Perth’s beaches are magnificent!! White sand, crystal clear blue water!!! I never imagined it to be so breath-taking. But throw in a gorgeous couple in the mix, and I was on cloud nine! We had so much fun exploring the beaches and all the funky sculptures there.

Jason still can’t believe his little sister is getting married, but both Jason and I are very happy for Nathan and Jo, and we absolutely can’t wait for their wedding in November, it’s going to be amazing.

Here are some photos for you to enjoy!

~Lena

We’re on a plane over Australia, and although this won’t be posted until we’re down on the ground again, I thought I’d write anyway, and give you a quick overview of our trip so far.

I’m looking out the window and I see clear blue water and red soil of the land down under, and it’s only hitting me now that I’ll be in Australia in a few hours. Australia always seemed like such a far-away land, and all it had was kangaroos and some funny looking people who now live n Whistler and speak with a strange accent, hehe. But now that I’m married to an Aussie and I’m flying over this distant land, it’s finally hitting me that there’s more to it than kangaroos and Whistler lifties! I can’t wait to explore Perth, meet some real Aussies, eat the famous Australian pies and perhaps get myself some comfy Uggs  

But let’s go back a few days and I will tell you all about my impressions of SIngapore. I’m not the most cultured person I know, all I’ve ever seen was  the snowy winters of Siberia, cool summers of the Altai mountains, all of Vancouver and Whistler, a little bit of Mexico and a few months of Europe, oh and the resorts of Cuba. So Asia was and still is a foreign land to me. Singapore was definitely not what I expected, and I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at every corner  

Did you know that they drive on the wrong side of the road? I didn’t. I thought it was only those who spoke English with an accent drove on the wrong side, but as it turns out Singapore’s main language is English, and they do speak it a little funny, thus it was only logical they drove on the left side.

It’s also interesting to note that it’s always summer dress season there! Can you imagine the life without sweaters, boots and winter coats? The only bad thing is that you’re always, and I do mean always, sweaty there! Not sure that I could ever get used to it or adapt to it, but I don’t think I’m cut out for living in the tropics, the humidity would kill me. You sure do begin to really appreciated air conditioned air. The one cool thing that tropical countries like SIngapore have is lots, and lots of green trees, namely palm trees. I love walking down the street and being shaded by green giants, although the shade does nothing to cool the hot air.

Something else interesting to note is that they eat a lot! They eat 6 small means throughout the day, the food is cheap and abundant. There are small food courts all over the place. We ate all the different asian varieties of chicken, duck, pork and seafood, but if you’re a clean freak, you might find it hard eating anything in singapore. First and foremost they don’t give any napkins anywhere, unless you’re in a fancy restaurant. You gotta carry your own kleenex and wetones. But all in all, I had a great time experiencing a little bit of the  culture in Singapore. I’ve got lots more to say about it, like their awesome parking systems, monkeys as city dwellers, nannies and their metro system. But I’ll save that for anyone who is actually interested and wants to hear about it. I’ll tell you all about if you ask  

Now, here’s the part where we go sightseeing: their markets are busy, their zoo is awesome, and their orchid gardens are magnificent. Here’s a quick photo to tie you over, we will have a slideshow of our adventures up very soon!

~Lena

We totally got into the Olympic spirit and got ourselves some sweet hockey jerseys. Jason (even though not Canadian just yet) is wearing his team Canada jersey proudly; whereas I’m the opposite, although I’m no longer Russian by nationality, I’m wearing my Russian jersey and totally cheering back a big “YEAHHHHH!!!” when people on the streets yell out “GOOOO RUSSIA!!!” Although it’s not cool when someone looks at your jersey and says, “You’re from Poland?” People, learn your flags!

So anyways, we scored some tickets to the women’s curling event, and although we had no idea initially what curling was all about, we learned quickly while watching the ladies hit each other’s rocks. It’s quite an exciting game once you get how it works, and we got pretty intense cheering on Canada, and Japan! hehe Japanese girls are just so cute, and it didn’t help that they were right in front of us battling against USA. Japan prevailed over the USA!! The last 2 rocks were soo close they had to bring out a special measuring device, the few minutes they were doing that the whole crowd was so quiet waiting for the results, and everyone cheered for team Japan!! To sum up, we had an AWESOME time!

Here are some photos for your enjoyment!

~Lena

This special includes a 1 hr on location shoot, an online proofing gallery, online slideshow, disc of high resolution proof images from the shoot, and your choice of 10 premium retouched images on disc ready for print.

All this for only $150 plus applicable taxes!

Contact us at info@jaylena.com to make your booking!

I thought that today is the perfect day to share some sexy photos of 3 beautiful girls I photographer recently. I’ve given you guys a quick sneak peak a while back, and here are some more sexy boudoir photos photographer in a beautiful Hotel Le Soleil.

To all the girls out there if you’re looking for a fun Valentine’s Day gift, or his birthday or anniversary is coming up, or you just want to make his heart skip a beat, shoot me an e-mail and we can create photos that will take his breath away!

