Danika’s uncle gave her a portrait session gift certificate last year for her graduation present and she wanted to schedule it for sometime this spring so the weather would be ‘nice’. The weather was spring-like at times with beautiful sunlight, followed by a massive rain storm and high winds….just another day in Victoria! Danika brought her best friend Lindy along for the session and we hit up a bunch of different locations around downtown Victoria.

My good friend Jo had a little visit over the weekend from her son Aaron, his wife Pamela, and their 3 month old daughter Andie. Aaron is an Alberta farmer and was taking a mini West Coast vacation with the family before seeding for the season, so we decided to squeeze in a portrait session during their visit. Andie decided to nap for most of the session…growing is hard work!

Each year when I go home, I put time aside to stay with my long, long, longtime pal Bonnie Jean. During my visit last October, Bonnie Jean and Michael invited me to their appointment when they found out that they were having two little girls. Rowan and Riley arrived a few months premature this year, but to see them now, you’d never know. Bonnie Jean and Michael make it look easy juggling two active, teething, on the verge of crawling babies. I guess it helps that the girls are very much like their parents. They’re easy going and they love to laugh…I can’t wait to see the people they become. Oh, the stories I have to tell them!!

Grace contacted me to take some family portraits during my stay in New Glasgow. They had a beautiful barn in their back yard complete with a collection of homemade bird houses.

There’s just something about kids from Cape Breton that make me laugh…I guess we just ‘get’ each other. Roblyn contacted me a long while back about taking photos of her 5 year old daughter Erin. As soon as I arrived home on the Island, so did the rain…and the freezing rain, hail, and snow. With a few tweaks in our schedules, we managed to arrange a session for Erin on the only day the sun came out from behind the clouds. Roblyn went to great efforts to find some really super locations and Erin did the rest. She had me in stitches the whole session and is quite possibly the funniest 5 year old I have ever met.

On Monday I had a session with the talented Emma Beaton and Nic Gareiss. I met Emma a few months ago while I was in Boston shooting her group the Folk Arts Quartet. Nic is a fantastic musician and dancer (video here) from Michigan and together the two are playing some shows together on the Island. One additional image from the session is posted over on the Photographer Network blog!

My wonderful pal/fabulous fiddler Ivonne Hernandez was back in town for a bit in between graduating from Berklee College of Music and heading out on the road. We spent a whole day gabbing at the new Caffe Fantastico location at Dockside Green a few days ago. On the drive back to my place, I directed us to a slight detour so I could take a few photos of her before we parted ways. There’s one more from this series over at Photographer Network!

My weekly post over at Photographer Network features the superbly-talented James Laughlin. James runs Come2Drum which offers both online pipe band snare drumming lessons and workshops worldwide. As part of the pipes|drums feature I’ve been shooting, James very generously spared some of his limited time during the Bellingham Games on Saturday for some photos. Head over to Photographer Network to check out one more.

To celebrate their parent’s anniversary, the Anderson kids came home from their travels for a portrait session in East Sooke Park. As I was shooting, I realized that it was almost a year to the day that I had photographed Trevor and Brianna’s wedding. We had a beautiful sunny day with loads of wind that kept me semi-distracted from the fact that we were in the long grass…home to thousands of snakes (at least that’s what my imagination was telling me!).