I love my job. I feel so blessed to be able to do something that I adore and have people pay me to do it. I think that’s what life’s all about… finding what you love and putting in the blood, sweat and tears (plenty of tears!) to build a life that makes you happy and hopefully brings joy to others as well.

Sometimes I get bogged down by business, schedules, timelines and I lose that sense of creative abandonment that drew me to a career in art in the first place and find what I fell in love with in the first place. I have stuff I should be doing today, but some days I just need to play, experiment and find the joy again.

I have a gorgeous tree that’s very quickly losing it’s petals in my front yard, so yesterday I took some photos of it and my little Lacey girl who is growing up way too fast. Both are a good reminder to me to stop and smell the flowers… neither will be quite the way they are today again.

Stop and smell the flowers, enjoy your kids while they’re little and wash the dust away with a little art.

This post is sooo long overdue. Awhile back, my cousin (Kirsten Komant from the Beauty Parlor) and I had Jamie come over to do a fun fashion shoot. She was awesome and gave us full reign to style and shoot her how we wanted, which was so fun for us. I love how they turned out. Jamie did an amazing job of modelling for us, and Kirsten killed it on the styling. FYI, Kirsten does all the styling for me for my boudoir shoots. We would both love to get into a little more fashion photography, and for our first experimental shoot I think it went really well!

The last two years right about now we’ve been getting ready for a month in Europe. It looks like this year we won’t be going and now I’m totally nostalgic for it so I thought I’d share a few from last year. I loved this old man reading his paper while walking through a more remote part of Venice. The second one is of a lamp lit street in Rome, and the third… well Venice obviously. Oh how I miss it there! I have a large collection of photos throughout Italy and Spain that are available for purchase as prints or canvas. Send me an email for details at karey@kareywood.ca.

I’ve been doing some amazing sessions with very beautiful women lately. I can’t show you a lot of them, but here are some from a recent session with the gorgeous Samantha. I love how soft and pretty these are!

Hair for this and my upcoming boudoir shoots is done by Kirsten Komant of The Beauty Parlor, and will be included in your session fee. I think this is such a great way to get dolled up, feel great about yourself and give your special someone a little suprise

If you’re interested in doing a boudoir or beauty session with me, contact me for details. I will also be planning some fun marathon sessions so if you want to get on my mailing list for upcoming specials, email me at karey@kareywood.ca.

For a workshop I’m doing I had to do photos for words we were given. One of those words was truth.

I chose to do a portrait of my husband for truth, and to do it in a way that shows every line, spot, scar and pore. This is the truth of who he is. He’s 37, and every year he gets a few more gray hairs in his beard and a few more lines in his face. I think he gets more and more handsome with each line. He looks distinguished, and it’s hard to not love him with his English accent to go along with all that wisdom.

Thank you babe, for being such a wonderful husband, father and sport, and for letting me take photos of you and post them all over the place for everyone to see.

I thought I’d add a few fun new options to the mix for client prints. I want what’s on my wall to be fun and artsy, to go with my house. These will look great as canvas or prints in your hallway, living room, nursery or child’s room. You can change up the background and the frames, colors… really whatever you want.

I just ordered this for my hallway… or stairs… not sure yet. I’m so excited! I ordered it as a 16×20 canvas gallery wrap. I love that saying. I’m thinking about offering these fun canvasses for clients that want to incorporate their photos into something a little different. What do you think?

I’ve started working on these little video slide shows and am thinking about offering them to clients. Contact me if you’ve had a session with me and are interested in purchasing a high resolution video of your session.

I sometimes have clients or friends wondering why custom portraiture is so much more expensive than going to WalMart or Sears to get a few quick snaps of your family or children.
To me, custom photography means capturing memories of your children and creating art out of those memories that you would be proud to hang on your wall. There are many, many great photographers in Edmonton, but we all have slightly different strengths and styles. Custom photography is about having a choice about what style meets your needs, and having some choices along the way as to how your session will go and what you’d like to see in your photos.
Custom photography is much more time consuming than big box photography studios. You don’t have to worry about who’s next in line or how much time we have. I take as much time as we need, and for a newborn session that can sometimes mean 4 hours or more.
Custom photographers offer products that you just cannot get from big box studios. From the basic prints to the canvas and albums, the quality is wonderful. Speaking of that… I do have a few new products that I’m going to work into the mix soon. Stay tuned for some photos and details as soon as I get my samples in!
I also spend a lot of time editing your photos and create unique pieces of art with the color adjustments and textures added. I’ve shown below a few of the before and afters of some recent sessions… with 25 to 35 images per session you can understand how the time can add up! You pay for my knowledge and training in understanding how to touch up that baby acne, how to create a stunning black and white conversion and how to add textures and layers of color to make that image really pop.