And as we arrived in Whistler, we drove all over the place picking out spots for Richard and Rani portraits. We usually put a lot of effort into the portraits on the wedding day, so with the help of our two photographer friends, Brisbane wedding photographer husband and wife team Todd and Alyda, we came up with a strategy.

But here’s the thing about strategies and wedding portraits: The best portraits are the ones that just happen, sans strategy.

Like this one. The sun cooperated perfectly, Rani and Richard were excellent models and everything just fell into place.

So, often strategies just kind of go out the window when we’re actually doing the portraits, no matter how much we strategize in advance.

5. Features.

Green Wedding Shoes recently featured Becky and Ymir’s glacier wedding, Style Me Pretty featured Annika and Doug’s Icelandic countryside wedding, and Junebug Weddings featured Susan and Jag’s Sikh wedding in Vancouver. These wedding blogs are arguably three of the biggest in North America.

A short while ago The National Post, one of Canada’s two largest papers, contacted us out of the blue. They found us in the ocean of photographers across Canada and we were featured in their weekend addition. Flattered. Honoured. Take your pick. It was very cool to see Nordica make it into a national publication. The web version of the interview can be viewed here.

This final “feature” is not really a feature at all, but an example of the weird and wonderful place our work ends up from time to time. About a month ago, we were following our web site’s stats and all of a sudden, it just went crazy. We’re talking a hundred new viewers a minute crazy. And even weirder was that all the viewers were from Poland. It turns out a Polish cartoon character named “WŁÓCZYKIJ” posted a link on its Facebook wall to an Iceland wedding we did, and this resulted in our site crashing from the influx of viewers. Hi, Poland.

4. Workshops.

A couple of months back, we started offering full-day workshops and online consultations. The Interwebs picked up on this.

We have done quite a few Skype chats since we started offering the consultations, and people are coming from all over the world to Vancouver for the day-long two-on-ones. This makes us happy (and humbled) because we really want to share our story and experiences – so we welcome any photographer who wants to see how we roll.

Also, we have added another slice to the service pie: Photography Business Evaluations. You can read about what that means here.

Staying with the workshop theme, we’ve got one more word for you: Fer. Yep, that Fer. He is a world-class Mexican wedding photographer and he’s coming up to Vancouver for a workshop. We’re helping him with the logistics, and apart from Fer’s general awesomeness, we’re also excited about the venue: Our good friend Matt from the Vogue Theatre is allowing us to host the workshop there. You might remember the Vogue engagement session we did there a while back. That’s happening in March. Sexy like iguana.

3. 2012 + 2013.

Our first wedding of the year happened recently in (freezing, Arctic cold) Edmonton, and we’re gearing up for another busy year. A ranch wedding in British Columbia Interior (with this couple), a destination wedding in Dominican Republic, a fall wedding in Finland, and a July wedding in Iceland are some of the weddings we’ll be travelling for. And of course all the local weddings we have lined up. We can’t wait to get this year going.

2013. Yeah, who knew people planned this far ahead? We’ve started booking weddings for 2013 already and we have some exciting things planned for next year. We aren’t going to let the cat out of the bag quite yet, but let’s just say Europe is on the horizon.

2. Social.

We’ve quietly been active all over the web on different websites, but you probably haven’t had those sites easily passed along your way. By design. But, here are a few places where we can be found:

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/nordicaphoto (also, @allan_cole and @jakobg)
Formspring: www.formspring.me/Nordicaphoto
Google Plus: http://goo.gl/bpwFh
Tumblr: http://nordicaphoto.tumblr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nordicaphotography

Also, it seems the happy pinners of Pinterest have found us. Pin on. (And if you want to follow us on Pinterest, we’re here: Cole, Jakob)

1. Motivated. Happy.

On the personal side of things, we are two happy dudes and we want to thank all the people we’ve networked with online and in person, and also all the couples we’ve worked with throughout 2010 and 2011. We had no idea what to expect when we started Nordica, and to come as far as we have is very cool. But, we couldn’t have done it without all the input and opportunities we’ve received from everyone, so thank you.

We’re massively motivated right now to smash our potential as wedding photographers, and we can’t wait for all the 2012 action.

Cold weather aside, we had a great time in Edmonton. It was our first wedding in Alberta, and Edmonton is a cool (no pun intended) city. Even if it feels a bit like Siberia this time of year.

Beers. Sun. Beach. Party. Big hats. Tequila. More party.

You know the drill.

The story doesn’t always need to be told that way though. It doesn’t always have to be all sunshine and roses.

Raegen and Doug struck us as an intense couple. They are fun, for sure, but they also have a seriousness to them that we really liked. This broody feel was what motivated us when we photographed their wedding.

