My kids love to go swimming. They’d go every day, all day and then stay overnight if they could.

Here are some Diana moments:

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

Here’s Mason:

And here’s Gabe:

First off, let me thank all of you for your support in what has been one of my friend Heidi’s hardest times in her life.

According to Dustin Izatt, the fundraiser has generated close to $2,000!! Thank you!! Thank you for your donations, thank you for your kind words of support and for you pro photographers out there, thank you for your generosity in offering to lend your pro gear! Support poured in non-stop and from the farthest places.

She’s slowly recovering and as I’ve told her before, I’m convinced next year is still going to be great for her.

Second, not really news, I turned 30 on October 31st! In sad news however, my doctor tells me I have about 50 years left to live… What do you even do with news like that?…

Blog, that’s what!

Day 288/365

It was unbelievably cold out at the Salt Lake that day. That wind was beautiful on her dress, but not so much fun to shoot or be shot in (no pun intended haha).

Des & Eric:

Day 289/365

Who says Halloween pumpkins have to look scary and angry at the world? From the day-before-halloween party(iPhone photo)

Day 290/365

October 31st, 2009! Halloween! My birthday!

I was out at the park with my little boy when I realized that if you try really hard, you can actually get what looks like shallow depth of field with an iPhone! (iPhone photo)

Day 291/365

Right! As in, “Take a right!” or “I know, right?!” or “I’m right!” or just plain old “Right!” (iPhone photo)

Day 292/365

I only WISH I’d taken this shot… Alas, it was taken by Heidi using my iPhone. I just loved it so much I had to show you all. The composition, the movement in the shot, the nostalgic feeling as if on a roadtrip… Really really cool. I’m jealous! Gimme back my iPhone! (iPhone photo)

And my shot from a bunch of kids waving glow sticks around!

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.

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.