PixelPie Photography || Edmonton and Area Photographer

It’s been way too long since I sat down and wrote anything, photo related or otherwise.  I figured I had writers block.  Then I figured it was a lack of time.  Then it was back to writers block.  Either way, I have taken a long hiatus away from work without really giving a reason.  Just disappeared into the walls of my home.  I talked to clients and referred others away.  It’s not that I didn’t want to use my camera, I did but I was beginning to feel swallowed up in managing a business, running my kids to school, the dayhome, running my own home, and trying to catch my breath.  With my husbands shift schedule and the demands of little kids, something had to give.

So I stopped.

I took a few months to just play with my kids and be mom and only mom.  My husband went out hunting.  We hosted Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and 4 birthday parties.  I surprised my husband with his dream of hunting the Yukon.  We got the news that his Mom is cancer free after a tough surgery.  My own kids had surgery for separate issues with their hands and made it through with the grace of orange and purple popsicles.  There was a lot to be grateful and happy for and I got to be a part of it all.

I love being a mom to my kids and being there when they need me.  But kids have a lot of needs.  A lot.  Everything is a need.  And it is easy to feel swallowed up by them alone.  I am missing my clients and missing using my camera for just pure creativity.  I miss feeling productive in the world and miss conversing with people about subjects other than potty training and on how to navigate the world of preschoolers without losing your sanity.  That is challenging in and of itself no doubt but I like a good debate, a good conversation, good people, and good wine.  And you can only discuss things with your 4 year old to a certain point before you begin backpedalling to escape the “too-much-information” trap they quickly put you in.

I find myself losing basic conversational skills when I sit down with someone without children in tow.  I stop mid-sentence half the time and forget what on earth I was just saying.  I chalk it up to being interrupted on a regular basis by 3-footers…“stop jumping on the couch!”, “no, you can’t have a snack; you just had one”, “can someone else please nurse the baby?”… that my brain has just evolved to the conclusion that I can only make it part way before it needs to shut off and stall.  It takes the raised eyebrows or the cocked glance of another adult before it sputters to a start again.  “Oh geeze, I’m sorry.  But what was I talking about?  And before we get any farther, what was your name again?”

Chidren put my nursing career on hold and to go back I would need refresher courses for sure.  I would also be battling my husband’s shift schedule.  To make paying for 3 kids in childcare worth it, I would need to work a lot of hours and my children would never be living in their own home, so it all cancels each other out.  I did love taking care of children that were sick or needed special care.  I was good at it.  I was good at my job and I hold a very special place in my heart for a lot of kids that I was so honored to meet during that time.  But nursing isn’t something I really, truly want to do for the rest of my life.  It’s a hard, political and stressful job that I don’t want to bring home with me right now.

PixelPie is a dream of mine.  Well, the company is a new dream.  The photography is a dream that was woken up after being buried under ex-boyfriends, school, jobs, and rent. 

Growing up I was never given the opportunity to take a hold of my desire to be creative.  It was hard to pay the bills and live an independent life style if need be.  I get that.  I agree to a point.  But I loved to draw.  I loved to paint.  And write.  I loved being in drama and singing in the choir.  I played the flute for a few years.  Heaven help me if I had to pick up an instrument again.  I could probably make it through ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ but I might interrupt myself and begin playing ‘Happy Birthday’ instead.

It was years before I bought a camera.  My first real paying job aside from babysitting brought me a 10% discount on camera’s at the drug store.  It was my first purchase.  Film and batteries made up the 2^nd and 3^rd purchases.  I knew how to turn it on and click the shutter, hand in the roll of film and wait for the “Your photos are ready for pick-up” phone call.  That’s it.  Oh, the camera did have a really cool feature that allowed you take a picture in 3 sizes with the flick of a switch, the amateur joy of the Advanced Photo System, a.k.a. Advantix by Kodak.  Whoohoo for panoramic! My dad had a film SLR, lenses, tripod, and a bunch of other gizmos but he stopped using it and I wasn’t allowed to touch it.  I also had 2 uncles that dabbled in photography.  I admired them all but knew nothing about photography or knew it was even a path of life and just took pictures of anything and everything because I always held my Advantix in my pocket or backpack.  I had that camera for 7 years.

