This Or That

My Choices!

Steph, tagged me in her Instagram Story a couple of days ago with this list, she had done hers and then named a few followers to do the same. I guess it is a meme, or a challenge, or a chain, or something. I replied that I would do it for my blog. This was partly because it is Two who has Instagram - she doesn't use the story feature and doesn't like to share her account. Also I am constantly needing content for Always Standing so happy to have things like this to do.

The thing with Insta Stories is that they disappear in 24 hours so when I was ready to go and do it - the original one was gone. I looked it up online and couldn't quite find the exact one that Steph had done. (I know, because her's had White Wine / Red Wine listed and she had crossed both out, which I would have done too.) However, I feel like this is the same style and will do. I used Paint and the computer, which is also different, but it gets the point across. Now I challenge all who are reading to let me know in the comments where you stand on This or That? 

Also, if you have Instagram, Steph is a great person to follow @sbeachphoto because she posts regularly, the images are always beautiful, and sometimes you get a glimpse of her adorable dog Kaylee.

Go Vote For Kaylee

Steph and Dave have backed a game on Kickstarter, this is something that they do quite regularly, Jason too though he normally sticks to video/computer games. This one looks like it is going to be a cool Dungeons and Dragons style table top game, featuring animals/pets.

The game company is running a contest on Facebook for people's pets. Steph and Dave have submitted Kaylee and are hoping she will get picked to be featured in the final game art. Please vote for her, they are picking one dog and one cat based on the number of 'likes' that a comment on the post gets.

GO TO THE POST HERE, scroll down until you see Steph's comment about Kaylee, and her adorable puppy picture - in a basket! Then click like, or love. I don't know when the contest is over so you should go do it now!

It is fun to scroll through and see everyone's pet submissions, I also clicked on a cat that I thought was cute and fluffy since that isn't Kaylee's competition. Thanks for your help, let's make Steph's dog boardgame famous!

Steph Won!

Steph sent me a text last night to say she had received a Platinum Award at The Wedding Awards! Steph and Dave have been attending this yearly gala in Ottawa since 2014, and she has won before. I couldn't find details about her 2018 win, except that it was also a Platinum Award, for best Live Moment - pretty sure the image was of a horse going after a brides bouquet. This year, she won for best Unique Photo. Here is the winning shot:

Award Winning Wedding Photo - 2020

by Stephanie Koning of Stephanie Beach Photography

Instagram: @sbeachphoto

So beautiful, such a cool shot too. (I think it was done using a crystal.) When I was with her in Virginia she had just gotten a few more interesting crystal shapes that she planned to experiment which, so I am interested to see how those images turn out. As always, you can follow along with her career using the link to her blog that I have posted over on the right, her Facebook page or Instagram.

Breakfast Of Champions

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

When I was in Ottawa at the end of last month, Steph mentioned that Dave had bananas on his breakfast cereal in the morning. I had totally forgotten about doing that! Usually I have a smoothie for breakfast in the morning. A pretty basic one: frozen fruit (either strawberries or peaches), soy or almond milk, a couple of scoops of protein powder. Now, if Jason is around to cut the banana, I have started to have Vector with (cow's) milk and bananas. I am loving it! When I was little, my dad used to cut bananas into 'coins' for me and often put them in cereal (usually Rice Krispies.) Reminds me of my childhood and makes me think about my dad.

Kaylee Is Such A Good Girl

Visiting Steph and Dave (both before and after doing Christmas with my family) so I finally got to see their new puppy!!

Meeting Kaylee - December 30, 2019

Quick snapshot with my phone

The funniest thing is that she doesn't like Jason at all!! Normally dogs are obsessed with Jason and love him so much, so her dislike of him was pretty refreshing for me. She wasn't super in love with me either but she didn't bark at me like she did at him. 

Also, she was a puppy in the summer and she is much larger now. I am sad to have missed seeing her when she was tiny tiny. Steph said she woke up one day and all of a sudden she was a dog. However, she is still super playful and very soft.

Let's Go To Virginia, Real Quick

So this past weekend brought a snow storm to Toronto (and the surrounding area). I got a call on Sunday that Steph was trapped at the airport downtown. (Toronto Island Airport that was originally just Porter but now a few other carriers use it too. Also, you used to only be able to get to it using a ferry but now there is a tunnel to walk under the water.) Steph was trying to get to Virginia for a photography conference.

Upon reviewing her options she called to see if she could stay overnight and then figure out a way home to Ottawa the following day - since everything in Toronto was basically shut down with the snow (even though it had basically stopped snowing at this point.) I decided to do one better and offered to drive her down to Virginia so she didn't have to miss out on the conference, or the styled shoot she had scheduled on location as well.

It took 10 hours to drive to Charlottesville and we arrived at her hotel at 4am on Monday morning. I was going to drive her to the shoot but then decided I wanted to sleep and just lent her the car for the day while I hung out at the hotel. When she got back that evening (and how she worked a full day, I have no idea) I drove her up to the Washington, DC airport (where she was originally going to fly in) so that she could grab her rental car and continue onto the conference. Then I drove home overnight from Monday to Tuesday.

It was great to spend time catching up but now I need to catch up on some sleep!

A Different Type Of Anniversary

A year ago today, Steph left her engineering job to focus all her attention on her business Stephanie Beach Photography. It was a very brave thing to do, I was very excited for her at the time. Everything is going well, she keeps exceeding her goals and is producing beautiful work - she is also much happier. Congratulations Steph, I am very proud of you.

Happy Birthday Steph!

It is Steph's birthday today! 

I hope she is having a good one.

Prime seats in front, up top, on a double decker bus.

London, England - January 2008

Photo by ME

It has been nine years since we took this photo, and we have been friends since September 2003, yet she still makes me this happy! Since moving to Toronto in 2010 we don't see each other as often, but we both make the effort and I head up to Ottawa pretty often. We make it work, she is worth it. Happy Birthday!

Little Gallbladder

I am at Steph's today in Ottawa, a quick turn-around trip that has me here for less than 36 hours. However, Steph and I got a chance to catch up last night, and today play a quick new card game that she had recently ordered online. The card game was designed by the same person who does The Awkward Yeti comic. He did these which Steph showed me after my gallbladder surgery last year:

By Nick Seluk

Top Posts For 2016 - Views

After seeing Steph's Top 5 Posts, I wanted to do my own for 2016 on Always Standing. I think I would be able to use Google Analytics to quickly figure it out but it isn't working right now so I did it manually. Scrolling through the 220 posts from last year I can see the number of comments left on each and how many times that post was viewed. Some posts do much better than others and it is very difficult to understand why. It might be what gets visited through a search or something I post on Facebook that gets more traffic than usual - but my theories don't show to be consistent so I am not totally sure.

Honourable Mentions

These two posts did well but didn't break 100 views, however I still wanted to include them because I think they are great!
- Peru Overview, With Help From Mom - As it sounds, a quick diary about my January trip hiking the Inca Trail. The post is mainly used to send people over to Vicarious Travelling to view Mom's photos.
- Flat Surface? - A cute photo of Two sitting on our mantel at Casa Verde.

FIVE

So Many Milestones

Post about picking up my wedding ring, getting keys to our new house, and eating french fries. Pretty sure that I posted a link to this one on Facebook and it covers some pretty big life events, I understand why this shows up.

FOUR

Xmas List 2016

The cute photo above taking by Mom of Maya in a Santa hat isn't included in the original post. It was just a list of what I wanted for Christmas this year, something I do on Always Standing every year. The traffic is probably from relatives and friends coming back to reference the items.

THREE

Talk Consent

I like this post a lot. It references a big campaign but I spoke in my own words as to why it was important to me. I hope it inspired some of the 141 viewers who saw it to talk about the issue of consent - a discussion that can be had at any age.

TWO

Addictive Television

An interesting post to follow up the last one, a quick reflection how that fact that Jon Taffer can be a bit of a bully on the show Bar Rescue.

ONE

Two Speeds

A post that features two pictures of Avery from Jason and my wedding. I am glad to see it showed up as number one, Steph's photos are beautiful and Aves is adorable subject matter.

