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.

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.

Daisy and Mali’s three day Sikh wedding was as intense as it gets. And we’re not just blowing smoke and mirrors here – they partied hard.

5 am mornings, 2 am nights, lots of laughter, lots of tears, wild dancing, serious stage-diving, extreme partying, incredible food and drinks, and lots of love. It was full-on.

Their wedding had it all, and we’re stoked to have been able to come so close to this culture that’s still very new to us.

We’ll post the full wedding soon.

A while back, we photographed a Mehndi ceremony. It was our first time seeing this and it was awesome.

Coming up soon, Susan will have her Mehndi ceremony before her wedding and we’ll be there for that as well.

Susan and Jag are having a Sikh wedding, and the colours and cultural bonanza will definitely be wicked.

We did a casual photography session with them in and around Gastown.

We deviate from weddings once in a while and do portrait sessions.

This session was with Jennifer, and we took her to a place called Commercial Drive in Vancouver.

Gastown feels like home for us.

We’ve done the most sessions there of any spot in the Lower Mainland, and we will always look back on Gastown as the spot where we paid our dues and did a ton of photo sessions.

While it’s easy to think doing a lot of work in the same spot could lead to stagnation, we think the opposite occurs. We find it challenging to view the same spots differently and make each session totally unique.

For this couple’s engagement session, the challenge for us was how we could best use the fantastic morning light. We roamed around with one thought in mind: Where’s the best light.

A simple approach to one of our favourite spots in Vancouver.

Their wedding is coming up next and will be at the Shangri-La in Vancouver.

Brian and Giovanni have a great relationship if only based on where they are from.

Brian is from Vancouver and Giovanni is from Mexico, so when it comes down to visiting hometowns, both have very appealing aspects.

They were married last January in Vancouver, and we recently did a session with the two of them around Main Street and the Olympic Village.

Gotta love morning light.

We did Sonia and Thierry’s engagement session early on a sunny  morning in Gastown, Vancouver. Lots more to come.