Even luckier for me, these guys were from the Middle-East. So the food was familiar (coussa, fatoush, wara’ anab… mmmmmmm), the language was familiar (I spoke Arabic to them half the time while the other half of the time, my flawless American-English turned into a heavy Arabic accent), the culture was familiar, the generosity was familiar; everything. And once I revealed to them that I was Lebanese, I became a lot less threatening with that giant brick of a camera in my hands.

Felt just like home.

To top it all off, Firas and Emma were, as with all my clients it seems, a dream to work with.

Here’s my favorites from the day:

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:

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

Day 90/365

I was the designated photographer for our Easter family party:

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:

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.

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.

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.”

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.