I recently recovered a batch of old pictures that had gone missing. It was really very exciting! And it didn’t hit me until I started writing this blog post that all four pictures were snapped using the same camera; my late father’s Pentax ME Super:

“Super”…

There’s a word you don’t see in the description of any new electronics huh? And ME right in front of it too! “ME Super! ME good photographer! ME hungry!”

Anyway, but it’s strange to think of that Pentax as having been there to take pictures of everything from when I was so young until the end of its life (with me at least) in March of 2009 when someone broke into my house and stole it.

Man I miss that camera…

Here’s a few of the shots it was responsible for. Everybody say “awwwwwwwwwww”!!

And here’s my oldest, Gabriel:

I did a shoot of my boys recently. Thought I’d share

Here’s Mason:

And here’s Gabe:

I had a roll of undeveloped film from back when I was in NYC, so I finished it on Wil & Ashley and my boys.

First, the really touching picture of Wil & Ashley:

The gorgeously simple Guggenheim museum:

A bridge in Central Park:

Back home, my oldest, Gabe:

And a little something different to finish off.

I hardly have any pictures of myself. I think that’s true of most photographers actually, and although I can’t speak for all of them, I know my share, myself included, who don’t like their appearance. Maybe that’s why we prefer to stay behind the camera. I know it’s the main reason for me.

Anyway… Enjoy a rare little glimpse of myself in pictures.

Mason took a shot of me with my Holga:

And yesterday evening at a wedding, a guest took my camera and decided I should be in this group picture. I wasn’t about to object to being surrounded by six beautiful women! What I wasn’t expecting however, was the girls deciding they’d pick me up!! Why OH WHY didn’t I just smile?!?!?!

This wedding was such a blast! I’ll be posting more of it soon (I still need to post the pictures from the Vegas wedding). At the end of the evening when the party stopped, the bride just said “You’re off the clock! You can go home if you want, but we’d love to have you stay and hang out with everyone.”

So I did

I ended up mingling with a whole bunch of cool people, playing a few exciting games of foosball and then finally calling it a night after being invited to take one of these beautiful stones home with me:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.

I LOVE my job.

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing. – Charles Schaefer

I was standing steady in the corner of my son’s bedroom, NERF gun in hand, cocked and ready to fire, silently waiting for my two boys to fall into my trap and come to me. My oldest, Gabe, took the lead. “Ok Mason, you take this room, I’ll take that one.” I didn’t know which of the rooms he meant.

I press my finger on the trigger more tightly. Gabe walks in.

I fire. Direct hit!

He screams, laughs and runs back out. Mason in the other bedroom is screaming and running to his brother’s aid. All out war! I reload, fire again, chasing them now.

Oh man that was a fun afternoon. Thought it might be worth sharing

Back to my work, here’s a headshot I did recently for a terrific actor and all-around great guy called Matt Mascaro. He was in NURF Wars, which I’m afraid is still in the works. Anyway, here you go.

Wedding, engagement session and model shoots coming up next, either today or tomorrow.

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.