I was always, ALWAYS, curious as to how the darn thing worked and how come I could create some cool shots and sometimes I couldn’t recreate it.  I took thousands of pictures of things just because I loved it or thought something stood out to me.  I’ll never forget the day when I was told, as they were flipping through an album of a recent trip I took, “Heather, you shouldn’t put this many pictures of scenery in an album.  It gets boring to look at.”  I was crushed.  I know they were a far cry from award winning landscapes but it was just so personal to me.  I remember every thought I had when I took those pics.  Why I took it.  Why I choose that angle.  Why I waited for something to happen or to stop happening.  I thought it was beautiful.  I thought it was unique.  It was my picture.

I threw the album out.

But I remember.  I remember feeling hurt but I remember more the drive I had to learn how to take a picture and not be told that it was boring.  But I had no resources or no knowledge on even where to begin to learn.  I didn’t even know photography courses existed and I know I would never have been allowed to take one even if I knew of one.  My small town school didn’t even offer a home economics course let alone photography. 

Then one day, my husband said “Sure.  Buy yourself a camera.  Use it.”  And I had a friend who showed me how.  I met other people who actually lived in the world of photography and carried the title ‘Professional’ to boot.  I had never met or known a professional photographer before.  “Teach me! Teach me!” I yelled.  And sucked in every bit of knowledge I could.  Learned and failed.  Learned and failed.

I built a portfolio.  I did free sessions.  I followed photographers.  I second shot.  Tripods, backdrops, lenses and flashes arrived at my door.  Websites were built and paid for.  Photo labs were researched.  Test prints sent to Album companies.  Kijiji & eBay were scoured for props.  An accountant was hired.  Sessions and Weddings were booked.  I worked. Going to bed at 3, getting up at 6.  I worked hard.

My kids were playing one day.  And my son and daughter wanted to play “Mommy”.  They got out some toys and set up their ‘computers’.  That’s what Mommies do of course.  They sit behind a computer.  They ‘text’ on their phones and fiddle with iPads.  It started occurring to me that I spent more time pushing my kids away, bringing them to dayhomes and school than they spent here, in their home, playing with me.  When they were home, they had to leave Mommy alone so she could work.  I looked back to the amount of photos I had of them and realized that the number was getting less and less.  My kids are babies.  I have one that has started in preschool part-time with Kindergarten next on the list.  Next year, 2 kids will be in school, leaving me with just one baby home.  She has just learned to walk, climb the stairs and run after the older two.  Soon, she’ll be on her way to school too.

Do you sense it?  That guilt?  That horrible, wrenching Mom Guilt that I felt?  It has bashed me over my head so much that I would get a headache from the pain of it all and my heart would explode a little.  So I stopped working and taking sessions.  I clued up my fall sessions and stopped with little word.  My husband didn’t say much until later when he said how much he’s enjoyed me being around more and not having late nights behind the computer.  I did too.  Like I mentioned earlier in this ever lengthy post, a lot of things happened during that time frame that I was grateful that I wasn’t booked up with other stuff, but I was missing out on the dream that came quickly and was crushed that I had only gotten just a small taste.

Balance is a word that is always hovering over my head.  I recently sat down with a few different friends and cried my way through my struggles of balancing kids, a job, a husband, and a business.  It’s no easy task and I commend those that can do it.  Something always has to give.  My husband’s shift work throws a huge knot in plans sometimes and it can be a struggle to work around, especially when you throw in overtime, training, meetings, etc, etc into the mix.  I don’t want to lose out on PixelPie.  It’s still a baby of its own.  I also need something other than TreeHouse for education and potty training to be the foundation of my conversations.   In order for all of it to work in harmony with as much fluidness as I can, PixelPie Photography is getting an overhaul.

My goal is to be accommodating to my clients but also remain accommodating to my family.  I have a number of new ideas in the works and I am brainstorming many others to get my plan in motion.  My kids are still small and as such, PixelPie will also remain small, growing as they grow.  Thanks for your continued support and I’ll be in touch with new details.

Have a fantastic week!

~ Heather

Last weekend I ran away from work, my husband and my kids to hang out with a gaggle of photographers instead.  Once a year, I actually manage to get a whole weekend off! Yay!

Last year we hung out at the most beautiful, charming cottage with beautiful scenes all around.  This year, we decided why spoil ourselves? and crashed a rental house deep in the realms of Edmonton.  Okay, to be fair, the cottage wasn’t available and this house was just as cozy and quite nice.  It’s all about the company we keep anyway and I’m sure that no matter where we are put, as long as we have a camera dangling from our neck, we’ll find something to photograph!

And this weekend brought no shortage of photo opportunities. 

See what I mean?

Okay, we did more than that.  Really.  We had a blast.  7 photographers, a surprise Magician, an Awkward Hug or two, and a weekend filled with babies.  It was a blast.  This is what we looked like all weekend long…..

