The Big Time!

I was fortunate to be asked by the David Thomson Health Region Foundation to do some promotional shots for their fundraising event, the DTHRF Lottery. There is almost a million dollars worth of prizes to be one, including a brand new home!

Some freindly faces from the community helped make this happen, and now my work is larger than life as it graces these billboards and bus benches around Red Deer. The billboard with Jesse Wallin, head coach of the Rebels, is on Highway 2, south of Bowden. John and Joan Donald are across the street from the Tim Hortons as you head up the hill on Gaetz Ave. South, and smilin' Jordan can been seen as you head North on Taylor Drive, with the hospital in the background. The bus bench signs change location regularily, so those you will just have to find yourself!

Be sure to visit the link above and get your tickets today!

Fashion Hunting Hills Style

For the third year in a row I have photographed the Hunting Hills High School fashion show. This event has some local businesses represented and silent auction, with the funds raised going to offset some of the expenses of putting the grad on. It's usually an evening full of great music, more than a few miscues and some antics from the teaching staff. I don't know how we can trust these people to educate our children, considering their behaviour!

Just kidding Lisa and Chelsea, slouch socks and spandex was a great look, I don't know what made it go away:)

Enjoy the show, and remember you can order copies of any of these images, just call the studio at (403) 346-3573, or view them at a slower pace at Traptow Photography

Brent and Krista

One of the things I said in my very first blog post was that I had a number of weddings coming up and I was looking forward to filling you in on all the details. Well, this one was a lot of fun. Brent and his family were past clients, I had photographed them about a year before the wedding. Now the lovely and adventurous Krista was joining the family, and I was thrilled to be part of the story.

We had an awesome engagement session during the hot summer, out at Sylvan Lake where Krista's parents have a sweet little cabin on top of a cliff. You have to take a motorized chair lift from the house to the dock. We made is up and down safely, despite the vorociuos mosquitoes, and we got some amazing shots. However, you will not see any of those images here! I just thought I would tease you with the story. What you will see here a complete story of their awesome wedding day. It started at the salon with some rather unco-operative girls, but there was muffins and fruit so I still came away happy:)

The boys put themselves together in fairly good order, with only a little help from Arnie, Leslie and Jose Cuervo. I guess it was just Corona, but Jose sounds better. The ceremony went off without a hitch, wait, that's not right, they did get hitched - then we headed for the great outdoors.

October in Alberta is not a reliable time to be outdoors, I'm just sayin'. I had some beautiful light at the park, and some beautiful people to work with so things went well for the first hour. Then it got interesting. We had just made our way to Brent's second home (the baseball field at Great Chief Park) when the clouds started to roll in. By some small miracle the wind did nothing, so we captured some awesome shots around the field and in the dugout. Surprisingly enough, flip flops have incredible traction on red shale, hey ladies!

Anyway, without further ado, here's Brent and Krista. Congratulations you two!

Rebels 20 Year Olds

There are a number of perks that go with this job. One of them is going to unique and interesting places to photograph clients that most people do not have access to. Working with the Red Deer Rebels organization allows me the opportunity to get into a very unique place at least once a year! I always photograph the 20 year old team members for the last issue of the R magazine for each season. These young men are only weeks away from finishing their junior hockey career. There is still plenty of hockey in them, as they have college or university options and some semi-pro possibilities. The goal of the article, and the portraits, is to showcase them one last time for the hard work they have put in over the last four years.

This year I took Brennan Wray, Carter Smith and Luke Egener out to the Finning Centre of Excellence to photograph them on some of the biggest trucks in the world. Finning is a very large sponsor for the Rebels, and I always like to incorporate that into the portrait session. Now these guys have no problem being in front of a camera. They had lots of attitude to go around, and it suited the environment very well. Job well done guys, all the best!

One of my favourite's

Well, this blogging thing did not get off to an auspicious start, as it has been 6 months since my last post. I have heard a lot of different facts and figures from various professionals about building good habits. One thing I heard, was that if you do something every day for two weeks, the habit is formed. Now, if it's a bad habit, it probably only takes a day!

Anyway, I am going to work on this from the perspective of it being a good habit, so it is my goal to blog every day for the next two weeks. When I started this blog, I was about two weeks away from my busiest season of the year, so the timing on my part was not good. Now it's March, and it is quieter around the studio these days. And not in a bad way.

I have saved up a lot of content for this blog, so I am going to get started right now. This lovely little princess is Sofie. She is an amazing little 2 and half year old with a few shyness issues that only add to her charm. The session I had with Sofie was one of the highlights of my year, simply because of her demeanour and aura in front of the camera. Enjoy the show, I am sure you will agree, Sofie is a special little child.