Insurance is slowly (and probably reluctantly) kicking in, our security system works really well (it was accidentally set off yesterday and holy fast response!); things are getting back to normal.

I also realized that I’m behind on site updates… I have a lot of new work that I haven’t uploaded yet, so that should be happening very soon.

Day 66/365

Mike & Blakelee engagements:

Day 67/365

My boys running for the ball in a backyard soccer game:

The door getting fixed from being busted open:

Day 68/365

Belgian mail. They look the same now as they used to when I was a kid. I have good memories associated with these enveloppes.

I’m editing a wedding I shot last weekend. That along with the rest of the daily shoots will be up soon.

It’s been far too long since my last post, but it’s also been excessively eventful.

Some things were incredibly positive, others incredibly negative, and then there was everything in between that made it next to impossible for me to not only edit and Photoshop the work I’ve been doing every day, but made it even more unlikely that I would have time to post a new blog.

But today is my first empty day on my schedule in almost 2 weeks… and I’ve got a lot to catch up on before the next wave of work comes in this week.

First and foremost, the incredibly positive.

There’s a reason I took a picture of the calendar day, March 9th of 2009 (although technically I took that the day after). There’s a reason I posted a picture of the Belgian flag, the country I am a citizen of. And if I had one in the house, I would have taken a picture of the Lebanese flag as well (I was born in Lebanon but grew up in Belgium).

Here’s the Lebanese flag, cause hey, I’m proud of my origins.

Anyway, getting to the point. Here’s the reason I’ve been doing all this.

I got my green card on March 9th, 2009.

Did you see that? Did you see how I wrote that? I really thought that if I were ever going to write that sentence anywhere and share it with anyone, it would have been followed by about seven thousand exclamation points and that I would have been running around town, cheering loudly and swinging a t-shirt over my head like a drunken idiot!

But no, it feels right the way I wrote it. Quiet. Kind of subdued. Easy to miss in this ocean of words.

Because the road to my green card was long and often painful and unfair. I can’t tell you how much 9/11 complicated my life. I don’t mean that to diminish in any way the tragic importance of the day, just to point to the dramatic turn that it forced on my personal life, as I’m sure it did on the lives of many others, immigrants and Americans alike.

But after all the “fighting” to get to this point, a quiet, peaceful resolution, even in writing, feels more appropriate.

So no exclamation points. And no loud cheering or swinging a t-shirt over my head like a drunken idiot either.

The 9th was also why I scheduled so many shoots before and after. A couple of models cancelled on me, no surprise there, but I scheduled enough shoots to keep me so busy that I would stay focused on the work rather than worry about the outcome of the 9th.

At this point you might be wondering what the “incredibly negative” was. Well, it was more of a shock negative than a lasting negative.

The house was broken into. About $6,000 worth of stuff was stolen.

This happened not one week after I got the green card. Hmm. Coincidence? Intentional? Who knows. Probably just a coincidence. We came home late from being with friends all day, giving the burglars enough time to go through the house, take what they wanted and get out.

The reason it’s not so much of a lasting negative for me is that we’re covered, so we’ll probably get every cent of that $6,000 back, not to mention that the cops did catch a break by finding a fingerprint and we’ve given them serial numbers on almost all of the stolen items. It goes without saying that we’ve had a security system installed in the meantime.

The only stolen item which had no real monetary value and that I’m never going to be able to replace was my late father’s film camera. I had almost filled up a roll of new pictures with it and was planning on showing you all… Oh well… Maybe I’ll catch a break and get it back someday. Here it is from the very last time I took pictures of it:

But hey, life goes on, and the positives in the last couple of weeks far outweigh the one “big” negative.

So moving on, here’s a shoot I did on the 11th at the Salt Flats.

Day 59/365

Tyler and Katerina:

Day 60/365

Baby pictures for a friend of mine. This is Trinity:

Day 61/365

Fashion shoot. This is Hailey:

Day 62/365

Here’s what my oldest son, Gabe, does 90% of his time… Video games. It’s hard to pull him away from it but we try.

Day 63/365

Charcoal is the best way to barbecue. The last owners of the house left a gas grill. In the almost four years I’ve lived here, it’s been used it exactly zero times.

Day 64/365

Mason and Emma are just bouncing around, while Gabe wrestles on the trampoline with his best bud, Luke.

Day 65/365

Party at one of my best friend’s house.

I don’t want to completely overwhelm all of you, so I’ll post an more in the coming days.

It’s been a rough and eventful week. I’m headed out on another big model shoot this afternoon at the Salt Flats. It’s gonna be awesome!

Day 55/365

This is the model shoot I’d been talking about. It took me a little bit to get it done, but I was finally able to get to it late last night. This was an important shoot for me and I had something pretty specific in mind. I think it turned out pretty well.

Madi:

Day 57/365

I am a citizen of Belgium. Something the day during which I took that shot reminded me of.