No, Thank You

Just before writing about her Top 5, Steph did a thank you post on her blog reflecting on her biggest year yet with Stephanie Beach Photography. I am so excited about the future of her company. You can read about the many things that has made this past year such a highlight, but for me it will selfishly be her participation at my wedding (which she also mentioned). Here is her sweet message:

I had such a hard time writing the original blog post for these two. This wasn’t because their day wasn’t interesting, on the contrary, Chris + Jason’s wedding was the most unique we have ever been a part of (and this will likely be a true statement for a long, long time, if not the rest of time). It was difficult to write because nothing was ever enough to express just how much they mean to us. When the bride is your very best friend, who has (and continues to) given you so much and always been there for you, expressing all of that in a matter befitting her, such a charismatic and well-spoken person, can be troublesome. Writing down the words that truly show how genuinely happy I am that two people as caring, thoughtful and utterly wonderful as them, have found each other took me longer than usual and to be honest, I still don’t think the words did the entire situation justice. I love them to pieces and getting to document their wedding days was without a doubt, a highlight of my photographic career and I can’t think of any other way I would have wanted to spend these days with them.

Check out the full 2016 Thank You post, HERE. You can also see her post about our wedding, which I love and frequently reread, HERE, the pictures are so beautiful.

Fall Wedding Handicap

Steph has reported on her blog the TOP 5 POSTSs for the year, Jason and My Wedding did make it. (Though we did get a nice little shoot out at the bottom, and included one of my favorite pictures of us hugging.)

I am a bit competitive and like to achieve really high digital and social media stats, so I was careful to link to Jason and my wedding post on her blog as often as I could. I also love the pictures and want to share them with everyone.

I think that we had a small disadvantage since the wedding was at the end of September and the main post went up at the start of November, so only two months of traffic! However, there was a wedding listed that only had a month up on the blog, very impressive, they must have a large network of friends and family.

Steph uses Wordpress, I think, for her blog so I won't be able to ask her how she figured out the top posts because Always Standing is on Blogger. I want to look into it though and maybe post mine later.

Wedding Photos For Your Monday!

Had a great surprise this weekend - Steph has finished our Wedding Photos!! You can see her post about them on the Stephanie Beach Photography blog.

In the text of the post, she included her 'Deceleration of Legality' speech that she gave during our ceremony - it was so lovely and while she mentions that she messed up while giving it at the wedding, I didn't notice. She also describes the events really well and the photos are ordered chronologically to really explain what the whole wedding weekend was like. I enjoyed my mom's description of her experience that she posted on her blog, but since Steph was with me the whole time, her details are closer to how I remember the event - a great read!

Obviously the photos are amazing, and those included in the post are just a small sample of the full set that she has given Jason and I. This was a wonderful wedding present from Steph and Dave and we are beyond thankful.

I have mentioned before that Steph and I always prefer different photos, so I am going to be posting a bunch on Always Standing that weren't included in her blog post to show you my favourites (Basically they are all good and I just want to share more of them!!.) Here is one:

Bridesmaids And Smiles - Before City Hall

Our Wedding - Paperwork Day - September 23, 2016

By Stephanie Beach Photography

Steph On Dave

Steph has been participating in the Rising Tide Society's InstaTideChallenge this week. It has been nice to get a little glimpse into her daily life as a professional photographer through her Instagram feed, which normally features her work and nothing about her as the worker.

Today she posted the following photo of Dave, with a beautiful passage she wrote about his role in their two-person team, how he supports her, and the awesome love and life that they share. Having known Dave for almost as long as I have known with Steph, I am also good friends with him. This is such a beautiful tribute to the incredible person that he is. He is the only partner who could be close to good enough to my Steph and their love is one for the ages.

Check out the image and her comment below from Instagram:

Words and photo below:

Copyright 2016 - Stephanie Beach Photography

Today is the final day of the risingtidesociety InstaTideChallenge where we celebrate another creative who inspires us. Ottawa is absolutely filled with amazing talents who inspire me on a regular basis, but I felt I should give credit to the other half our my husband-and-wife team, the tall guy with the bow-tie as I often describe him on wedding days – my husband and second shooter Dave.

He is always looking for new, super creative ways to capture our couples and their moments, never too tired to get one more shot and never complains when I want to stay longer on wedding days to ensure we get everything covered. He’s forever in my corner rooting me on and supporting me as I follow this amazing dream of mine. And although photography was something he initially picked up through me, he has definitely created his own voice through it and has a unique style all his own. I often find myself culling through our images and thinking how lovely the shots are and pleasantly surprised by the new angles and compositions he worked with.

This is a behind the scenes shot I grabbed during one of our favourite weddings that I think sums up Dave’s style pretty nicely – adventurous and creative. He is willing to do just about anything to get the shot he has in mind, including scaling walls.

