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.

The cherry blossoms fire it up every year around this time in Vancouver, and people always explode with a ferocious amount of joy over how wonderful they are. There are even groups of people who ride their bikes around Vancouver together in absolute fascination with their… pinkness?

We were going to blow your minds with a Haiku about cherry blossoms today in honour of their awesomeness, but we’ll stick with just this picture instead.

Yay for cherry blossoms!

But we think it’s time you get to know us a little better as individuals. Because even though we share the same photography vision, we are rather different people.

So let’s start with the European guy. The Finn. Or Swede. Or whatever he is.

Jakob.

Yeah. Finn, Swede, whatever I am.

It’s very confusing. But it’s really not.

I grew up in a swedish speaking part of Finland, moved to Sweden when I was 19 and lived there till I moved to Vancouver late 2009. Finnish citizen. Swedish speaking.

Not that complicated.

There. Now we’ve straightened that out. Let’s move on.

I moved to Vancouver in November last year, which means I’ve lived here for a year now. I think it took me a month or two to make this city feel like home. And another couple of months to really fall in love with it. Now it’s definitely one of my favorite places on earth.

I’ve even started saying “eh” like a real canadian. Weird, eh?

“So why Vancouver?“ is the first question I always get. Well, it’s all Cole’s fault. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

“And why photography and why weddings?” is the next question.

To that, there’s really no short answer. It’s not like I knew that I wanted to be a wedding photographer when I was six years old (like my sister the doctor did).

Nope, far from it actually.

By coincidence I started doing photography professionally. Journalistic and corporate stuff. And as the guy with the fancy camera I ended up shooting a friend’s wedding a couple of years ago.

That’s how it all started and now there’s nothing I’d rather do.

One of the main reasons I love wedding photography is that the people we work with actually care about the results. They care enough to sometimes even cry seeing their photos.

It’s a great feeling knowing that what you do makes people happy. That it makes a difference. Kinda what makes the job meaningful.

My goal in life has always been to do something I really like for a living (and become insanely rich of course) and that’s exactly what I’m doing right now (the like part that is, the insanely rich is still to come).

I guess I have Cole to thank for that. He’s the one that convinced me to move across the globe and do this whole Nordica thing. Well – to be honest – what he really said was something like “the chicks are gonna love you here”.

Yeah. I usually go with the I-moved-here-to-start-up-a-business story.

I did actually run my own business (JG Media, doing photography and various design stuff) in Stockholm before I came too. But only as a side thing. And I’m not totally convinced it would ever have become anything more. Now I can’t imagine having a 9 to 5 job again.

So thanks eh, Cole.

What else?

I grew up in a small town where winters were too dark and too long. Our neighbours had cows and hens. I played soccer throughout my youth. I still love soccer. I’m a sucker for minimalism. I’m a Mac. I’ve been to 22 countries (or something like that). I could live on sushi alone. I took German in school for about 5 years and could probably not even order a beer in Germany. My grandpa’s first name was Viking. I’ve got a masters degree in business and entrepreneurship. I had higher scores than Cole throughout that masters year (I’m pretty sure that’s how it was, but Cole may be of another opinion). I’ve had cats named The Dark Man and Jesus. I’m not very religious.

There.

Hopefully you know me – one half of the Nordica machine – a little better now. Cole will tell you his story in a couple of days (or when he’s ready, he hates writing about himself almost as much as he hates having his picture taken).

:)

- Jakob

In all honesty, we had no expectations because we had no information from which to draw any sort of conclusion. We spoke on the phone with the father, and two weeks later we were in Cache Creek. We had an open mind and nothing more.

But this wedding taught us to throw pre-concieved notions out the window, and work with the environment you have in front of you.

Anyways, this wedding had in itself a lot of memorable moments. The suicide motocross mission by the groomsmen for example.

But the story of this wedding did not end there.

We came across a story in a Regina newspaper about a prank the groomsmen played on the bride and groom while they were away on their honeymoon. Long story short, they used a forklift and put the brides car on the roof of their house.

For some reason, this didn’t really surprise us a tremendous amount because at the wedding, the groomsmen were lurking around like wolves searching for their cars. The bride and groom had wisely hidden them somewhere beforehand.

If you would like to view the wedding in its entirety, check it out here. Thank you to those who have left their comments (we’re bewilderingly flattered – believe us).

Leah and Rhett’s wedding is featured today on Wedding Chicks.

In our opinion, the perfect album is one you can pull off the shelf in 50 years and it will still hold as though it was new.

