Jill was my roommate at university. We were sort of forced together a few weeks into the first month of school. For some reason, I was put into a French residence…meaning I had to speak French 24/7. I can’t speak French. I had to request a residence transfer, and as it turned out, so did Jill’s roommate. We had a basement room in our residence and were thick as thieves within hours. When we were roommates off-campus, we would skip class (sorry Mom) and meet at home to watch a really terrible soap opera, while drinking really terrible Irish Cream flavored instant coffee…and it was absolutely wonderful. She’s still the one person who beats me to sending an email when I’m thinking of her. Today, I sent her a link to the gallery of her images and the first line of her response was, ‘I was just thinking of you.’ It never fails.

This year, my Jill married her Kris. They’ve known each other forever, they’ve traveled and taught around the world together, and they finally had a surprise wedding in March. The distance made it difficult for me to attend, and I missed their wedding celebration party this summer as I was shooting another wedding in Victoria. My present to them was this rainy day session at one of their favourite places, Melmerby Beach.

I had a very quick session with Calum and Niall on my last day in Halifax. Their mom Chrissy, is one of my oldest pals. We played in the pipe band together and were always roommates on band trips, and together we had an acronym-based code language. Our session was the day before Halloween and by the time I arrived at their place, Calum had already been a Clone Trooper at his school party and had consumed enough sugar to turn him in to a tiny human tornado. He gave me my workout for the day as I tried to keep up with him through the piles of leaves, up and down the ladder to the tree house, and in and out of the house. Niall, on the other hand, was freshly changed out of his Darth Vader baby costume and was pretty chilled out…too tiny for candy this Halloween.

Lauren contacted me to take some photos of herself and her horses during my stay in Halifax. She’s an equestrian trainer and takes care of the horses at Maurway Stables, just outside of the city.

At the tail end of my trip to the East Coast, I got an email from Jamie letting me know that our good pal Jori Chisholm was on the cover of Piping Today. Piping Today is the National Piping Centre’s (Glasgow) bi-monthly magazine and Jori submitted the photos I took of him to accompany the article. Jori had a very successful year on the solo competitive piping scene as well as being a member of the current World Pipe Band Champions, Simon Fraser University Pipe Band. Based out of Seattle, he makes his living by teaching piping through his business BagpipeLessons.com.

Catherine is a piper from Pictou County, and she’s yet another friend from the Gaelic College days. We took some photos around downtown Halifax and were joined by her Dan at the tail-end of the session.