I swear I don’t even know what any of these girls look like.  We just call each other “Hey Nikon!”, “Canon girl”, “Pentax look up!”.  We had plenty of adorable subjects to photograph.  There was no shortage of cuteness.  Or wine for that matter.  We were challenged to new heights in our photography and the biggest experiement was to take an adorable 3 week old baby and create adorable images without being a copy cat.  I tried ‘shooting-over-the-shoulder’ a few times and got glared at (these camera girls are a little mean that way), so in my, I must say very limited 10 mins, using my one lens choice of an 85, I  captured a few images for mom and dad.  Here’s a sneak peak of this beautiful little girl.

If you have some more time, wander over to these blogs and you may find some more of this little beauty on their blogs too.

Hope Walls, Christine Hopaluk, Helena Knittig, Laura Jane, Talitha Watkinson, Linda Mix-Kondratski

I’m not going to lie.  Photographing a curious 16 month old can be challenging at its best.  Especially when you give them a huge, outdoor space to run around and explore.  They love seeing themselves in the back of the camera and that will grab their attention for all of, ohhh, 2.3 seconds before they run off and find something else way more exciting.  Like a stick.  (Don’t get me wrong. I’m not discrediting the power of a good stick and a lot of imagination.  My kids love sticks and rocks like they were made from Fisher-Price.  They really should have the market on those….. that is, if you could sell sticks and rocks for kids.)  I’ve totally drifted from my point.

Kids can be tough to take a great photo of.  No matter if you take photos of kids for a living or whether your a mom that lives to take photos of your kids.  Capturing their true spirit is what we all aim for when we grab that camera.  Whether it’s to document that fleeting moment of a loving hug between two sparring siblings, to catch that adoring grin while they pull all the toilet paper off the roll, or when they are beaming with pride over their noodled and glittered picture frame made just for you.  Whatever it is, kids emit a charm and are filled with personality.  Even if they are the quiet type.  Children are intense in their emotions and have so much passion with every thing they do, say and see, that we can’t help document every stage in pictures.

I think that is what I love the most about taking photos of kids.  Each child is so unique and every month they have different quirks and characteristics than the last month.  One minute they are the quiet child that will light up in front of the camera, the next they are making the squinty face, yelling “CHEEEEEEEZZ!” really loud all the while climbing a tree and using sticks and rocks for sword fights and deserted islands, or they would soooo rather not be there right now, like, especially when they could be out with their friends.  No matter what day of the week, or their age, your child will reflect the very real person he or she is at that very moment.  You will be 100% assured that when a camera and a stranger, relatively speaking, is trying to chase them, get to know them and putting a big, black camera in their face, they will show, without a doubt, exactly who they are.

I love that about kids.  I love that children are so authentic.  They are so genuine in who they are going to be in that moment.  Even with the pleading and bargaining to “show your teeth” I often hear, if all they want to show you is the big, open mouthed, toothy grin, those are the pictures to treasure.  Those are the moments you are going to look back on and remember exactly the child they were.  Not the photos that while photogenic, contain those forced smiles that promises of lollypops, trips to Disneyland and a new iPod Touch will bring.

Just chase a newly walking/running toddler and you’ll see all the gorgeousness of pure, innocent, curiosity that no matter what you promise, isn’t going to bring more than a quick glance up and then back down to pick up another stick.

A session past brought about a lot of running for me, and although it wasn’t sticks, apples caught the interest of this darling little girl.  She was a delight to watch.  She was more interested in walking with a chair than sitting on it, piling up the apples than sitting beside them… but let’s face it.  That’s exactly what she is supposed to do.  And I love it!

I am so glad I got to meet these wonderful girls!  They are a seriously sweet group of sisters that are good hearted and have a ton of love for each other.  They were more than willing to step behind the camera to do whatever it took to get grins and giggles from their littlest sis who wasn’t feeling top notch the day of her pics, but they made her smile!

Mom is welcoming another bundle of joy into this group in January… little Hunter will definitely be adored in this family!  Enjoy these few pics from their fall session before their family expands once more!

So I’m editing another wonderful family session and as I go through this set, I just have to share these images!  Beautiful children so full of life! They just radiate childhood.  I seriously just want to run through a pile of leaves right now!

Doesn’t this look like so much fun?!

And yes!  I got to smooch these cheeks!  He’s every bit as cuddly and happy as he looks!

I {heart} my job!