It’s large, but without taking up a lot of space. Sort of like a plus-sized coffee table book.

We design the albums, and our aim is to have the style complement our photography.

Vancouver is an absolute top-notch spot for photography. It’s got the mountains, the ocean, the beaches, the big-ass buildings and everything in between.

But we’re constantly looking for adventures and we love to see new places.

Jakob’s been all over the place, visiting some 25 countries. Cole’s no slouch either having lived in places like Helsinki, northern Sweden and being suitcased all over North America during his junior hockey days.

Add that up and you’ve got two guys who are primed and ready for destination weddings.

So for today’s blog post, we thought we would give you our individual top three wedding destinations. Why three? Well, we’re two dudes with different opinions and we don’t want this post to turn into a monster.

Jakob’s Top Three

3 // Hawaii

Hawaii is pretty much as exotic as it gets for me. Maybe it’s because I come from the complete opposite side of the globe, I don’t know, but I’ve always wanted to visit Hawaii.

And I love sun, beaches, palm trees and all that stuff.

So bring on Honolulu, Hilo or any other place on the 50th state and I’m all over it.

2 // India

I’ve never experienced an indian wedding in real life, but from the photos I’ve seen and from the stories I’ve heard, it seems like an absolute dream for a wedding photographer.

The weddings go on for days. It’s an overflow of awesome colours and patterns. And there are lots of traditions.

I’d love to do a wedding in India.

1 // Florence, Venice, Rome, or anywhere else in Italy

To me Italy’s got it all. Warm climate, awesome scenery, a lot of history, wicked food and a passion filled culture.

A wedding on a nice sunny evening in Italy is top of my wish list. It’d be absolute money.

Cole’s Top Three

3 // Inverness

I image Scottish weddings to be all-class. I’m not sure if it’s the kilts, the party-till-you-die attitudes I’m envisioning at the receptions or the killer accents, but there’s just something magical about Scotland. My cousins over there are probably gutting themselves reading that there’s something ‘magical’ about Scotland, but for me, there is.

The Highlands is my favourite region in Scotland by far. There are fistfuls of scenery in every direction and the people who lived there are insanely friendly, even if you can’t understand a word they were saying. Killer combo for a great wedding experience.

2 // Anywhere in Russia

Russia is a mind-bending place when it comes to digesting all of the culture going on. A wedding with some of those good-looking, vodka inhaling Ruskies would be challenging and intense, but what an experience it would be.

Aside from the beautiful people and the gorgeous cities, I think the most interesting part about photographing a Russian wedding would be the traditions and obsessive superstitions.

I was in Moscow on a May afternoon in 2005 and remember seeing a groom sprinting at breakneck speed across a bridge carrying his new-bride, both laughing hysterically. To me, seeing this was thoroughly confusing, but I’m sure there was a very good reason for this.

So Jakob and I would be totally lost the entire time if we were ever to do this, but man, would it be an amazing experience.

1 // Reykjavik or Akureyri

Anyone who knows me is fully aware that I have a weird obsession with Iceland. My dad’s side of the family comes from there, and since I was a kid, I’ve always been ridiculously curious about this odd little island.

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, my uncle gave me a book (or I took it, I can’t remember) with a badass picture of a Viking on the cover that contained all the Icelandic sagas, and I never put it down.

I was, and am, hooked. Shit, even as I’m writing this I’m listening to my favourite radio station that I’ve listened to for years, Xið 97,7.

But I’ve never been there.

So I’m not sure it’s totally necessary to delve into the million reasons why I want to photograph a wedding there, because we wanted to keep this post somewhat small. But, I will say it would be a surreal excuse to go there considering it’s all I’ve wanted to do for many years.

//

There you go folks, our destination wedding bucket list. We like weddings for many reasons, but one of our favourite aspects about a them is the cultural emphasis that occurs. So, hopefully destination weddings will continue for us in the future, and we can learn more about the world.

But, like we’ve done since Nordica was born, we like to take on various projects on the side if we feel it will improve our photography skills. Most of the stuff that we do we don’t post on the blog because, well, it’s not always that exciting to read about. But we like to do all kinds of photography if we believe it will benefit our main clients: Brides and Grooms.

We have worked alongside BC Business Magazine for some time and it has provided us with some interesting photography challenges. We did one project a while back about British Columbia’s social media rockstars and before that some stuff for the Olympics, and we more or less have a nice working relationship with BCB.

The latest project we’re going to keep close to our chests for now, but let’s just say it has to do with style in Vancouver. We’re speaking with strangers and taking their picture, so our Faces of the Games project prepared us for this task quite nicely.