Day 58/365

A turning point in my life, March 9th of 2009. More on that in a few days or so…

Day 56/365

Mason and I often play soccer together and always inside the house (REBELS!!). He’s always asking me if we can play. Hence all the damage to the ball

Sorry about the lousy picture. I’m really tired from all the shoots I’ve been doing lately. You may have noticed that I skipped a day, day 57. I’ll hopefully get to that tomorrow. If not, the day after.

I have a couple of days worth of model shoots, so make sure to scroll all the way down

Day 53/365

I shot a couple of male models that day. The first was in the morning (Warren), while the second was a night shoot (Phillip). I have to admit that after shooting with Warren, I felt I needed something a little stronger. Warren’s pictures are technically fine, but they’re just portraits. Phillip’s stuff was more of an experiement with aggressive lighting techniques. I liked that better.

Warren:

 

Phillip:

Day 54/365

Lianna is a stunning model I’ve worked with before. I love working with her. We’re hoping to do a couple shoot with her apparently very handsome boyfriend sometime this week. I’ve never met him so I have no clue what he looks like, but I trust her judgement.

Plus she said she’d have access to some rich people’s houses for our shoot, so it’ll enhance the shoot that much more.

Anyway, I agreed to shoot with her down where she was, in Pleasant Grove. It’s about an hour’s drive from where I am, so it’s not exactly convenient for us (“us” meaning me and my favorite makeup artist), but I figured it would help get us some new locations without scouting for them, not to mention that she’s totally worth the drive (this is in case she reads this blog… hi Lianna!).

Finally, I think I suck as an editor… I have a really hard time figuring out which of these (and the ones above) to keep and which to keep to myself. A tight edit would yield one to three great shots… I’m ending up with a lot more than that.

What do you think?

Nothing to post today unfortunately, but I wanted to let all of you know that I am still shooting.

I did 2 model shoots yesterday, a long one today, I’ve got another long one tomorrow, another one on Sunday, probably no time on Monday for anything, a child portrait on Tuesday among other things, a giant shoot on Wednesday and on and on, roughly until the last week of March…

So I don’t know when I’ll be able to post pictures next, but hopefully in the coming days.

Trust me, it’ll be worth the wait

Day 52/365

The last shooting buddy I had was Sabrina, with whom I went out and shot at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. It was a ton of fun and the photos turned out pretty good too.

But Sabrina left for Brazil… And believe it or not, arranging to shoot together from a continent away is friggin’ hard.

So it was back to just me, going out to random places and taking pictures.

It wasn’t until I did the Salt Palace Bridal Show in January that I met Natasha Roos, who was just a few booths down from where I was. We stayed in touch, talked about shooting together out in some random run-down area of town and finally settled on today to do just that.

Problem was, she couldn’t find a sitter for her girls… So we just took them with us, and before long, the shoot was much more about them than it was about anything else.

Rightly so.

Why take pictures of messed up alleys, dilapidated walls and stationary trains when you’ve got a couple of hyper kids around?

It was enormous fun.

Here are Natasha’s girls, Amelia & Lucie:

Ladies and gentlemen, Tinaaaa Feeeyyyyy!!!!

Oh man I love that shot…

Lucie was upset her sister wouldn’t let her hold the stick…

So to cheer her up, I chased her around.

I love the message this conveys! NO TRESPASSING. “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

Natasha wanders between the trains.

This reminds me so much of the shot in Slumdog Millionaire where the kids are jumping between the moving train cars, I just had to show you.

I love this. The focus is on Lucie in front, but the composition leads your eye to Amelia in the back. There’s a life to this shot that I love. Hard to describe but I feel strongly about this one.

And finally, the view from just beside the trains.

Day 51/365

So ok, yesterday I was supposed to shoot a model. Forgot to mention that… But yeah, I had another cancellation, this time from a male model. I was leaving taking the pictures of the 5×5 cards for today, as kind of a short breather between the many more model shoots I’m planning on doing this month.

Instead, because of the cancellation, I was left scrambling for a picture today… so I shot my other keyboard.

I love that little thing.

This is a little 25-key MIDI keyboard. It doesn’t generate any sound on its own. It has to be plugged into the computer so that it can trigger sound from within a music program.

Day 49/365

Sue and Adriu are both models I’ve worked with before, separately. I knew I could count on them to do the basics, like… you know… showing up. But more importantly, I knew I could count on them to work hard and give me some killer results.

In this case though, I felt the results would depend on me. And that’s because I’ve never really done a shoot with 2 models at once. Actually no, I did one a few years back, but I meant that I hadn’t done a shoot with 2 models at once since I’ve been any good as a photographer.

I also wanted to tell a basic story with that string of photos. This was just a “fight and make-up” idea. Not that complicated, but man I had a hard time doing it right… I’m pretty happy with the pictures individually, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in terms of telling the story.

Anyway, here you go:

Day 50/365

And then today’s shoot. These are just the little 5×5 cards that I use for my wedding price list (now). I just got those the other day and thought I’d share. Right side is the front, left side is the back.

Day 48/365

I finished Photoshopping these very late last night and just didn’t have the energy to post a blog about them. I have another shoot in a couple of hours, so this is gonna be very short.

This was technically a model shoot, but this outfit made it look more like an edgy prom shoot to me…