Each November I transform the home studio into some sort of insanely festive photo set for our annual Holiday Photo Sessions. In 2017 the inspiration came from Canada’s 150th birthday celebration earlier in the year. The result is this amalgamation of Christmas and Canadiana.
The best part of these holiday mini sessions is watching families grow up in front of my lens. Lots of familiar faces in this crowd!
Enjoy the gallery.
Want to see more?
Check out this 2017 holiday season compilation.
Last month, just before Mother’s Day, I attended a Mother Daughter floral workshop with the buds at From The Potting Shed, and the lousy weather didn’t stop my mom, my aunt Debbie, my cousin Alex and I from having a grand ol’ time– and going outside to take pictures in the rain. Earlier in the day we got a quick garden tour and then learned how to make spring twig wreaths and floral crowns. In between there was a catered lunch and some excellent photo opportunities.
We had a lovely time making our wreaths and crowns, but the real pleasure of this workshop was luxuriating in the ambience surrounding the French peasant gardens and the stone cottage that Elaine and the team at From the Potting Shed call home. Don’t even get me started on that incredible weeping cherry tree! Those pink blossoms totally made my day. Here’s a taste of all the pretty that went down at the 2017 Mother’s Day workshop.
Did you like the look of this workshop? From The Potting Shed will be hosting another very similar workshop called Fairies and Flowers on July 9th, 2017.
Want to see a complete gallery of images from this workshop? Visit my gallery website. Want to see another blog post showcasing flowers from FTPS? View my open house post.
Thank you for a beautiful day mama, Alex, Debbie, and all the buds From The Potting Shed.
Its (nearly) spring! A year ago I was busy celebrating International Women’s Day with some of my favourite clients and a series of soft and sensual boudoir sessions. Now we’ve had time to choose our favs, share them with loved ones, and revel in the secret of these beautiful images. Its time to share. Here’s a taste of the pastel perfection we captured last March. 
The idea behind these Vintage Glam Minis was to give some devoted family photography clients an opportunity to sample a boudoir experience on a small scale. It just happened to work out that the soft pink and blue colour combo that inspired much of our 2015 wedding decor became Pantone’s first ever dual colours of the year in 2016, when our Vintage Glam sessions took place. You’ll find Rose Quartz and Serenity are both sprinkled liberally throughout this setup. I also used various strands of pearls, white satin bedding, and a vintage suitcase full of antique cameras and vintage lingerie from my collection to bring some mid-century charm to these sessions. And we must not forget Simon! One of our participants asked if she could include her handsome rabbit friend for some extra unique portraits. I was only too happy to oblige. Bunnies make everything better. 
You won’t see this backdrop anywhere else by the way, I made it by hand myself to use at my own wedding, knowing I would eventually reuse it for portraits of some kind. Essentially it is huge piece of plywood covered with a giant layered collage of different scrapbook papers as well as old wallpaper and paper doilies from my grandmother’s house. There’s also a can or two of shiny spray paint and yes, of course, gold glitter.
Each of these remarkable women has endured a major health challenge in one form or another, and none had had so called boudoir photos taken before. These shoots truly felt like a celebration. For some of these individuals, having their portraits taken helped them to see themselves in a whole new light. Every one of the participants ordered additional images once they saw how amazing they looked with a little help from good lighting and proper posing techniques. The feedback I got from the ladies was just lovely. I’ll never get tired of photographing women in a boudoir setting. It can get surprisingly emotional. And silly. I see such honest beauty in these images. I hope you will too. 
Thank you so so much to all these beautiful women. I’m happy we had the opportunity to take these portraits together, and I’m grateful you have allowed me to share them here on my blog. 
P.S. YES, I will be offering another spring boudoir feature in 2017. YES it is taking me longer than anticipated to work out the details, but it is happening, and here’s what I can confirm: White, bright light. Floral crowns. Professional hair and makeup. Brand new portrait display boxes.
Details coming late March.
The flower wall. I had no idea how popular it would become when I started making these giant paper flowers in preparation for our wedding back in the winter of 2014. I experimented and played around and eventually ended up with the combination of white, blue, pink, turquoise, yellow and orange flowers that would be the colour scheme for most of my life for the past 2 years. After all the “I Dos” and hullabaloo, I was left with the wall. THE WALL.
Each individual flower represents at least $5 worth of paper and 1-2 hours of my life. This baby took me so long to make that I knew it had to get set up at least once more so that I could properly photograph it myself. Thus the idea for “May Flowers Minis” was born. I enlisted a handful of gorgeous young ladies for May Flowers portraits and we set out to create joyful photographs that would celebrate springtime 2016. Here is a handful of my favourite shots from our styled mini sessions. Thanks so much to all the lovely ladies that participated in this endeavour.
What a year! For me and EBI, 2015 turned out to be a flurry of excitement full of extreme highs and lows, big life changes and unprecedented career opportunities.
The year opened up with elaborate plans for my own “glitter garden party” wedding scheduled for June, escalated with Easter minis, continued with the honour winning a YWCA 2015 Woman of Distinction Award, got complicated when I learned who my true friends were in the spring months, and peaked in June when I vowed (on literally the rainiest, stormiest day in 6 years) to stick with Todd forever. Just our luck.