It’s OK to be serious once in a while.

Everyone is weird in their own way, and when you embrace the weirdness, life is that much more awesome.

Weird is a good thing.

When we met Karen and Cameron in 2010, we left thinking this: “Penguin ice sculpture? That’s weird.” You see, Cameron had intended on building a massive ice sculpture for their wedding. Penguins was the theme for their wedding, so Cam wanted to smash a home-run with this ice sculpture idea.

So, missing a few details, our first impression of the pengiun-ice-sculpture-wedding was, well, weird.

We basically envisioned a totally tripped-out wedding. Hunter S. Thompson greeting at us the door with penguin shaped jello shots. Oompa loompas in penguin outfits roller blading around the reception with trays of absinthe. And the whole kumbaya revolving around a humongous penguin ice sculpture that would be spraying Bacardi out of it’s stout.

It would be weird. It would be awesome.

Even though the penguin ice sculpture never actually happened, hearing of a wedding that had something a bit different and a bit off the wall was awesome.

And weird or not, we liked Karen and Cam a lot from day one. They found us through Rebecca Bollwitt (aka Miss 604 - a Vancouver blogger) and pictures of her dangling from a building (which is weird), and we’re glad they did.

We’ve always referred to Nordica as our baby, and it is. Nordica’s roots are deep within both our lives and we’ve nurtured it, fed it, and watched it grow ever since we gave it a name and started shaping it’s identity in November of 2009. Like any proud parents, we shone the limelight a bit too bright on a baby that we knew nothing about, and we may have blinded ourselves a bit along the way.

But, with naive in full force, we pushed forward believing our baby would grow to be awesome.

Nordica took a few steps in 2010 – steps that we were very proud of and still are – but those steps were not unlike a crazy teenager’s.

More confident then experienced, more talking then listening, more dreaming then action. In 2010, Nordica was the loud-mouthed guy who screamed greatness having yet achieved a thing, and yelling to the world all the things he wanted to achieve one day.

Then, in 2011, it started to happen.

Some – not all – of the things the loud-mouthed teenager was screaming began to happen. It was as though Nordica had just cruised the university, had a dream job in mind, and actually got hired.

We dreamt about photographing a wedding in Iceland. Nordica ended up beside glaciers on one trip, and isolated countryside the next.

We dreamt about photographing multicultural weddings. We found ourselves in Sikh temples, Mexican jungles, Swedish archipelagos, historical farmlands, Indian ceremonies and faraway ranches.

Throughout 2011, we lived the dreams that we envisioned to be possible when we first started. We had big ideas, and somehow they came true.

And as 2011 drew to a close, we realize that we weren’t yelling a bunch of bullshit without substance anymore, and we weren’t living in some sort of fantasy that would be whisked away.

We realized that our little man, Nordica, had done a great deal of maturing, and we are proud of who he’s becoming. There are many lessons to be learned still, but experience and achieving goals has lit a fire in our little man, and we look forward to seeing where the journey takes him in 2012.

That is the statement you’ll see when you read about Thrive Alive, a foundation that Stephanie and Walter started in 2009. Their passion in life is to make the lives of those effected by cancer more positive, and most of their focus in life is the betterment of others.

Their story is very inspiring.

When they’re not making the world a better place, they share another passion together: sailing their boat. The boat is a big part of Steph and Walt’s lives and you can feel their love for that thing the second you step onto it.

So, it was logical for us to do their Document You session amidst something that held such esteem in their lives. Boating is a passion they share and being together on that boat clearly means a lot to them.

It’s tough for us to put into pictures and a few sentences how much we respect what these two do for others. The world could surely use a few more Stephanies and Walters, and we feel honoured to be photographing their wedding in 2012.

Bryan makes beer that would knock your socks off. At his wedding, the beer he served the guests was absolutely awesome. 12% alcohol content and smooth as silk. Delicious.

When we first met Grace and Bryan, we never would have guessed that one of their favourite pastimes together is checking out brewhouses. And as we happen to enjoy slinging the odd pint ourselves, we felt right at home with these two. It’s nice when common interests trickle to the surface, especially when we spend so much time together on a wedding day.

Melissa and Josh’s wedding portrait request was something along these lines: Just do what you do. We’ll give you all the time you need.

Creative freedom is a very good thing.

One of the biggest challenges that we look forward to with weddings is scouting locations, and ideally, never using the same spot twice. So when a couple gives us fee reigns, it’s happy times in Nordica land.

When we arrived at one of the spots we’d picked, we hopped out of the car and scoped things out.

“Vintage Nordica”, Josh said.

Mission accomplished.