Happy people make me happy.  Sunshine makes me happy.  And so do pumpkins.  It really doesn’t take much to make me love my job.  Add in a great looking family and my day is made!  These kids are super duper cute.  And hand-in-hand they sat for every picture and gave great smiles.  A few ‘cheeeese’ looks that I cannot lie, I do love, ridiculosly cute sweaters and a promise of the Corn Maze afterwards really gave some great pictures.  There is no doubt there is a lot of love in this family!

I am in a thankful mood, and it doesn’t even have to do with Thanksgiving.  I was so happy that I got the opportunity to photograph this family again.  They graced me with the same opportunity a few years ago when I was just finding my camera voice and still behind the editing technology so I was glad I could do a repeat for them.  Not only that but this family is really special to me.

I have known them since my son was 12 days old.  Their girls are the same age as my oldest two and they are fast friends.  In fact, my son, Ethan, is determined to put a ring on the finger of one of them… although he may have to wait a few years!  They have been to every birthday, and to every bbq.  They have helped us with childcare when we’ve needed and Miss. Kristina has even helped induce my labor with her hilarious stories that still makes me cry with laughter.  Most of all they have been fantastic friends to my family and I.  Thank you so much for letting me capture some smiles from your girls!  With tons of love ~ Heather.

So many of us are filled with gratitude this weekend and are busy thinking of all the things we have to be thankful for as we celebrate Thanksgiving here in Canada.  As so many of us stuff every ounce of turkey and pie into our bellies that we possibly can before we utterly burst, instead of honoring her October birthday with yet another piece of pie as she often does year after year, this birthday girl decided to make her own cake and wish herself a happy birthday.  With a bit of buttercream, her fav Nutella filling, topped with a self-made fondant bow, this cake was made with only one thing in mind.  Here’s wishing you a Happy Birthday Helena!

I’ve been hiding out recently.  Mostly outside enjoying the last of the gorgeous weather we’ve been having and photographing beautiful people with the most gorgeous kids.  I am a true sucker for all things Autumn.  This season and Christmas are truly my favorite times of year.  There’s something about this time of year that makes you feel all warm and cozy inside.

I thought for sure we’d be getting snow the first official day of fall with all the cold, rainy, dreary days we were having but Mother Nature had a different plan.  And I’m grateful.  The colors were vibrant, the light was stunning, the families were loving.  What more could you ask for?

I just seriously love these guys. Aren’t they a great family?

What an amazing expereince!  I was completely honored to be able to photograph the 7th annual Batting Against Breast Cancer™ slo-pitch tournament held this past weekend in St. Albert.  Not only were there a lot of crazy uniforms and a few crazy people in them, this event is a way for people to come together to raise awarness and fundraise for a disease that will bring a new diagnosis on average, for 445 Canadian women every single week and every week, the lives of 100 women will end.

In this year alone, an estimated 5,300 women and 50 men will die from breast cancer in Canada.  It affects women AND men.  It also isn’t limited to the breast.  It can travel.  Breast cancer can spread travelling through the blood stream or lymphatic system to other parts of the body causing a secondary cancer.  And no one knows what causes it and how to stop it.

That’s why the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation is there.  By Canadians participating in fundraisers like these amongst others such as the CIBC Run for the Cure, the Foundation can allocate the funds to much needed research for better and more advance treatment of breast cancer, tools to help with early diagnosis of the disease, education and awarness, and support for those living with breast cancer.  All of this leads to better survival rates for women and men and hopefully to a future without breast cancer altogether.

Many, many lives are affected.  It’s not just the person with breast cancer.  So many families have to live with this every single day, living on Hope.  By each of us doing what we can, whether it is donating 2 dollars, 5, 100, or 1000, donating our time and volunteering or just by talking about breast cancer can help.

I strongly encourage you to donate whatever you can.  Please visit the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation for ways that you can help.

One small way you can donate is after you check out the slideshow below, be sure to go to the web gallery and start to share and purchase the images from the tournament. ‘Share’ them on websites or by email, ‘Like’ them on Facebook or ‘Tweet’ them on Twitter.  The more images you share, the more awareness is brought to this great cause.  Not only that, but you can raise more money for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.  Purchase any print you like in a variety of sizes with a gorgeous finish and have them delivered right to your front door or purchase downloads instead.  100% of the proceeds will be donated back to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation so the more you share the images, the more you can potentially raise.

I really hope you enjoy these photos.  I had a blast doing it.  A huge thank you to Kurtis Charchun for allowing me to be a part of it.

All images ©2010 Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation