When I think about Kyle and Michelle… I think about music, ridiculously friendly people and high school (but only because I went to high school with them).
When I found out that these two were getting married finally, I pretty much threw myself at them as a photographer. I missed them. Through Facebook, I’ve been able to follow them as they’ve graduated from University with Music degrees, adventured around the world, and come back to Edmonton for even more education. (haha sorry, that sounds creepy… but you know you all do it too, at least to some extent) Both of them are such out going people and I knew they’d be amazing to photograph and their wedding will be one of a kind!
Michelle and I shared a ceramics class in high school… which evidently was the year when she originally set eyes on Kyle. She’d tell me all about him while we made our coil pots in the art room. :) They were both part of the big school theatre production “Once on this Island”, and held the only two wind instrument roles… So they spent quite a bit of time together!
Kyle and I graduated together… we shared a few fun classes together, but the one thing I remember most was the improv club. I joined, trying to step out of my comfort zone. It was great, even though I was on the C team. haha. Kyle was on the A team, which won the city high school competition. They were invited to perform in the first half of a Rapid Fire Theatre night! ‘Edmonton’s premiere destination for improvised comedy’
In improv theatre sports, anything goes. Kyle plays a variety of instruments, one of which is the saxophone… so he can hold his breath for a LONG time. Our team came up with a challenge that required a skit to be performed on the spot with plot suggestions coming from the audience… the only rule was that it had to last the length of time one team member was able to hold their breath under water.
All I can remember is that after a while NOBODY was watching the skit anymore. We were all watching to see when Kyle would finally pull his head out of the tub of water. It was crazy. The average person can hold their breath for 45 seconds to a minute. I can’t remember how long he actually held his breath for, it was at least two minutes… but it felt like 10! He came out spraying water everywhere and the crowd went crazy!!
Last week, Shaun and I went over to the U of A to shoot the engagement session with them. I’d taken a workshop a few weeks ago where we talked about stepping up the creativity and bringing more of our client’s personality into our photography. I asked Kyle and Michelle to bring along a few instruments. I had a ton of ideas running through my head before the shoot of how it might look, but I learned that as important as inspiration and creative ideas are… when we’re photographing couples for the couple and not for ourselves, photographers have to go with the flow to create great images. The dynamic relationship between us as we shoot and interact with each other comes out best when the images aren’t being ‘step by step’ controlled.
Thanks Kyle and Michelle, we had lots of fun. Hope you like the images.
-Steph
On a side note….Shaun’s camera ended up having technical difficulties literally minutes before we started shooting this session.
He’d brought along his old Hasselblad and Leica M5 to play with, so he ended up jumping right back into film again, while I shot the session with my digital camera. He’s working on a blog post to show off his recent film adventures!
5 comments