FEATURED | Sarah and Craig's Nautical Deer Island Wedding on Weddingbells.ca

It is always so nerve wracking when you complete a wedding and send off the gallery to the clients! When you are providing a creative service to others you are really giving away a piece of yourself. This is your creation, your ideas, your perspective. As a photographer, I am the artist and my camera is merely the medium through which I create. Thus, sharing a couple's wedding images with them is like sharing a piece of myself! I take their response very personally... everytime!

I knew Sarah and Craig loved their images. And their wedding celebration was full of personality and details that I wanted others to delight in! I knew going into their wedding day that I wanted to share their images with the editors at Weddingbells.ca in hopes that they would feature it on their blog. Just like when I sent the completed gallery off to Sarah and Craig, I waited with baited breath to hear back from Weddingbells.ca... and for a while I heard nothing!

One of my goals for 2013 was to have a wedding featured on Weddingbells.ca, so you can imagine how elated I felt (after waiting nearly three months from the submission date) when I opened my email last week and found a note from the editor at Weddingbells.ca advising me that Sarah and Craig's wedding had been featured! I literally jumped up for joy, and spent the rest of the day beaming!

Everytime my Bride's and Groom's write to me following their wedding, telling me how much they love their images... Everytime I meet with a prospective couple who ask me to be their wedding photographer... Everytime an editor accepts my work to be featured on their site... Every single one of these times, I am encouraged and affirmed that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing right now! I still pinch myself some days when I feel like I am in a dream.

I am going to stop rambling now, and simply ask you to go check out Sarah and Craig's wedding on Weddingbells.ca where you can leave some love for them and for me!!

Special shout out to my friend Jon, who was my second shooter for day and helped me capture all these magnificent moments and details!!

To see more of Sarah and Craig's wedding visit www.craigandsarah.shannonmayphotography.com.

Love & Sunshine,

Shannon-May

Packing Boxes, Mailboxes and Paper Moons

This week marks a big changes for me. Really big! I don't think I'll really know the brevity of this change until a few months from now, or perhaps even a year.

After living nearly two years in a very small and confined bachelor apartment where there is no separation from sleep, work and cooking space, which is really no more than a room with a walk in closet and bathroom, I am moving in to a larger space! This little bit of home in St. Stephen has served me well over the last twenty-two months. The sacrifices I made to this space home made it possible for me to start my business and to invest everything into it. At times I thought I could live here long term, especially on the days where I spent time dreaming about having my own studio space where I could invite my Brides and Grooms to for coffee. But this past fall it became clear that my business and I have outgrown this space and it is time to move into something bigger where I could spread out a little more and have a larger space devoted to my office. So as I sit here at my desk I am surround by moving boxes waiting to be filled and on my desk sits a set of mailbox keys for my postal box.

There are tons of things I am looking forward to with this move. Firstly, I will officially be a Saint Andrews NB resident!! This became even more real when I picked up the key to my postal box this morning (everyone living in Saint Andrews has a postal box - how cool is that!). Other things I am looking forward to: organizing and decorating a new home - I have tons of Pinterest ideas just waiting to be tried; buying new furniture; cooking in a real kitchen again and inviting friends over for dinner parties; being within walking distance to Honeybeans and the beach; standing on my teeny little deck and seeing ocean; having enough floor space for morning stretches, floor exercises and five minute dance parties when I can't sit at my desk any longer!! But I think the most important thing I am looking forward to: the positive long term impact this will have my business as it moves me closer to my goals.

And speaking of Saint Andrews and goals... I am so thrilled to have wedding featured on an online publication!!! Keisha and Andrew's beautiful Saint Andrews wedding has been featured on Paper Moon Weddings... check it out!

Getting Published

I am no rock star. I think only photographers who have been in the business for ten plus years, who's work has a good reputation, and who acts with integrity and treats their couples with dignity and respect deserve this kind of title. However, when you see your own work picked up and published by other wedding industry professionals you can't help feel a little proud of yourself!

I always approach each engagement session and wedding with my clients interests as a priority and my needs as an artist a close second, which is one of the reasons I find it so important to feel connected with my couples and to share similar interests, aesthetic style and love for details! And, in the back of my mind, I am thinking about the details and photos that would be appealing to editors of wedding blogs. I want people to know about my work and the awesome people and places I an privileged to work with here in Breathtaking New Brunswick!!

This past month I have been fortunate enough to have three of my favourite engagement sessions featured on Canadian and UK based wedding blogs! Man alive does this feel good!

July started out with Abbie and Dalen's Deer Island engagement session being published on Canada's Wedding Obsession.

And then Sarah and Craig's Lobster Boat engagement session was featured just this past weekend on the UK's Engaged Wedding Blog! This is particularly neat because Sarah and Craig's wedding is this coming weekend and many of Sarah's guests have flown in from Scotland!!

And just in today, Cara and Noah's Perfect Saint Andrew's engagement session was featured on Canada's Uschi & Kay!!

Give my couples (and me some love) and visit the fore-mentioned posts and leave a comment or two!!

Love & Sunshine,
Shannon-May

{PUBLISHED} Sarah & Craig on The East Coast Bride

The greatest compliment a photographer can receive is from their subject. hearing from my brides and grooms that they love their photos not only tells me that I did my job well (and hopefully exceeded their expectations) but is also affirms to me that I am doing what I was created to do. That the hard work and sacrifices I make in order to move myself towards where I want to be in my professional and personal life are just that, moving me towards my goals.


The second greatest compliment is knowing that everyone else thinks my work is worth attention! Which leads to this great joy: my work has been published!


Earlier in the month I took a risk and submitted Sarah and Craig's Deer Island Engagement Session to The East Coast Bride, a wedding blog dedicated to inspiring "east coast brides with real weddings, DIY projects, and insight into our wedding planning experiences." Their submission guidelines indicated that they only accept submissions from work photographed in the Eastern United States, but I took a chance that they would fall in love with Sarah and Craig's session as it took place in the gorgeous, world class Bay of Fundy which not only borders Maine, USA, but also lures thousands of visitors from America every year. 


I must be a better saleswoman than I thought and was thrilled to learn that my submission had been accepted. And yesterday The East Coast Bride featured my work on their site. Yippee!!!

And I'm not going to lie. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the post in my Facebook newsfeed... and I  may or may not have squeeled!

Love & Sunshine,

Shannon-May