sure his parents are pretty happy to get to spend so much more time with him! You might recognize his gorgeous parents from this post, or even this one. They were one of our wedding couples from last year, and we were so excited to get to shoot them in this new and awesome point in their lives!!
Adam was a sleepy little guy. But he knew that we were waiting for him and finally peeked at us, and opened those gorgous eyes. I can’t believe how different shooting newborns is. It’s something we’re really really loving. I mean, Adam will literally never look the same as he does in these images. We just saw him again yesterday and he was already totally changed!
Today I wanted to share another Moving Portrait with you, and chat a bit about the project, since we kind of just threw it out there without much discussion.
This is our loveable little cat, Scooter. Last time we traveled we had a photo of him on our laptop and looked at it every single day. Next time we go, this will be on our iPhone and we’ll be watching it all the time.
So what exactly are these moving portraits, and how do we create them? If you’re a nerd-tographer like us, all we need to say is they were made with our 5DMKII, and you’ll understand. But if you’re not, then here’s a quick explanation.
Our still camera that we use to shoot our images can also produce high definition video. Essentially we have all the abilities in terms of the *look* of our images, but now with video. This isn’t something a Handicam from Best Buy can do. Trust me, we’ve been looking for this for over a year now! We’re able to create a very cinematic look to the video, and we’re absolutely loving that!
I think we’ve suprised even ourselves with how powerful these short videos are. If you saw Richard and Talya’s video, that was was especially moving for us. So many things happened during that shoot, that happen during most shoots, that stills just don’t quite capture. I’m thinking especially of their dancing, as well as when Richard gave Talya about 8 kisses in a row. Trust me, that looked weird in the stills, but unbelievably adorable in the video! The first time Rob showed me what he had put together, I actually started crying. It’s so powerful! We can’t wait to start creating these for more clients!
And we’re intending to create these for more than just newborn sessions, so if you’re interested in having us create a Moving Portrait for you, make sure to drop us a line and we’ll give you more details!
And finally, I just want to mention that as special as these Moving Portraits are, we strongly strongly believe that still photography is, and will always be, the core of our business. The video is beautiful, but still can’t do something like this:
Wow, that’s a long title! But so much to share this morning. So much that we’re going to share some teasers from Saturdays wedding tomorrow! That’s how much we have going on, it’s crazy!
Let’s get to it right away. This is a Moving Portrait that I’m so excited about. Talya & Richard are a very dynamic and snuggly couple who also both happen to be amazing hip hop dancers! Photos alone just can’t quite get all those little nuances of them, since they move so much together. We hope you enjoy this Moving Portrait we made of them.
We just want to let everyone know that we are DEFINITELY shooting in EDMONTON for 2010. We admittedly were a bit overenthusiastic about our move to Vancouver, and didn’t quite consider housing markets and all that boring stuff. We still will be moving there, but within the next few years. So Edmonton, you’ve got a lot more Rob & Lauren coming your way! And if you’re a Vancouver bride, give us a shout since we have extremely discounted travel rates for you!!
And we’ve been getting lots of emails asking when the next Chill Session is. Well, here you go:
Chill Session 2009 2.0
When: Sunday, August 16, 2009
Where: Our home on the south side of Edmonton
What: A day of learning and shooting with Rob & Lauren. We’ll be focusing heavily on live shooting and post processing, with even more one-on-one time!
Included: Snackies, bevvies, and din din
Cost: $300 + GST
We will be limiting the session to 10 people, and I have a feeling it will book up rather quickly, so get in touch with me right away (lauren [at] robandlauren [dot] ca) if you’re interested. I’ll send you an email with all the details of what we’ll be talking about, and how to book your spot!
Wow, so much going on in this post, but I hope you all enjoyed it! Leave us a comment and let us know what you think of our Moving Portrait!
Wow. The past couple months have been such a busy time for us, prepping for the summer, coming up with new ideas, new projects, new products…It feels like we’ve finally started to actually DO all these things we were preparing for!
This is one of those things; what we will be calling Rob & Lauren // Moving Portraits. I’ll let you watch, and then explain afterwards. (P.S. You can click the arrows in the bottom right of the video to watch in full screen)
Allow me to get a bit philosophical here. I really feel like Rob and I aren’t just photographers. Instead, we’re artists, and photography is our current medium of choice to express our vision. What inspires us is people, both individually as well as their interactions with others. Photography has been a wonderful way for us to capture these people we’ve worked with, but recently we’ve started to explore how small bits of video can add to our vision.
So we started with little Samantha. We took a lot of images that are beautiful captures of her and her tiny personality, but we also took video. That’s how we created that small little clip you just watched. And personally we feel like it captured things that the images just couldn’t quite get. Her yawns, the way she wiggled and kicked, the way her eyes just looked right into the camera. It’s a way to create a portrait of someone, and show who they are, even though the images are moving rather than still.
What does this all mean?? Well, this is the deal. The first five people to book a newborn session with us will receive a Moving Portrait for free. This can be used in combination with our current portrait session special, which would give you a crazy good deal!
Why newborns? Well, there is always somewhere to start, and this is where we will start. Literally at the beginning of life! Moving Portraits is a project of ours that is just beginning, and we will be exploring in all different forms, but for now this is what we’re up to. We also absolutely LOVED shooting a newborn, and can’t wait to start doing a lot more! So if you are expecting, or know someone who is, please get them in touch with us right away to take advantage of this completely unique product, because as far as I know, there is NOONE else doing this quite like us :) But by now I’m sure you know how different we like to be!
Well, I won’t keep chatting on and on here. Enjoy these images of Sam, and I hope you’ll keep checking back in for more of our Moving Portraits! We have big plans for these :)
Usually babies this young spend most of the session sleeping (from what I’ve learned!) but Sam was wide awake, and giving us tons of great moments, like this adorable sneeze!
And such expressions. I love this one!
It might be just me and my crazy mind, but she totally looks like a boxer here!
Leave us a comment and let us know what you think of our new project!
Christine 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Wow! I love these moving portraits, you guys have skillz!
What a great feature for the Campus Community Garden.
lisa 1 month, 2 weeks ago
What a beautiful portrait of our garden!!! Great work!
Dayna 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Wow!! Absolutely beautiful!! You guys are amazing!
Melanie 1 month, 2 weeks ago
This. Is. Amazing! Almost made me cry. Thanks so much guys!
steph 1 month, 2 weeks ago
Woooo, garden!