A few days ago I got an email from Pam, whose wedding I photographed last year with Jenny Karlsson.  Pam told me that she submitted photographs from her wedding to Whirl Magazine and that the photos will appear in this month’s Whirl Weddings.  Today I finally made it to a newsstand in Squirrel Hill and picked up a copy.  Say what you will, but it is really nice to see your name and work in a magazine!

OK, I don’t usually post photos of myself on my blog (the obvious exceptions are when have my daughters hanging off of me or when I’m making fun of myself).  But this is seriously the best photo anyone has ever taken of me.  My friend Jenny took this photo two weeks ago when we were photographing a wedding at the Oak Lodge.  I cannot help but look at this photo and think – damn, I look good!

A few years ago I decided that I will absolutely, positively, hell-or-high-water follow through on my New Year’s resolutions. So far, I’ve been pretty successful. Following my New Year’s resolutions I quit smoking, started exercising or regular bases, learned computer animation with Adobe Flash, and learned how to play banjo. Last year, as I was going through the body of my photography work I realized that I had not worked on a personal project since 2007 – that’s four years of not stepping back from weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and commercial shoots. As much as I love event photography I realized that if I don’t start working on something personal, I would just burn out and stop caring about my work. I’ve always been fascinated with Marilyn Monroe and one of my favorite photographs is the one of Marilyn smoking a cigarette on a Manhattan rooftop (I believe it was taken in March of 1955 by NYC based photographer Ed Feingersh). From a photographic standpoint there is nothing particularly special about this photo, but something about it appeals to me. So, as one of this year’s personal projects, I decided to do a rooftop photoshoot. My friend Julia graciously agreed to model for me and an amazing hairdresser/makeup artist Igor Vavilov volunteered his time to do Julia’s hair and makeup. The “getting ready” part took well over two hours, but I guess beauty requires sacrifice:)

This Saturday I had an opportunity to shoot with the fabulous Jen McKen. Jen and Nicki set up an amazing inspirational session complete with flowers, cake, decorations and a beautiful newlywed couple. Unfortunately, I could not stay for the entire shoot, so I only got a couple of photos. Still, I had a blast hanging out with Jen, Greg and Nicki. Wedding planner: Nicki Ann Events Cake: Cake Creations by Hillary Flowers: Urban Gypsy And of course, my friend Jen, the photographer extraordinaire!

Today started out as a pretty good day! I woke up, opened my email inbox and saw the following message from WeddingWire:

Needless to say, I am pretty excited! Thank you to all the wonderful brides and grooms who trusted me with capturing their special moments and thank you so much for taking the time and submitting vendor reviews to WeddingWire.

This is me standing in Chernobyl in 2006, standing about 50 yards from the exploded nuclear reactor. In 2006 I traveled to Ukraine to work on a photo documentary dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl`s catastrophe. The documentary did not work out as well as I hoped – even though I was working with a couple of non-profit organizations, without a press pass and sufficient financial support (to bribe Ukrainian and Belorussian officials) I could not photograph everything I wanted. Once I finish reorganizing and reediting some of the photographs, I`ll post a full story.