Me and my business hit the ground running in August and the number of jobs I had on the go steadily increased until holiday minis and then the Christmas rush were upon us. After some personal tragedies and the deaths of 2 family members and my beloved bunny, Todd and I had plenty of opportunities to test the strength of our new marriage. I’m pleased to report that through all the various challenges 2015 presented us with, the two of us have become a stronger team than ever. With his support, I shot and edited more portraits for more clients this holiday season than I would have believed possible in the recent past. For weeks on end I was running on coffee and editing around the clock as Todd delivered photo packages for me all over town. I actually had to turn potential clients away in December because there just weren’t enough hours to fit everybody in before the big deadline on the 25th. I would have liked to help those families out, but I admit it also felt like a bit of a milestone for my business to have reached a point where I can afford to turn people away.
At long last, it feels like I’ve got a substantial client base rooting for me, and what excellent clients they are! In a classic example of Murphy’s law, when my new husband and I finally got a chance to slow down on Christmas day, Santa blessed us with food poisoning and we both rang in the New Year in a rather disgusting state.
It truly was a crazy year, full of far more challenges, joys and sorrows than I ever could have anticipated. These are the images, personal and professional, that stick out for me after the last 365 days of living life and pursuing my dreams at full speed.
Thanks so much for being here and for taking a few moments from your busy day to glance at my pictures. Wishing you love, peace and joy in 2016.
Hello dear readers, and welcome to the next chapter of EBI! That’s right folks, Mrs. Lister is in effect. My name has changed, but my vision hasn’t. I’ve been slacking in the social media department, but I’m here to tell you that ends now.
Last week I found myself having coffee with a close friend in my living room, and saying something to the effect of, “I don’t think I’ve ever gone so long without a big creative endeavour on the go. I feel like I haven’t produced anything cool in a year.” My friend laughed, because she was seated in the opposite direction, facing a brand new gallery style wall chock full of crafty and colourful photos taken at our wedding. Now I’m looking back on the preceeding months and trying to figure out if this has been the most or least prolific period of my career. 
If you ask any of our close friends or extensive family members, it was a crazy vivid year of glitter art, party plans and whimsical expectations. There was a month or two where you literally couldn’t get into our home without tripping on some kind of spray painted, decoupaged, sparkle encrusted wedding craft. I busted our vacuum by exceeding its sequin and glitter capacity. Seriously. All my life I’ve loved making pretty things, and as I recognized the early stages of photography related burnout, I decided to embrace party planning like it was my job. It was a new way to channel my creativity within an industry that I’ve been a part of for several years now. The trouble was from my clients’ perspectives, I’m sure it looked as though I was just hanging out. While my personal contact list was getting tired of seeing so many images of cakes and dresses and tablescapes, those of you who have always supported my art and my business saw a dramatic decline in my engagement with social media as I allowed my focus to drift away from EBI in favour of more romantic pursuits.
I didn’t shoot anybody during July. And that for me, is a big deal. It was a decision I made many months previously, a decision to slooooowww things down and get my bearings. For awhile there you see, I was charging forward, camera in hand, digging myself deeper and deeper into a pile of projects I couldn’t begin to imagine my way out of. When Todd proposed, all of a sudden my creative to-do list doubled. I guess you could say I spent the majority of the past year in over my head. Thank goodness I had my mom and my sister and my partner’s fantastic family keeping me organized and focused when it came to planning our big day.
I was awake for what felt like a week solid during mid June as I scrambled to get everybody taken care of so that I could go well and truly off the grid for a week or two following our nuptials. I sent off the final client photo gallery an hour before we had to go to our rehearsal dinner. Then somebody told me the forecast for our wedding day. Oh boy.
Worst summer storm in six years. Perfect day to get married. Our devoted friends and family members pulled together to throw us the garden party wedding of our dreams in teeming wind and rain that never once let up. The party was confined to a tent in my parent’s backyard, but oh the marvels we had crammed into that tent! At the end of the night we were all very cold and wet, very tired, and very glad to be married and moving on from all the matrimonial mayhem that had dominated the last year of our lives.
I’m so glad I had the sense to step back and enjoy the bridal period of my life. It was a whirlwind that I was thrilled to revel in at the time, but now I’m more than ready to get back behind the camera where I belong. To kick off this new era in my photography career, I challenged myself to put together a self portrait featuring as much Emilyness as I could pack into one small faux-wallpapered square. This was also my first attempt at making floral crowns with fresh greenery, and I have to admit I’m rather pleased with the result. I think I see more DIY tutorials and more self portrait projects on the horizon. After all, I’m the only model I know that works night shifts for free with absolutely no prior notice, and the crafty component is something fun and unique that I can bring to photo shoots. Its worth all the effort, because nothing feels as good as capturing an idea out of thin air, translating it with a camera, and eventually watching it roll out of my printer in real life. At long last I feel recharged and reinvigorated to pursue my passion: connecting with awesome individuals by photographing life’s best moments in vivid colour. 
Thanks for sticking with me!
