Vermilion Music Portraits | The guitar

Reimagined Portrait Art – I was going through some archives today and found this image. I had forgotten about it but when I saw it, I remembered making it. I’d had this musical cowbow leaning on the wall with his guitar when I saw the reflection the guitar was casting on the floor from my softbox.

I took a few steps sideways and got this image. It’s part of the magic that I love to watch for and let kiss my portraits!

I think this one tells a powerful story about a quiet cowboy that loves his music!

If you have a 2020 grad or a 2021 graduate, I’d love to chat with you and create a plan for their grad portraits! Connect with me through social media or my contact page!

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    Vermilion Grad & Family Portraits | An all new season

    Reimagined Portrait Art – You are here! Welcome! Come on in!

    This means this space is “live”. It has been months in the making so I’m glad you are here! It’s exciting to release my website and new brand today because it truly is Reimagined.

    Let me share a little of my heart and the reason behind Reimagined.

    The name came after a discussion with my closest friends who get me better than I got me at the time. I was stuck on Vermilion Portrait Studio as a name and one of them finally said but it says nothing about you, and another said you are reimagined.

    It stuck and there was no question in the name after that.

    As for the rest of it?

    The kids and I recently moved out of their childhood home. It was a brutal, emotionally charged day. It was the end of an era and a literal door slamming on hope.

    Instead of heading straight “home”, I took my five babies on a meandering drive to our new digs.

    We wandered the countryside from Mannville to Derwent cross country. When we started out, we were heart sick. But slowly the countryside and nature did what it was always intended to do – it captivated us by it’s natural and simple beauty.

    We stopped to admire a picturesque pond, grew excited by a crazy, curvy trek through a forest, came up over a hill and gasped as the world literally dropped out from below us with views of farmland, parkland and an old church spire.

    By the time we arrived in Derwent, we were all smiling, laughing and full of the love God put in our hearts. It was 45 minutes that were life changing for each of us because it was such a lesson in choosing to lift our heads from our sorrow, look out and find the joy in a simple spring day!

    At one point on this journey, we had an owl fly right up and over the windshield. It was amazing! It was the start of a conversation about what owls and eagles represent. Soon, one of my babies was pulling up google on their phone and we were learning!

    My children all love hummingbirds as we have always fed them at the garden. The call came out to look up hummingbird.

    It represented coming into lightness, a lifting up of light from out of darkness. A shift from negativity into positivity. It also celebrates resiliency, independence and joy.

    That day that meaning was so fitting, and so strong that I had it added to the logo. It’s a small piece of the logo but it’s there for my babies who always see the joy in life. It’s there for me as I embrace the light after dark.

    It’s there as a reminder to all we touch that even when the world is falling apart, there is still joy to be found. It’s there friends, you just have to lift your head up and look out. Truly, it is there. Be grateful every second of the day. Joy is always there.

    I am a star gazer. A dreamer for if I didn’t dream, I would not have a skill set that has become vitally important for me now. My daughter told me I shine when the lights dance so they are there too.

    My photography, my heart are all strongest in the outdoors. My garden, our home away from home, is surrounded by strong trees that shelter us.

    My heart is lifted up by family, friends and clients who have taught me how to be strong, brave and flexible.

    That tree is there for all of you who are strong, that when life toughens up the outside, the inside is still standing strong and reaching tall. I didn’t know I wanted that in a logo, but when I saw it, it was perfect.

    And finally and the most important piece of this new logo, the best role I have ever been given in life, a Momma. It’s there in the smallest piece. For even on the hardest days, I can find the joy for them.

    Welcome to Reimagined Portrait Art. Please come in, relax and let’s chat.

    It’s still me. It just fits better.

    This brand? This website? What I do for a living with some light, a camera and serendipitous magic? It’s my heart. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

    I cannot wait to photograph yours.

    Kim

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    • Edna SwainSeptember 3, 2020 - 8:58 pm

      Very well said Kim!  You have a way with words as well as your photographs.ReplyCancel

    Alberta Fine Art Photography | The Prairie Sky Project

    Reimagined Portrait Art – I lived abroad for 10 years of my life. In all those years, I never quit being home sick for my prairie sky! Those wide open spaces and that incredible sky without it’s view impeded by trees, mountains or skyscrapers called to me.

    Once I moved home, I would head home from evening sessions and be mesmerized by the amazing storms, clouds or sunsets. Once I got a cell phone with a camera, I seldom ever stopped to pull my “big camera” out to photograph these skies.

    I then learned new photography apps and even how to edit my images on my phone and I would post them on my personal facebook page. This work is different than my client work as for me, it’s my escape. It’s not perfect at all, sometimes it is from a moving vehicle, sometimes there are power lines in the photographs (gasp – I always remove those in portraits), and lots of time my shadow is in the photograph too.

    Finally, I got brave and signed up for an instragram account. The only images I post on this account are taken by my cell phone and edited on my cell phone! I have had requests for prints of these images and while it surprised me at first, I am able to blow these up on large canvas wall portraits! I now even have a few of my personal favorites on my wall!

    Please note – when I left Dragon Hare, I had to stop using my Dragon Hare instagram account as well and I have not been successful in getting the two accounts merged! Please bear with me!

    Follow along at @reimaginedportraitart

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      Vermilion Fine Art Photography | Mystic Wonder

      Reimagined Portrait Art – Did you know, I provide fine art images for office/home decor? Connect with me via my contact page to receive access to a gallery of my fine art work!

      This is one of my most popular requests! I called it Mystic Wonder and it features the Green River deep in the Berkshire Mountains near Greenfield, MA. The local kids would come down here to a swimming hole, build a big bonfire and build these rock statues! Look closely at some of the “creatures” you can see in this image.

      This image is available as gallery wrapped canvas, fine art print or cards.

      You can also follow me on instagram where I feature much of my fine art work: @reimaginedportraitart

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      • VanessaAugust 30, 2020 - 11:28 am

        I absolutely adore this ReplyCancel

      Mannville Family Portrait Photographer | The fabulous five

      Reimagined Portrait Art – What happens when your mother is a photographer? Well any time she looks out to the north and sees the fire dancing across the sky, she heads out to photograph them.

      On some nights, they when they are particularly strong, she may call home and encourage you to look out the window.

      On the most incredibly show she has ever seen, well she may fly home, wake you up, and drag you out to the middle of a canola field in your pj’s.

      I have to say out of the six subjects in this photograph, only one was really thrilled about being out and about in the middle of the night. The rest were wowed enough to stand still for the photograph.

      This is hands down my favorite portrait I’ve ever taken of my children because it’s in my natural element, beneath the prairie sky alive with the dancing lights.

      If you’d like to create a family portrait that shows the authentic you, let me know! I’d love to work with you and be your Mannville family portrait photographer!

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      • SueSeptember 3, 2020 - 3:39 pm

        You always have the perfect background for your outdoor shots!ReplyCancel

      Vermilion Wedding Portraits | Love is Love

      Reimagined Portrait Art – I recently had the honor of photographing this couple. Their life stories are full of challenges that they rose above to find each other. It was so uplifting to watch their families come together and celebrate the very center of their marriage, love. Not culture, not race, not history, nationality or struggle but simply love.

      Thank you Glenn and Joan for asking me to be a part of your day. Your love is a beautiful thing.

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        Vermilion Child Portraits | A Harley Man

        Reimagined Portrait Art – A Harley man, no matter his age, deserves a beautiful portrait with his bike.

        This little man looks up to his Daddy who loves his Harley, when I heard that, I had to create this portrait for his Daddy.

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        • VanessaAugust 30, 2020 - 11:30 am

          Amazing! I bet they loved itReplyCancel

        Myrnam Grad Portraits | Combining

        Reimagined Portrait Art – It’s spring of 2020 and the combines are running over the hills. There’s something really wrong with that image for a farm girl like me.

        Now in the fall, I photograph a lot of grads with the machine they spend many hours in tracking back and forth across the land they grew up on. That is when I should see them out!

        This family is seeped in their farmland so it was a natural background to use Joey the John Deere combine with Seth’s older sister on her graduation.

        Not to be outdone, I photographed Seth with the New Holland combine. I can’t decide which of the two images is my preferred portrait!

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          St Paul Family Portraits | The Real ‘Cost’ of Portraits

          Four things have happened this week that inspired this blog post. Each of these events were completely unrelated, but they each got me thinking about the real cost, or value of our photographs.

          Earlier in the week, a woman stopped in to the studio and asked me for pricing information to print a canvas portrait. In speaking with her, I came to find out that she was looking to print her family portraits taken a few years ago by a friend that liked to play in photography. Upon looking at the image, I discovered to her dismay, that the print quality/resolution was too poor to be reproduced as a wall portrait. The images were fine for viewing on a computer at a small size, or on a cell phone, but they could not be printed. This woman asked specifically for a disc from her friend so that she could reproduce the images she wanted with ease – but it had taken her years to ask me to print them for her, and then she discovered that she couldn’t have a single print of them. A disc is not a photograph, it is a form of media storage. It is not the same thing as having a print framed on the wall in a place of honour in your home.

          We photographed a new Mom this week who shared with us her experience with her wedding photographer. She and her fiancee hired a photographer based solely on pricing. The photographer spent their wedding day looking for posing ideas on pintrest on her cell phone, and she failed to get a few key portraits at the wedding – a portrait of the bride with her Mom and Dad, among a few others. The photographer was so focused on finding “fun” photographs of the couple with their wedding party, that she missed getting those photographs that were truly the most important photographs for the bride. The bride’s memories of her wedding are just that, memories, she doesn’t have photographs to go with those memories.

          For the past few months, my youngest son, who never met his Uncle who passed away in 2009, has been “chatting” with his Uncle every night. He runs to his photograph, pointing and jabbering and very clearly saying Uncle. My son will never have any memories of his Uncle alive, but he knows his Uncle is very much a part of our family through his portrait and the stories his older siblings share with him. Brian and I have frequently said how grateful we are to have this portrait in our house because it means so much to our children and it helps us keep their Uncle alive in their memories.

          The last thing that really brought all of these events together for me happened this morning. I was sad and my daughter asked me why. I told her it was the fifth anniversary of my brother’s death today. She told me that she really only had one strong memory of her Uncle now, and that was playing on the swing with him at the farm, every time she came towards him, he would pretend that she was kicking him and knocking him over. She said she remembered laughing so hard at her Uncle being so silly. I brought some photos of her Uncle out that I had and in them, was a photograph of her memory. She immediately burst into tears, crying so hard. It broke my heart, but I was so grateful to give to her a portrait of her memory, to give her something tangible that she can hold because she was so worried she was losing her memories of him.

          It was a pretty powerful moment for me to watch my daughter discover the true power of a photograph. It is just a candid snap of a seemingly unimportant moment at the time, but as it turned out, it has become one of my daughter’s truly most treasured moments in her life. My daughter cannot remember her favorite outfit from that time, or the kind of vehicle we had, or what she got for Christmas that year or even the trip we took to DisneyWorld when she was around that same age. She can’t remember any of the things in life that are deemed important and are desired. But she can remember a sunny afternoon on the farm when her Uncle came over to play on the swing with her.

          This blew me away in that moment and it made me think of this quote:

          We do not remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese

          We never know when the most minor of a moment will become one of the most powerful moments in our life. We don’t know the true value of our photographs until it is too late. We get wrapped up in the price, the cost, and creating big moments that we forget there is more to life than that.

          The most powerful moment in my daughter’s life has an actual photograph of the memory. My daughter can show this photograph to her daughter. She can laugh with me when she remembers her Uncle’s antics and together we can cry over the photograph which helps keeps this man alive in our hearts. This image is not a file on a computer, it is a real tangible thing. This one single photograph to my daughter is priceless. The two women above do not have this.

          I encourage you strongly to take into consideration these two women’s experience, and my daughter’s when considering a photographer. Photography is an investment. It is much more that pressing a button and burning a disc. There is a science involved, one that takes years to master. There is expensive gear to maintain, and training in how to operate it. There is insurance, business licenses and taxes just like any other business. Before you seek pricing information from a photographer, you should be researching that aspect. What recourse do you have if you receive a disc of images that are not sized correctly and you do not discover this mistake until a few years later? Does your photographer understand the importance of resolution, white balance and proper exposure? Do they carry insurance, pay taxes, maintain extensive back up systems? Do they have the experience and confidence to capture all of those important moments that occur in a wedding day? Or do they guess on exposure, hope it works out and copy what others have done off of pintrest? After asking about all that, ask about price.

          Just remember, this seemingly small moment in your life, could be one that becomes the most powerful. The old adage of you get what you pay for is still true. Please take time to check out the photographer you are hiring, be sure they have the experience they need to do the job you are asking them to do because the real cost of a photograph is priceless, especially when it happens to be of a little moment, turned big.

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            Vermilion Family Portraits | The Bucket List

            Dragon Hare Studios – You know that special list of things you dream of doing in this life?  The bucket list, the one that keeps dreams alive and hope in our hearts?  As I get caught up in life with five  young children, a business and every other part of life, sometimes it feels like those dreams are super far away.  This year though, I crossed off a pretty major bucket list item – in fact, it was my #1.  I used to dream of being an astronaut when I was little.  I was fascinated by the night sky and wanted to reach out and touch it.  As I grew up, the logistics of being astronaut set in – multiple degrees, flying in planes etc.  I chose a different path for my journey but my fascination still has not disappeared.  One of my goals for myself as a photographer is to tackle astrophotography!

            On January 10, at 4:47am, I was standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, five miles from SpaceX’s Dragon rocket as it launched into outspace to make history (first time a booster was caught in an attempt to reuse them!).  I had my camera set up but was quite frankly, more interested in experiencing it than photographing it!

            We could see the lights on the rocket across the water, then a slow glow started that grew larger until the Dragon took off.  We watched it glow until just below the clouds in this image, and then the sound waves hit us.  Up until this time, it was eerily quiet.  I saw the ocean rippling out in front of us and the ripples grow closer until the sound wave hit us.  It grew and grew in intensity, not extremely loud, but so incredibly intense.  It was not a sound that we heard so much as felt in our whole body.  Incredible!  We found out at Kennedy Space Center the day before that the sound wave would kill a human if they were within three miles of the launch!

            Then SpaceX grew to the point where it was just a star glaring above us and then disappeared and moments later, the sound disappeared too.  We all stood there in awe of this spectacle.  What a simply amazing experience.  The crowd gathered along the beach with us broke into spontaneous applause!

            Instead of satisfying my desire to watch a rocket launch, it’s only fueled the fire in me.  At Kennedy Space Center, I stood within feet of a space shuttle, saw the Vehicle Assembly Building and the launch pads where they shuttles flew from and press row where the press watch all launches from!  We actually saw Dragon sitting on the launch pad ready to fly!!!  My new bucket list item, the new thing that will keep me dreaming is to sit in press row and photograph launches.  I was so excited the night before that I couldn’t sleep for fear I would miss it!

            The cool part of this journey for me, is that I have a photo of it.  I also have a photo of me sitting with my camera and the launch going up.  This is one of those key life moments, I will remember it forever, but I will have portraits to keep all of those emotions fresh within my memories!

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              Vermilion, AB