So, keep your eyes open for this one come the end of month on BCB’s website. It should be interesting!

We’ll be in Mexico for a wedding that we’re both being flown in for, and it goes without saying that we’re very excited for this. Neither of have ever been to Mexico, and the ideas we have for this wedding are all unreal on paper. Of course, we’ll wait to see if they’re worth a shit or not in reality.

So if you’re trying to phone us over the next few days, please be patient and we’ll be back to normal Friday morning. But, email away if need be to info@nordicaphotography.com and in between the wedding, the engagement photography and the cerveza, we’ll promptly reply.

Adios amigos!

This picture is of us (Cole on the far left, Jakob on the far right) and the wedding couple we photographed on Saturday. We thought it may be good to put a picture of us in a post ever once in a while so you get an idea what we look like!

Two grown men doing wedding photography? One man is rare as it is, but two working together?

The roots of this atypical partnership (there was an example of the ‘closet feeling’ – forgetting to include business before partnership is a bit misleading) are fairly straight forward, and embedded in our shared passions for photography and business.

While growing up on the other sides of the globe, an education in business would bring this eventual business partnership together. We met while studying our business masters degrees in Sweden. Years after the completion of this education Nordica would be born in Vancouver.

Why Weddings

Wedding photography became our photography genre of choice for a couple of reasons.

First, we both have athletes’ mindsets. Second, the opportunity of style and story a wedding presents.

In sports you may not get more than one opportunity, so being mentally equipped to deal with the pressures is a must. Weddings share this demanding trait. Brides put on their wedding dresses once, the first kiss happens once and all memories on a wedding day happen once. Mess it up and your reputation as a wedding photographer is ruined. It’s that mental pressure that makes weddings so appealing and exciting for us.

The second reason why we do weddings is the opportunity to improve on a style of photography that we would want on our own wedding days, and when we write ‘our’ wedding days, we mean with the women we will marry one day, not with one another. See, that partnership thing is tricky eh?

In photography, brand and style go hand in hand. A brand is what your gut instinct tells you about a business or style, and we wanted ours to be extremely Nordica. So we set out to create style and avoid everything we disliked about wedding photography. Ridiculous poses, props, cringe-worthy photo editing techniques and a portrayal of photography that reflects what a photographer wants a wedding day to look like, rather then what happened on the day of the wedding.

We vowed to be better than that. To be better than the clichés and present a unique style that we like.

Those two things are what we think the core of awesome wedding photography. Mental preparedness and awareness, combined with a strict adherence to style that we believe in.

How We Photograph a Wedding

So what’s our style? Well, first and foremost it’s telling the story of your day as accurately as possible.

We do this by showing up as early as you permit us to arrive, and photograph your day until you feel comfortable with us leaving. Because we want to get the whole story. And going for the photojournalistic style, we do not interrupt anything and we do not get in the way. That allows the day to unfold naturally, and leaves out the posy and unnatural photography that we made a vow not to do. Basically, we’re like flies on the walls with fancy camera gear (plus fancy backup for that fancy gear).

So what do we do with the interactions, the tears, the laughs, the firsts, the ‘only once’ moments, the relief, the happiness, the toasts and the love after we’re done photographing your wedding?

Simple. We give you all the best photos.

You get everything, edited and ready in a format that allows you to use the pictures for whatever you want. We will never hold on to any photos and we will never try to sell you anything later on. Hidden fees have no place in our business model.

Nordica Photography

So, we’re Nordica Photography and those are the reasons we do wedding photography and the approach we take to your wedding photos.

If you’re interested in hiring us, please email us at info@nordicaphotography.com

To conclude, in four minutes you can check out what we do for a passion and a living, and why we ‘came out of the closet’: So we can tell wedding stories with our cameras.

Aside from being wedding photographers, we are also passionate photographers of other things. In fact, we take a fairly ridiculous amount of pictures that have nothing to do with weddings at all.

With that in mind, we have some favourite pictures that deserve a better home than rotting away on our hardrives.

So, we have decided to put a collection of our favourites up for sale to you – people who view this blog. The collection is a totally mixed bag of pictures: Landscape, animals, people, and totally weird stuff.

We are selling the images for $150, and they come either framed or as a canvas print (your choice). The images are 16×24 inches in size, and will be delivered to your home or business address.

So, have a look at what we have over at our little online store! You may see something you like for yourself, maybe as a gift for someone, or maybe even something for your businesses walls.

This print sale goes on until July 15th, 2010.

Click here to check out the images.