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.
Oh I’m sorry… Did I hint towards a trip to New York City a couple of posts down? Woopsie! I meant to say EUROPE BABY!!!!!!!!!!!
A few days in Paris, a few days in London, a few days in Belgium, a few days with my brother in Cardiff and a few days in Rome.
I should mention however, that I went with my little Mason, who is just under four years old right now, so although I really wanted to pull out my camera more often, go in more places and get a lot more artsy-fartsy… Well I just couldn’t. He wanted to be everywhere I was, all the time, doing everything I was doing, including taking pictures when I did.
And I’m going to begin with that.
I know that as a father, I’m biased in saying this, but my son is a photographer. And a spectacular one at that.
Aside from a few not-so-good ones, and hey, he’s friggin’ FOUR, he captured three shots that I wouldn’t hesitate to put in my portfolio, HAD THEY BEEN MINE!!
What REALLY blows my mind though, is that whenever he would take pictures, I could see him searching for an image. He wouldn’t be content with snapping a picture of whatever, I could see him aiming the camera at his surroundings, actually searching for what he considered a good image, never taking a shot until he’d found it, then he would really pause and take the care to not shake while hitting the shutter button.
Dude…
And then the results speak for themselves. Just LOOK at the composition on those!! Are you friggin’ kidding me?!?!?!?!
These were shot with my iPhone, and I think that had something to do with him finding an image because he could really see what he was doing as he was doing it.
Here’s the last one he took that I really love, although I think it was more of an accident. It was unbelievably cold in Paris, and that night was colder than that. This was an attempted shot at the Eiffel Tower. I didn’t have a tripod and in my shots remained as still as I possibly could and set the camera on as stable an object as I could, but I don’t think Mason realized the camera had been set to such a slow shutter speed, so after he felt the camera shutter open, he figured he’d taken the picture, and started bringing the camera down.
Accident or not, that’s cool:
Ok, onto the rest. I’m not going to differentiate between my Canon shots and my iPhone shots and I’m going to split the trip in at least two parts.
Day 334/365
My trip to Belgium was long and turned bad by the end for me. By the time I landed, I wasn’t feeling well at all. By the time I got to my mom’s, roughly two hours later, I was about to throw up and in a cold sweat. Oh and United Airlines was kind enough to lose my luggage. Thanks.
A glass of water I sipped on and a slice of fresh bread was what helped me get through
Oh and with time “moving faster” going so far east, I technically missed a day for pictures. I headed out on the 14th of December and got there on December 15th even though the trip was about 15 hours altogether… So I don’t know. I’m just gonna add another day to my 365 days.
Day 335/365
The next day, it was off to Paris! I know it’s winter, but I was surprised at how unbelievably cold it was out there…
Oh how I loved the quaint little streets of Paris…
Day 336/365
To my Utah readers, snow isn’t a big deal. In fact, to many here in the States, snow is normal.
In Paris though, and in Europe in general, snow was complete and utter chaos. This is primarily because most of the European countries that had been hit with snow, hadn’t had THAT kind of snow in about 20 years. So I was told at least.
That day, we couldn’t go up on the Eiffel Tower at all, so we went to the Louvres.
Day 337/365
The Passages Couverts (Covered Hallways), the Centre George Pompidou, the Arc De Triomphe and finally, the Eiffel Tower again, illuminated.
Day 338/365
The Eiffel Tower again. This time we were able to go up, but only to the first floor. The second and third floors were still completely frozen… Bummer.
Notre Dame de Paris
On the train back to Belgium for a couple of days.
Upon our arrival back to Belgium, we went to see some friends for dinner. Mason got to play with their parrot, who apparently doesn’t take kindly to strangers. Not with Mason! Our friends were very surprised and Mason had a blast.
Day 339/365
Mason watching the giant snowflakes coming down in my old home.
Day 340/365
I missed the second day of being in Belgium. This was the last time I forgot to shoot for the 365 project. So I think the total ended up being four missed? Make it five just to be safe, so I’ll shoot every day until the 15th of this month, how’s that?
This was when we got to London
Day 341/365
The London Eye.
It takes 30 minutes to complete a full revolution on it and get this, you can get married on it! They said that it costs £2,000 which is just over $3200. I’m not sure exactly what they provide, if anything, besides the 15-minute ceremony which starts at the bottom when you get on, and ends when you seal your union with a kiss at the top! How cool is that?!
Any future brides on here wanna book me for that?
Day 342/365
Pigeons are tons of fun, especially when you can lure a ton of them to you. It’s not hard, just throw some crumbles of rotten food on the ground and you’re set.
Throw a four-year-old in the mix, and you have yourself a par-tay!!
Day 343/365
We got to my brother Ramzi’s house the evening before and had dinner with his fiancée and her father. It was great.
And then we went to their impeccably kept house. Here’s their Christmas Tr –… Sorry… Holiday Tree. Commemorating… stars… and lights… and glass balls…
Oh I don’t know what to call it anymore…
Day 344/365
The next day, we went shopping. Everything was half-off and this one looked like it was in good shape, so I thought what the hell, let’s get one of them!
Day 345/365
I haven’t been in every part of the world, so I can’t be sure these really were the best fish and chips in the world, but they tasted good to me.
By the way, fish is pretty self-explanatory, but chips are fries. What do they call chips? Crisps… So to recap, fries are chips and chips are crisps. Cool? Cool. Try saying that fast by the way. Not possible.