Enjoy!!

~Lena

As some of you may know, I’m a software engineer by day, and I pretty much build business web applications for a living (in order to pay for the goodies ). So when I say that the Prophoto blog saved me a bunch of time I really mean it!. Having gone from spending countless hours tweaking a custom Wordpress theme in CSS and PHP, to being able to get our site up from the initial download of the theme to looking pretty sweet in a matter of hours is totally worth the $199!

Now I can focus my time on the more important things in life!

Everything is just laid out in the most intuitive manner from within the Wordpress administrator, and there are a tonne of examples up on the ProPhoto website to help you achieve whatever functionality you like.

Check out the video below for a better overview! Also if you want to save yourself $10 simply use the discount code JASOHO937 at the checkout!

Jason switched over to the dark side, but he’s loving it! I’m actually going to let him do a review of his new camera gear since I’m not the techy one; however, I will say this, that Nikon D3s is sexy! It’s got sooo many buttons, so many features, so many options, it’s crazy! Hence when we went for a little walk to test it out, we went a little crazy, and here’s the proof.

Here’s a sneak peak of Jason’s new baby!

These two shots below are processed using some cool textures!

Huge thanks to Jason Brown for setting up the lighting for this shot below! It simply is such an amazing light set up consisting of no less than 5 strobes including one monster ring flash!

We had the pleasure of meeting him initially at the SMUG meet and then got the chance to hang out with him afterwards. I never knew someone so famous was so down to earth and full of energy! Having been chatting with him for a an hour or so, he makes you feel like you have known him for a lifetime!

One of the big things that [b]ecker teaches at his workshop is the whole concept of networking with other photographers. This idea hit home with the 80+ attendees as the wedding photography industry has been previously seen to be one of cut throat and intense competition, where photographers were unwilling to share and help out other photographers. In doing so [b]ecker has established the [b] school.com where you can sign up to join a friendly community of thousands of other photographers who are all looking to network with each other.

So back to the workshop. It was held at Miranda and Reilly’s new and gorgeous Blue Olive Studio. Lena and I were given the honour of being [b]ecker’s models for the day when he took us out on a quick photoshoot to show the class how he works.

This day would never have happened without the fabulous work of Tracey Heppner and Michelle Libby (co founders for the Vancouver Wedding Photographers and Second shooters group) for getting off their butts and actually making it happen. Also a big shout out to Tracey’s husband Jonathan Heppner who provided us with a fantastic meal!

Enough talk! here are some pictures! Thanks to Tom Galassi for taking the the shots of us with our camera!

We even got the chance to watch [b]ecker’s live recording of the Study Hall with Jenn and Steve Bebb from Bebb Studios!

We had grand plans to go snowshowing, since it is winter and all and there’s supposed to be snow on the mountains. But we were quite disappointed when we called the local mountains to inquire about snow conditions. There were no conditions, cause there was no snow! hehe I’m just quietly laughing to myself about the snow situation, Winter Olympics are about to start and we have spring temperatures and a bunch of mud on the mountains. Oh well, not my problem really.

Back to our grand plans, we decided that it’d be just as fun to gather up the car full of animals and head to Buntzen Lake for a short little hike. There car was filled with 8 legs, 5 lunches (one extra for good measures), a bunch of water bottles, 12 paws and 3 wagging tails!

First we let the dogs loose in the gated park at the lake, Razor being a crazy water dog swam circles in the water just for fun, he also learned a few new games from a few rambunctious dogs. Gina was going a little nuts trying to get me to throw rocks for her in the water. And Altai being the most mellow out of all the dogs just wandered around and said Hi to all the dogs.

Then we hiked to the other side of the lake, and this is where all the real fun began! Jelena and Graeme had a bright idea to try to make Razor jump off the dock into the water. Poor Razor didn’t know what he was in for! This is how it all went down:

1. Get Razor excited about fetching a stick.

2. Make Razor run after the stick without realizing that there’s an edge to the dock!

3. Laugh really hard once Razor falls in! (Check out Jelena’s head-roll-from-laughing-too-hard!)

4. Poor Razor didn’t know what hit him, and he frantically tries to get back onto the dock. And of course he’s got no leverage, so Jelena goes in for the save, falls on her butt in the process, and gets totally soaked!

After all that, it apparently wasn’t enough, so Graeme goes for attempt #2. But this time Razor isn’t that stupid, and he stops in time to just look at the stick and totally ignore it.

After all the water fun is over, Altai and I play a little tug-of-war. That little bugger is super strong, look at him snapping those twigs!  

Razor joins in the fun! I’ve got nothing against 3 dogs, they beat me pretty quickly.

This concludes our fun on the beach! We headed off back to the car, and we were all pooped! The dogs slept like little babies on the way back home, and we had a nice little nap when we got home too.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRAEME, hope you enjoyed hanging out with us!