I met with Ivonne Hernandez for coffee this morning and she gave me a copy of the new album by The Fretless. I hurried home excited to hear it and took a photo of the album to send to Jenna (I’ve recently converted her into a celtic music lover…well I’d like to take credit, but I think she fell in love with The Barra MacNeils easily on her own). She suggested a blog post with some of my CD album photography, so here are a few I had handy…Ben Powell, Ivonne Hernandez & Jeremy Walsh, Michael Grey, Seudan, and The Fretless. It’s always a treat when musicians send you a copy of the album so you can see (but mostly hear) the final product.

I stayed with the MacDonald family for a few days during my time in Regina last week. Ruaridh and Duncan stood in the sunshine and shadows falling across the kitchen wall for my photo of the week on the Photographer Network blog. The bear…well…he had an unfortunate run-in against Duncan and a pair of knitting needles and sadly lost. Curiosity killed the bear but his eye was glued back on later that evening.

It was an early-ish morning shoot with Breabach…not an easy task to ask of any Celtic Connections Festival musician, but they were troopers. It started to rain at the beginning of our session so we took cover at a cafe and shot indoors before braving the weather. We had some good laughs along the way and I was treated to some great tunes on the streets of Glasgow. The band just released a new album called Bann, which I played the entire time editing this session so I can vouch that it’s awesome…order a copy!

Fin Moore is a true talent as a pipe maker and musician. He’s been a friend for over 20 years, right around the same time I got my small pipes. When we get together we laugh…non-stop. The day after I arrived in Glasgow I hopped on the bus to go visit Fin in the workshop for an afternoon and took some photos of him at work.

This is a long post…be forewarned. If I had it my way, I’d post every single photo I took over the three weeks I spent in Sweden with my niece Astrid, because I love her that much. I’m a super proud Auntie, and will be THAT Auntie with a wallet full of photos of her niece (exploding at the seams like George Costanza’s). Astrid loves early morning dancing to old school hip-hop, snowflakes on her cheeks, splashing water all over the bathroom, diddled pipe tunes, and when you squish her cheeks. My sister is a great mom, and Anders is a great pops…which isn’t a surprise to me at all. Counting the days until the next visit…xo.

A rare photo of me here on the blog, taken by my sister Shannon with my Fujifilm Instax Mini.