Thanks ever so much to the lovely Kate for the feature! xo, jenn

Montreal, Canada. April 2012.

Things I love about our little office space….. the string of polaroids and photobooth strips beside my desktop | the beginnings of a dashboard hula girl collection | camera print from one of our lovely couples | bicycle paper clips I contributed (& won) at a Christmas gift exchange | extra pack of instax wide for this camera | gag camera that squirts water | quotes, schedules, notes to myself taped to the wall | stapler | classy door signage | old travel poster inspired calendar | postcards from friends | this creatively inspiring magazine | two month wall calendar for marking down weddings, shoots, meetings, etc | name tags from weddings we’ve photographed | prints of old New York City | and of course our office kitty……. :)

We spend quite a bit of time in our office in between photographing doing all the back end of running our business, so we’re trying our best to make a space that reminds us of ourselves and that we’re happy to be in, it’s working out so far. xo, jenn

We are all taught to measure success by the mistakes we didn’t make, the thing we deprived ourselves of, and when we slip up we are filled with guilt and anxiety that we didn’t do what we were supposed to do.  When I was younger, I taught mountain biking at a summer camp and one of the skills we taught was how to avoid obstacles like rocks and tree roots.   We would set up two logs next to each other with a space just a bit more than the width of a tire between them and ask the campers to ride through the space.  The campers that focused on avoiding the logs, invariably ran right into them but the campers that focused on riding through the gap, always avoided the logs.  The key to success was focusing on what to do, rather than focusing on what to avoid.

The quote above is one of my favourite quotes, from one of my favourite movies (Chocolat).  I have always been inspired by quotations, words have a certain power in my life to challenge me, inspire me, move me, and shape me.  This quote speaks to me on all those levels.  Too often in life I catch myself stressing all the things I didn’t do in a day…… I pat myself on the back because I didn’t waste time on Facebook, or I didn’t watch TV… rather than being excited by all the things I did do… I took a bike ride with Jenn, I laughed with friends, I captured a beautiful moment between two people.

When I die, I don’t want my tombstone to read, “Dave Stark – a nice guy that lived a good life because he denied himself and avoided bad things”, I’d much rather it read, “A man who lived a good story, a man who took risks, lived adventurously, created boldly, and loved fully & embraced life, all of it”.  If I spend my life worrying about not wasting time and not making mistakes, like the campers I taught biking to, I will undoubtedly waste time and make mistakes.  It’s time to focus on the gap, to focus on taking risks, living adventurously, loving fully. This is more a note to myself than anything.

At the end of the day, let’s measure our success by what we did, what challenge we embraced, what thing we created, what person we included, and stop focusing so much on all the ‘not supposed to’s’. – dave

Vancouver, BC, Canada. April 2012. And because variety is the spice of life – we shot these on digital, ilford 400, and instax. Image of us taken by our lovely friend Sandy.

Vancouver, BC, Canada. April 2012. We also photographed these guys HERE.

… can bring about feelings of apprehension and downright fear…. what if I don’t really have anything brilliant to say, or what if I can’t say it right and what if I can’t fill this space with anything meaningful? Or, it can bring about feelings of endless possibility, a blank slate, the freedom to create something where before there was nothing. What do you see right now?

This one time Dave went out to buy printer paper, and accidentally came home with a full package of the wrong kind of paper. For a while it sat on our shelf, this big stack of unusable blank white pages. Dave and I recently re-designed this blog and put out a new website, and we took on the design process ourselves (equal mix of endless possibility/endless fear!). There were times when I would be sitting in front of the computer screen, so frustrated and bogged down by ideas and dead ends. I’d distract myself by checking email, or going through Pinterest to get “inspiration”. Then, I found that stack of white paper. I left my computer and sat with the blank pages at an empty table, free of distractions, and drew out my ideas, wrote out diagrams and words. It was so immensely helpful to me that I just had to share. It made me realize how often as creative people we are looking for and pulling inspiration from other places and that we’re scared to actually sit in an empty room and pull inspiration from within ourselves.  

So here’s a challenge: do one thing that scares you every day. Make tackling the blank page a habit. Then, when the truly scary things come along, you’ll be in practice with dealing with things that scare you. You’ll learn more about yourself in the process (I have. I continue to use blank pages to sketch out ideas for shoots and for my writing). And because it takes skill to bring something you’ve only imagined into the world. For more thoughts on this, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of The Creative Habit, essential reading for those of us who rely on our creativity for our bread & butter. xo, jenn

THE IDEA….. well, it’s hard to pinpoint where the idea came from exactly. Even when I started this business a few years ago, I wanted to make something different out of it. I remember considering adopting an elephant and being known as the elephant photography studio (umm how random is that?? haha). And so I began my business, as a way to escape from the normal and create the life I wanted, and ended up creating a business that looked pretty much just like any other business. Yep, I did. I think a lot of people fall into that trap, as much as we hate to admit it. And any thoughts of how to “give back” with my business were pushed to the back of my mind for a day when I was making enough money at it for me to feel comfortable about it.

