Baby Riley | A birth story

PAUSE

We pause for many rea­sons: to lis­ten, to reflect, to revere, to be present. We pause for lit­tle things — like cross­ing the street — and big things — like tak­ing time away from our busy sched­ules to cel­e­brate hol­i­days and spe­cial occa­sions. For the past year, we’ve had to pause for our safe­ty and pause became a per­pet­u­al part of every day life. Each of us have had our own set of com­pro­mis­es, dis­ap­point­ments, and hard­ships and we had to find new ways to embrace this state of being.

Play

The oppo­site of pause. Life in motion. This is how we learn; how we move for­ward; how we relate to one anoth­er. Great moments, big ideas, and beau­ti­ful con­nec­tions are all born out of play.

As a busi­ness, and as a cou­ple, we like every­one else have nav­i­gat­ed the ebb and flow of the pan­dem­ic. We are grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ties that have come our way and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple we have built rela­tion­ships with (albeit behind masks or video calls). One project in par­tic­u­lar has us all in our feel­ings today reflect­ing on these states of pause and play.

Rachel and Lorne are wed­ding clients turned friends. We had an instant con­nec­tion years ago and it remains to this day. They are good com­pa­ny. Just before the pan­dem­ic hit they reached out to us to doc­u­ment the birth of their first child. We were hon­oured (of course) but a lit­tle hes­i­tant. It was new ter­ri­to­ry for us and between logis­tics (being avail­able to film a birth at a moment’s notice dur­ing wed­ding sea­son) and our tran­si­tion into more com­mer­cial work, it just didn’t seem to fit.

But we also couldn’t envi­sion any­one else cap­tur­ing this moment in their lives. We knew them. We knew their fam­i­lies. We knew we could cre­ate a very spe­cial piece. What we didn’t know was how much the scope of the project would change and how much it would mean to us personally. 

We had a ses­sion before baby Riley was born, one a few months lat­er, and anoth­er for her first birth­day. Due to the pan­dem­ic (everyone’s 4 fav words), Rachel and Lorne were respon­si­ble for doc­u­ment­ing the birth itself and the months in between to fill in the gaps. They did a phe­nom­e­nal job and the result is a beau­ti­ful cap­ture of a year in one family’s life.

Life goes on. It finds a way. Take a moment to pause, get ready for all the feels; press play, and enjoy.