Above all else, he is an absolute delight to work with, not only because he is my husband and I love him to pieces, but he is so sweet and thoughtful with our clients and their friends and families. I simply couldn’t ask for a better partner in this journey and his creativity truly inspires me every day.

In Memoriam In The Program

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

In Memoriam Page

Wedding Program 2016

Photos by myself and Stephanie Beach Photography

Layout by me using Canva

One of the pages in our massive wedding program was dedicated to my dad. You can see it below. It included my favourite photo of Dad that I took in Portugal, a photo taken by Steph that was included in her Photo Essay after Dad's death, the poem When Great Trees Fall by Maya Angelou, as well as the poem we had read at his funeral by Henry Van Dyke, which I have included below.

Gone From My Sight 

 I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side, 

spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts 

for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. 

I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck 

of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. 

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone." 

Gone where? 

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast, 

hull and spar as she was when she left my side. 

And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. 

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her. 

 And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone," 

there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices 

ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!" 

And that is dying...

By Henry Van Dyke, 1904

A Little Preview Of Our Photos

Steph has released the Sneak Peek of our photos on her blog! I haven't posted any photos yet of the wedding because I knew her's would be the best, so wanted to wait until I could direct people over to see them.

My mom has also written about both days of the wedding on her blog, and included a lot of photos. You can read about both Day One at City Hall and our wedding day on The Island and at The Pub.

Two Is 5

On her birthday, let's look back almost five years to a November 2011 photoshoot that Two and I did with Steph. She used to be a kitten but today Two is 5, which the internet tells me is approximately the equivalent of 32.

Two

By Stephanie Beach Photography
November 2011

I still love the photo on the bottom right, she is showing so much attitude. We both look very 'gangster.' Wow, was she ever tiny.

An Epic Party

My Bachelorette Party was this weekend, a three day event planned by Teri and flawlessly put together for me by 11 amazing friends. This has brightened my summer into the phosphorescent. There are no words so how loved I feel, how grateful I am to have these beautiful, inspiring, women in my life, how much fun I had, how touched I was by each thoughtful gesture. My abs hurt from laughing, my face aches from smiling, and these are the greatest pains to have.

Thank you so much to Teri, Steph, Kristen, Tessa, Andrea, Erin, Jenn, Jen, Maria, Meghan, and Taylor.

Four Things

Erin AH filled this out on her Facebook and I thought I would transplant it over the the blog, also I am heading to Ottawa tomorrow to visit her so that is exciting and fitting:

Four places I've lived: 
1. Cambridge, ON (1984-1985)
2. Paris, ON (1985-2003)
3. Ottawa, ON (2003-2010)
4. Toronto, ON (2010-now)

Four things I love to watch on TV or Netflix: 
1. The Daily Show
2. Orange Is The New Black
3. Archer
4. Property Brothers

Four names I go by:
1. Chris
2. Christine
3. Aunt Chris
4. Tita Chris

Four places I have visited: 
1. San Diego, CA
2. Yekaterinburg, Russia
3. Tangier, Morocco
4. Corner Brook, NL

Four things I love to eat: 
1. Bread
2. Watermelon
3. Pasta
4. Spaghetti Squash

Four favorite drinks:
1. Chocolate Milk
2. Pink Lemonade
3. Coke Zero
4. Gin and Tonic

Four people I would like to see respond:
1. Mom, maybe even on her blog
2. Steph
3. The T's (Taylor and Teri)
4. People who don't usually leave comments

Copy and paste this into the comments for this post and fill in your responses. Have some fun!

TB - July 2007

Throwback Thursday - Scroll to the bottom of the month and read up. Or click on the earliest post in the month (to view the post and the comments) then keep clicking Newer Post until you finish the month.

JULY 2007

Oh to be young in July again! This seems like such a nice period of happiness after a long stretch of depression. I am not manic and sad things seem to still happen - I mention a crush that wasn't panning out, I think that was a colleague at Subway. In general though going through this month is a lovely read where I seem to have really found myself. Definitely immature, very 'newly independent' and living the student life-style. However, you can see the early stages of my friendship growing with ERin and Kristen. Also Steph and Teri left lots of comments and get mentioned in posts. It just looks like it was such a nice, easy, fun month. Makes me excited for summer this year!

Noted Post: I still love the post comparing Hamilton to Mordor, thanks to a funny comment made by ERin during lunch at GeoConnections.