My next door neighbors and close friends; this is the Visser family.

And like any normal family, there are struggles.

Struggles to be everything to everyone, struggles to maintain some degree of order and control in the household, neither of which, frankly, are entirely possible. Add to that the endless list of day to day responsibilities without losing oneself, maintaining some sense of a unique identity, and anyone can see just how difficult the balance becomes.

That feeling of overload became clear when I tried (quite unsuccessfully) to pin down how I could visually define Jeremy. Husband, parent, churchgoer, soccer player (until he recently got injured), cook, gardener and student; I didn’t know how to boil him down.

Then I realized… “Let’s do all of it!”

Shelly, in the meantime, though far from leading a simple life, is a stay-at-home mom to their two beautiful kids as well as a piano teacher.

And just like their parents, when we were all done, the kids shut the door on me and stared. Yeah, the Vissers are an interesting bunch…

But I’m sure glad they’re my neighbors :)

I was sadly unable to shoot or even attend Alisha’s wedding when she got married to her handsome husband earlier this summer. I was already booked for another wedding on her big day.

When I first met Alisha, she was one of the more depressed people I knew. Soon after we met and worked together on a few projects (all film projects at the time), she got divorced and went through a horrible separation process while I watched helplessly from the sidelines.

She was a wreck.

And I didn’t realize how much of a wreck she was until I saw her transform into the happiest version of Alisha I’ve ever known.

So what defines a person? What makes them who they are? Well. Sometimes, it’s another person.

Here’s Jeremy, Alisha and their kids:

And here’s some random model shots of both of them. Can you tell who I’ve worked with most between the two? Oh and check out the contact section of my website. It has Alisha yelling into a megaphone :)

Erneke is a friend of mine that I met for the first time 10 years ago back in Belgium (she’ll kill me if I don’t mention that she’s Dutch, NOT Belgian), just weeks before I came to Utah. We’d stayed in touch on and off during that time, until Facebook came along, at which point staying in touch was a breeze.

Her husband Rick is from Utah, so they come out and visit family from time to time, and they needed new family pictures, pictures of their kids and pictures of themselves.

It was wonderful seeing her again, and admittedly a bit of a shock to see her all grown up with a family of her own. The kids took a little bit to warm up to me, so I asked Erneke if I could speak Dutch to them. She said “sure”. So I proceeded to speak to them in their language and Erneke quickly pointed out that “Um, no. You’re speaking Flemish. That’s not Dutch.”

Psh…

Well ok she was right, but whatever. They could understand me :)

Ok, here’s some of what you’ve missed out on.

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If it weren’t for this shot, I would have forgotten to take anything that day. I thought it interesting that a chair was just out there (iPhone photo)

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Day 294/365

Family shoot.

DISCLAIMER: Both my good friend Heidi and I were shooting with my camera that day. On the same memory card. For those who have been following my blog, her gear was stolen recently, so she needed loaners as she worked to get back on her feet – which she is now; she bought all the new gear she needed! Yay!! Anyway, what this means is that I’m not completely sure these are all my shots. I’m pretty sure most of them are, but I’m not 100%

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Day 295/365

I can’t post pictures of Kenzie’s bridal shoot until after her wedding on December 16th… But I have a good deal of cool stuff to show you when I’m allowed. Put it on my tab!

Day 296/365

Scouting for new locations. Best day of my life.

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Day 297/365

I absolutely LOVE being on movie sets!!

This was from a goofy short film a friend of mine wrote and directed called “Takito: The Quest to Save Rivendork”. It was, believe it or not, a prequel to another short film he wrote and directed called “Takito: The Revenge of Dreyfus”.

Yes, it’s a spoof. It’s a joke film. I mean… “Takito”. We’re alluding to taquitos.

It was a spoof on a largely unknown feature film called Shikito, by Utah Wolf Productions. Now, I’m not one to talk smack about other artists, but these people make some truly, TRULY atrocious films… As if that wasn’t enough, they’ve willfully infringed on an unbelievable number of copyright laws while insisting that you don’t infringe on theirs.

Andrew (the writer/director for Takito) and I found this incredibly funny. Particularly because Utah Wolf Productions seem to take themselves so damn seriously. So Andy decided he wanted to make a short film out of it last year. The original Takito film. I found this to be dangerous, not just because he’s stealing the movie from Utah Wolf Productions, who are stealing things from giant corporations like Sony, who probably stole their ideas from some schmuck in Arkansas, but also because… Well, how do you spoof a film that sucks? Make it suck MORE?… Andy decided to make it more obviously silly (ie. make it a comedy) while making the cool stuff cooler (ie. better production values).

Regardless, it was enormous fun shooting on set. I shot on days 2 and 3. On day 1 I wasn’t available.

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Kim wasn’t an experienced actress. She needed some reassurance.

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Director Andrew James overlooking the work of his DP (Director of Photography)

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Day 298/365

Day 2 for me, day 3 for the production of the film. The last day of the shoot.

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Fight scenes!!

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The ominous bad guy, Dreyfus.

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Look! Kanye West!! “Yo Andrew, I’m really happy for you and I’m-ah let you finish, but STEVEN SPIELBERG IS ONE OF THE BEST DIRECTORS OF ALL TIME!!! ONE OF THE BEST DIRECTORS OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!”

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It was unspeakably cold up there, and the wind didn’t help.

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Day 299/365

My new price sheets! (iPhone photo)

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Day 300/365

Location scouting again

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More catching up to do. I think I’ll be fully caught up now. Whew! That only took about… what? Seven years? Oh wait, no, I’ve only been doing this for 95 days…

On with the show:

Day 89/365

Natasha and I scouted some locations prior to a model shoot. We found an awesome little abandoned location in downtown Salt Lake. Here’s my favorite shot:

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And then the model, Katerina. You may remember her from last month’s Salt Flats shoot:

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Day 90/365

I was the designated photographer for our Easter family party:

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Day 91/365

This is a really easy-to-make middle-eastern specialty called mana-eesh. I’m not sure that you’d spell it like that in english, but phonetically at least, it’s correct. Anyway, me likey the mana-eesh:

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Day 92/365

This is my personal favorite sample wedding album. It’s an 8×8″. I just ordered a 12×12″ silk album about a week ago and I’m looking forward to showing that off to clients when it gets here.

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Day 93/365

Sasha is a truly, truly terrific actress. I’m not just saying this; I know this for a fact. I’ve seen her in action at the local Actor’s Lounge which I used to have time to attend pretty regularly. Sasha impressed me so much from just the few scenes I’ve seen her perform, that I knew almost right away that I wanted her to have the biggest supporting role in an upcoming project I had cooking. That is, “upcoming” until my camera was stolen recently

By the way, you might not believe it from seeing that third picture especially, but it was pouring down that day. Very ugly day to be shooting, but I tried to make it look and feel like summer.

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Day 94/365

I really need to clean out my window well. I saw a mouse scurrying around using the tumbleweeds that got trapped in there as a means to get to the bottom of the well and back out.

Now, the normal reaction would be “ewww!!”, while my reaction was “Oooo!!”

In fact, I was on the phone with my realtor when I noticed the mouse, emails kept pouring in from other sources, chat windows kept flashing, my facebook kept popping up with new messages, and all I could think of was “I’m gonna need to switch lenses to get a half-decent shot.”

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Day 95/365

Seems like a lazy shot to take, but I’ve been making a big marketing push for rajibarbir.com. Among other things I’ve been doing, I’m now listed on AltPick. In any case, I’ve been staring at that screen a lot lately.

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