The UK is known for its drizzly, grey, depressing weather. So is much of northern Europe actually. But what I’d forgotten is how cool their clouds are when the sun does break through a bit. Clear skies forever here in Utah does get boring after a while.
I love the architecture there.
Day 346/365
Another day of shopping. This time, outdoors. There was a Merry-Go-Round. And I had a four-year-old. What did you think was gonna happen?
Day 347/365
Shopping for food. Well, us adults were. Mason was busy.
Day 348/365
I bought a pair of Reeboks on that outing…
Made in Vietnam… Yes. As evidenced by the BRITISH FLAG SHOWN BEHIND IT!!!!!!!
And that gets me wondering, did anyone at Reebok get fired?
A rainy country means lots of fun in puddles.
Day 349/365
Running through the backyard.
Taking a walk through the neighborhood.
Happy New Year!!!
Day 350/365
And the next day, it was off to Rome!
No joke, this was the entrance to the building of our hotel.
Best pizza I’ve ever had and one of the best I had in Rome.
Day 351/365
Rome has some cool, colorful architecture and lots of churches.
Ok, see these stairs? I went down every single one of those while pushing a stroller that Mason didn’t want to get off of. Oh yeah. Highlight of my vacation!
Mason and I took a break, then a walk along a river where the water had receded enough that we could. My brother, his fiancée and my mom chose the road above us. Psh.
Day 352/365
The road leading up to the Vatican was PACKED with people who were going to see the Pope.
Find the Pope.
Give up? There he is! In the window!
The ledge to the river and Mason sitting on it.
Day 353/365
The Colosseum is the epitome of Italy’s past architectural grandeur. You get there and like many other places, you can’t believe how grand everything feels. Everything feels like it was built with excess and more importantly, luxury in mind.
But if there’s one image that I shot in Rome that I would use to represent it, it would have to be this one:
Chaos. Total chaos. I didn’t get that feeling from Paris or London. Only from Italy. Can anyone back me up on this?
Day 354/365
At the airport on the way home to Belgium. Yes, wood flooring in an airport. The Italian police also manage to justify Lamborghinis for some of its officers. Not making this up.
Part 2 along with the last images of the 365 project coming up soon!
Ok, last one before I go on vacation!
Day 333/365
Snowman! That’s my little Mason, grinning next to our accomplishment! (iPhone photo)
Dani, my close friend and model muse, called me up on the 23rd asking me if I’d come out and take some pictures as a kind of paparazzi to an event she was hosting late that night.
I said sure.
Early the next morning, I had a bridal shoot. That same afternoon, I had a wedding. The day after that, I had another wedding. And then on Sunday, I had a model shoot. Yesterday, a bridal shoot. Tomorrow, another one.
It’s been kind of busy. My mom even started worrying when she couldn’t reach me anywhere.
All this to say that I know I’ve been slow at getting back on here and posting something new, but I’m still alive, and here’s a recap of my daily shoots:
Day 100/365
It’s getting warmer. Mason and I went outside to play some soccer. I think he really just wanted to play with the neighbor girl.
Psh! Ditching his dad for a girl…
Day 101/365
I needed an excuse to shoot some pictures and going outside sounded good, so Mason and I went across the street to the school’s playground.
The reason I needed an excuse to shoot pictures was because I was worried – no, terrified – that my camera wasn’t focusing properly anymore… Two days before back to back weddings…
This test didn’t reassure me at all…
Day 102/365
But then on the paparazzi shoot Dani asked me to come to, it was fine. Razor sharp. In really terrible low-light conditions no less. Whew!
The paparazzi thing was an event where Dani and other local models were supposed to pretend being big Hollywood stars and I along with a bunch of other local photographers were supposed to act as the scum of the earth; the paparazzi.
Thanks, Dani. Great friend you are.
What I discovered was that I’m a terrible paparazzi on a number of levels.
First, I couldn’t get myself to yell out random questions. Not because I was too shy, but because I simply couldn’t think of a single thing to ask.
Second, I couldn’t bring myself to use any of the really, truly, colossaly ugly shots that the real paparazzi regularly throw into magazines. You know the shots. Ugly flash, shiny skin, shadows behind the celebrities. Yeah. Ugly. Spectacularly ugly.
Finally, I really sucked as a paparazzi because I found it more interesting to shoot pictures of the mass of photographers falling over themselves trying to get the best shot than taking pictures of the celebrities themselves. My camera was pointed in the wrong direction. I didn’t do that more than a couple of times, but I noticed some stares when I did do it.
I’d post the pictures of that mass of photographers, but those shots sucked too.
It’s hard to keep up on the blog on a daily basis when a single event gives me just under 2000 pictures to work on.
If I were just looking for that one perfect shot, like a model shoot, it wouldn’t be so hard. But weddings don’t have the same dynamic as model shoots. Not for me anyway.
Day 69/365
Here are the best 17 shots of the wedding. I picked 51 shots to build a new sample album (12×12), but these are the 17 I felt were the strongest while still telling the story of the wedding day.
Day 70/365
My son’s 3rd birthday was the day I shot the wedding, so we celebrated with cake and ice-cream the day after.
I’m posting an awesome female model shoot tomorrow along with a few more of my daily shots, so stay tuned for that!
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.
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.