Well, that is a lie we tell ourselves, I think. Giving back will never feel comfortable from a financial standpoint as a small business owner.

I think it maybe struck me the hardest in the middle of last year. We’d just met up with SARAH & CHRIS, and for the first time I had someone else tell me that my documenting travels and journeys clearly sparked something within me, it is something that feeds my creativity, and frankly, it feeds my soul. Things went well last year — I felt like we were doing well with the business, I was loving the people we were working with & the stories we were photographing, we were feeling fulfilled but still like a piece was missing. I felt like I had attained what I wanted, but that my goals maybe hadn’t been big enough. If there’s anything I fear most of all, it is the thought of living an unremarkable life…. and I couldn’t shake the ever-growing sense that I wanted our business to be not only about our relationships with our clients, but how we could build relationships with more people, and to build this into our idea of giving back by doing what we love….

TAKING SHAPE… there are quite a few books that I can credit with changing my life; two of those I can more specifically credit with changing our business. START WITH WHY is a fantastic book, required reading for any creative entrepreneur, that delves into the difficult topic of discovering what your overarching purpose is, and separating WHAT you do in life from the reasons WHY you feel drawn to do them. I’m drawn to photography because of something deep inside me, and it was an “a ha!” moment when I realized that I wasn’t a photographer, but I was someone who is intrigued by bigger stories, by atmospheres and meanings and feelings, and through the telling of those stories to hopefully inspire someone, somewhere. Photography is merely a means by which I can express that…. I read START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS right around the same time. This book is the story of TOMS shoes, and it was one of those “this is exactly what I needed to read right now” kind of books. It introduced to me the idea of the trifecta, where you are (1) doing something you love, (2) making a living doing it, (3) giving back to the world in a meaningful way. Much of our time in MAUI last December was spent talking through these ideas, about breaking out of what was “expected” of a wedding photography business, and about this idea of giving back with our business, not as an afterthought, but to build giving back right into how our business ran.

IT LOOKS LIKE… a crazy, undefinable adventure. We’ve always been drawn to adventures, to this idea of taking a journey. It explains some of the crazy things we’ve done in our lives. In a nutshell, we hope to plan at least one, hopefully a few of these journeys in a year, using a set amount from our incomes to do it, with the aim of documenting meaningful things along the way; of meeting with people who are making a difference; and of hopefully being able to give away our gifts, what we are good at, in a way that is meaningful them…. maybe it involves taking a roadtrip, or a long bike ride, or a plane across an ocean…. we are excited to go wherever the wind calls us and to see and encourage the positive things I know are out there :)

I know it’s not something I can expect everyone to understand. People might ask why we don’t just donate money to an organization or cause. And I’d reply that to us, the idea of doing this is something we’re really excited about. To us, the idea of giving our time and talents somehow means more.

WE WOULD LOVE… for you to get involved! It completely blew us away that we had people sending us emails and messages the day we released this, asking how they could be a part of it or offering us some ideas of places we could go and amazing stories we should check out. That is honestly amazing you guys. If what we’ve talked about speaks to you in any way, whether you are a client of ours, a couple searching for a photographer, a photographer, here in Toronto or anywhere (anywhere!) around the world, we’d love to hear from you. We’ve got a “be in touch” link at the top of our blog for you to send us a message.

We’d also love for you to take a few minutes to think about what matters most to you. It doesn’t have to be (and most likely isn’t) the same as what we’re doing, but I think each of us has a little adventure deep inside of us… is there a way for you to do something about it? We’d love to hear your thoughts & we want to encourage you to pursue it!

We’ve now got a few things in the books for actual adventures we’re going to take & people/places we’re hoping to document, so it’s all becoming a bit more real and exciting now! We’re hoping to announce our first project in the upcoming month, and we hope to be blogging the process of setting this into motion. Your support, as always, means the world. Thanks for listening. xo, jenn

Much much more from our life over at our instagram accounts HERE & HERE. Do you use instagram too? Give us a follow if you’d like! xo, jenn

“…..but for now we are young. let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we see.” – xo, jenn

Muskoka, Canada. April 2012.