A New Addition

After 9+ months of being pregnant, Tara, her husband Pat and her daughter Morgan (4 yrs old) welcomed baby Max to the world on March 4, 2012.

What better way to spend my Saturday afternoon than taking photos of this little guy with his new family? This is something I'd never done before, and to be honest, I felt a little nervous. This is a momentous occasion after all, one that should be captured perfectly. Even though I have now seen hundreds of various baby photos, I had no idea how this shoot was going to go.

It was better than I could have imagined. I had images in my mind, ideas about what I wanted to do, but going with the flow created something more magical than I thought was possible.

Snowking Castle Open in Yellowknife

Picture from Facebook: www.facebook.com/myspectacularnwt

When the days get longer in Yellowknife, NWT you know that March is here and that the Snowking has completed his castle and opened the doors to the public.

I haven't been yet, but noticed there were a few pictures on a new facebook page encouraging locals and visitors, past and present, to share their experiences.

Having lived in Yellowknife for seven years now, this festival is one of my favorites and I am happy to see that it is now in it's seventeenth year, quite the accomplishment for any local event. "Support the Monarchy" and pay this local icon a visit, open 12-5 daily with scheduled evening events on the weekends. It's worth freezing your butt off for!

I'm going to check it out tomorrow to see what the Snowcastle Craft Sale has in store this year! 

For further information on events: snowking.ca.

A Winter Engagement

In the early hours of December 25, 2011, Christmas Day, Alex proposed to me and I said YES!

I knew the engagement was coming, we picked out the ring together a few months earlier, but I had no idea when he was going to ask. The moment I tried on the ring at Sasha's Jewelry, I knew it was a perfect fit. The ring features three (.27-.33 Carat) Canadian Diamonds, mined in the Northwest Territories, and is set in a beautiful band of 14k white gold with specs of yellow gold, it's perfect. A ring meant to be worn a lifetime and that's what I plan on doing.

Last week, Alex and I hosted one of our frequent house guests from Vancouver, photographer Sean Norman. Sean is obsessed and passionate to view and capture the northern lights any chance he can get. He's also blessed with flight benefits with West Jet, making him a frequent flyer. It is always our pleasure to have him visit and this time he offered to take a few casual pictures of Alex and I to celebrate our recent engagement. I couldn't be happier with the way the day turned out. We found "secret" ice caves to do the majority of the pictures after we did a small session on the ice road over Great Slave Lake.

Please take a look at his blog, and our engagement photos and let me know what you think!

Engagement Photos: http://seannorman.com/samantha-and-alex-at-the-ice-caves/
Uninsured Adventures the night before: http://seannorman.com/stuck-on-a-lake-under-the-aurora/ 

The North Inspires

If there's one thing about my job that I love, it's promoting the North to people that have never been here. It's also watching people experience something unique and truly northern for the first time.

This past week I hosted my friend Kristen again. She's originally from Australia, but was my roommate in Yellowknife for about 6 months a few years back. I always think of her as kind of a unique individual because since she moved away, this was her second visit back, in the cold winter. It makes sense though, I live in the cold and I want to go somewhere warm, she lives in the warmth and seeks something cold and unique.

How did she first hear about Yellowknife? Ice Road Truckers of course! Remember the first season of the show where they were trucking on the ice road from Yellowknife to the diamond mines northeast of here? THAT is what inspired her to apply on a few jobs and eventually move here, in the summer. She liked Yellowknife so much, she decided to come back over the winter that year to experience the cold (-30C) and Northern Lights. Her reaction to seeing the northern lights is priceless, she compares it to surfing waves, every wave is different like every aurora is different. Wow, I just love to hear $h*t like that!

I know she'll be back to the north, she loves it, and with good reason. Every time I go to consumer shows to promote the NWT I find myself really emotional, really homesick and I just want to go home. I have been thinking a lot about the Dempster Highway trip I did with friends this summer, I want to go back so bad, soon! It was just such a life changing experience for me and I have never felt so free, so happy in all of my life than when I was on that one stretch of road.

Below is one of my favorite images of myself during the Dempster trip, and some of Kristen's thoughts on her recent visit to Yellowknife and seeing the Aurora Borealis.

Jumping for joy, pure happiness at the Arctic Circle in Canada.

Nothing else in the world can calm you like the open road.

The Dempster Highway is the only year round road in Canada where you can cross the Arctic Circle.

Evaporating Water in -30C in Yellowknife, NWT

I'm sure by now you've probably seen this video either on You Tube, the news, a blog or elsewhere. This is me in the video and my Aussie friend Kristen is behind the lens.

Here's the story: It was January 10, 2010 I had my friend Kristen and her friend Sommer visit me in Yellowknife over New Years. I had heard about this trick from a friend of mine, so I wanted to try it out and get it on film so my friends could share the phenomenon with their friends back home. Their reaction was priceless and the video turned out great.

We thought nothing of this video for the first year. It wasn't until 2011 when we started to take notice on the increasing number of views it was receiving. First it climbed up to 400,000 in a matter of days, it hit one million views within a week and has been steadily climbing since. This video has been on CBC, CNN, BBC and other national and international networks.

It was the bunt of a few jokes for Ray William Johnson, a popular YouTube comedian and has been replicated over 40 times on my channel since this trick went viral.

In the last week: Overall, this video has over 6.5 million views on YouTube, but in the last week (January 22-28) it has been viewed 70,382 times. Right now, the video is most popular in Japan, Russia, India, Ukraine and United States.

It's winter again and temperatures are sitting at about -40C in Yellowknife. This video might hit 10 million views by the end of 2012, here's hoping!

Oh, and if you are wondering if we are making a bit of money on this video, the answer is yes. When viewers click on the ads in the video, or on the page we get a certain amount, depending on the popularity of the video at that time. I recommend linking your videos to Google Adsense just in case you are the next big thing, you never know!

Here's another video of mine that is on the rise with 602,825 views: