All of you guys who emailed me over the last couple of weeks – thank you so much for your concern. To quote Mark Twain, “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. In all seriousness, I`m still somewhat alive and reasonably well. I had a really good reason for dropping off the face of the earth for two months without any blog or Facebook posts. Several good reasons, actually… Reason 1: On December 28th, 2011, my Irina and I had another beautiful baby girl, Sophia. Now I`m a proud dad of two girls, which means that Irina and I are not getting too much sleep these days. Reason 2: School, school and more freaking school! I am struggling through my last semester of grad school. In hindsight, taking two grad level classes when you have a new baby was a bad idea. Reason 3: Between my 9-5 job at the University of Pittsburgh, school and family, I managed to photograph two Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and three commercial gigs. Which basically means that in the last two months if I weren`t at work, school, studying, playing with my kids or shooting, I was editing. All that aside, I am probably the happiest man on earth right now. My kids are absolutely amazing, and my wife is the most supporting and wonderful woman in the world. On another note, I`m like the proverbial shoemaker without shoes:) These are pretty much all the photos I had time to take.

This has been an amazing year for my photography business. I worked with a lot of wonderful clients and photographed a lot of cool events and commercial projects. I am also very thankful to incredible photographers who helped me out this year – Jenny Karlsson, Anita Buzzy and Katia Forero. Here are some photos of us in action… Jenny Anita Katia … and me …

This year`s Help Portrait turned out really great. We had two locations – one at the Women`s Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh and another one at the Community Human Services in Oakland. We had a wonderful turnout – between the two locations we photographed 89 people. We couldn`t have done it without everyone chipping in and volunteering their time and talent to make this event special: Kevin Lorenzi – event director, photographer Dmitriy Babichenko – event director, photographer Leeann Marie Golish – photographer Kelli Glew – photographer Jane Alexander – editor Chris Toth – editor Luke Ling – photographer Alyssa Kraus – hair/make-up artist Dan Speicher – photographer, videographer Laura Petrilla – photographer Dina Ciabattoni – organizer, administrator Lynn Ratkovich – organizer, administrator All the photos from the Community Human Services location have been posted on Flickr.

I`ve been working so much lately that I barely get to see my family. On December 10th was my last photography gig and I celebrated by hanging out with Daniella all day the following Sunday. Here are a few photos from Pittsburgh National Aviary… More photos on Flickr