Rob and Lauren Blog

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:

Hanki Family // Moving Portrait from Rob & Lauren on Vimeo.

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.

Lauren :)

Wow, this is truly somewhere I never expected us to be, but all of a sudden we find ourselves at the beginning of this project, and it seems like the perfect place.

Before I get going, I’ll warn you that this might be a long post. But I strongly urge you to read it all through, since there are contests and giveways involved :)

On Thursday we went out to Pigeon Lake to do a family session. We expected nothing out of the ordinary, but instead walked away with buckets and buckets of inspiration.

You see, this family session was scheduled to start with a few portraits of the grandparents. Typically we would end up shooting these portraits in front of everyone else, and have about 5 minutes to do them. That’s when you default to very stiff, formal posing. Not too fun. But we were left alone with these two wonderful people, and given half an hour to create some images.

I’ll be totally honest, I was so nervous! This was something I’d never done before; posing an elderly couple. But instead of trying to change my approach because of their age, I just did exactly what I do when I pose one of our wedding couples. I asked them to snuggle, to kiss, to look at each other. I asked them questions about their wedding, their marriage, and just enjoyed chatting with them. When we came home a few hours later, after spending the rest of the evening with their kids and grandkids, we took a quick peek at the images. I sat there and was just stunned. Let’s let the images do the talking for a little bit…

 These two have been married for 44 years and are truly truly in love. When we realized the importance of that, that’s really when this project started.

 I asked them what their “secret” was to such a long and happy marriage. She paused, thought about it, and gave me such a simple and poignant answer. “Stay alive”. Loving for these two is easier than breathing.

Rob asked her if her husband was still as good looking as when they got married. She replied “He’s even more handsome than on our wedding day”.

This one almost reduces me to tears every time I see it. I mean, think about it. 44 years. That’s almost twice as long as my whole lifetime, and they still cuddle and snuggle and kiss and just truly enjoy being around each other. Their connection has grown stronger since they were married, and we want so much to be able to capture that.

I want to share a couple sentences from an email I received from their daughter when I shared one of these images with her, and told her of this project:

What you captured in that picture, is what I’ve grown up with all of my life—that love…that connection that was there on their wedding day and has just grown stronger and stronger and stronger through the years.  They have always expressed their love with deep affection…growing up on the farm, it was never a surprise to see him hugging her in the kitchen or her sneaking a long kiss from him out in the barn.  We got used to it, and that was our version of “normal”…

When you photograph a couple on their wedding day, you photograph the beginning of hopes and dreams.
 
When you photographed my parents 44 years after their wedding day…you photographed the fulfillment of hopes and dreams that went beyond the scope of anything they could have imagined on that wedding day…it’s definately an inspiration to those who follow in their footsteps.

And now finally, the project. We think it’s so important for this amazing and lasting love to be documented. It’s a cheesy parallel, but it’s like fine wine. Love gets better with time. Thus the name: Aged Love. Love that has time to settle and grow and sort itself out. We want to shoot these couples, talk with them, understand their life together, and create some real, natural and beautiful images that show that strong connection between them! At a time like this, when divorce rates are frighteningly high, I think couples like these two are such an incredible inspiration for all the young ones like ourselves. Who knows, we may even create a short film with all their advice!

Contest:

To kick off this project, we’re holding a wonderful contest. We want our readers to write in and tell us about their parents’ or grandparents’ love story (we’re looking for the age group of 60+, but we’re flexible). If possible, you can also include a photo of them so we can put faces to names!

Our favourite entry will win a free Aged Love session from us (valued at $500), which includes half an hour of shooting, all the edited files on a disc, and a print collection of our favorite images. At this time the winners will have to be from Edmonton (or the surrounding area) but hopefully we will expand this project to include the whole world!

So send in your entry to love [at] robandlauren [dot] ca. You have a week to send me the stories, and then we’ll announce the winner! It doesn’t need to be long, just a short little outline of their lives together. I can’t wait to hear these amazing stories!

Do let us know what you think of our new personal project! We’re so excited about it, and truly think it’s such a wonderful way to spend our time, learning from these couples, and creating such beautiful images of them! The beauty has very little to do with our photographic skills, and everything to do with the honest love just eminating from them.

Ok, I’ll leave it there for now. But send me your stories!! Right now!

Tons o’ love,

Lauren :)

I’ll definitely be sharing more from this session soon. Just wanted to throw this one up here! These guys were absolutely the cutest, and we had such a wonderful evening playing with them! 

People often talk about how they miss the seasons when they move to places like California and such. I never really got that, until I became a photographer. I couldn’t imagine missing out on the amazing fall colours we get here. 

 Lauren :)

Hi there and welcome to our blog! We are portrait photographers from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We love shooting engagements, newborns, families, couples, individuals, travel and lifestyle. This is where you’ll find all the cool new stuff we’ve been up to lately. We put new images up here on a weekly basis, so if you haven’t yet, make sure to bookmark this site or add it to your RSS reader!

Also, feel free to check out some of our work. Here are links to our portfolios!

Wedding portfolio // Film portfolio // Couples portfolio // Moving Portraits // Travel Photography

We really hope you enjoy our art, and feel free to leave a comment! We’d love to hear from you!

Tons o’ love,

*Scroll past this post to see all the new awesomeness!*

A more expressive baby I have never met. This one is an intellect, I can tell. Look at those eyes, there is so much baby wisdom in there, I’d love to know what she was thinking, especially in that first shot :)

Her parents brought her down from Red Deer to get some portraits done to commemorate her one year. Can you believe how adorable and fascinating a baby can be in just one year? We are really loving photographing little ones because no shoot is ever the same! You sort of just let them be, and capture. Nothing ever goes quite as planned, and once you understand that, it’s all good. 

This family is just way too adorable. Amber and Chris have known each other since they were 6. Those are stories that I love hearing about. I also love to watch couples like that, since they really can communicate so much more without words, as I believe they know just what the other is thinking. These two were self-professed as “quiet”, but I like ‘em that way. Spending a gorgeous summer evening with these three was just the ticket.

Thank you guys so much for visiting, and having so much fun! It was a real joy :)