This is Jack.
He lives with his parents in a great part of Philly. Their house has a ton of great light and texture, and we made the most of it at his newborn shoot a few weeks ago. Jack was about 9 days old when we shot these. What else can I say? He took a darn good picture!
Jack’s turning into a pretty great air guitarist…
Looking forward to your 4-month shoot, Jack!
I’ve been waiting to post these images for about 4 weeks now. In January, I traveled with a good friend of mine, Cliff, and my uncle, Merle, to Uganda. It was a quick trip (just 8 days in country) which seemed too short, but the three of us all left families and businesses behind, so we had to squeeze a lot into our time. We were sent from our church to spend some time with this man, George, who I’m proud to call my friend. 
George oversees about 65 churches in Uganda. We were meeting with him to get a better sense of what he’s doing there, what his vision and needs are, and to see if there are ways that our church in Pennsylvania might be able to work with him.
We quickly saw that Africa is beautiful. 
We started off visiting Good Shepherd’s Fold, an orphanage in Jinja, where Merle’s daughter spent a few months working last year. 
I love these pictures of the Joneses in Philadelphia… I’ve photographed some of them before but this was the first time we got the whole family in some pictures. We met up one chilly, overcast fall morning. The kids were great: easy smiles and mischievous grins, clearly enjoying life with mom and dad.
On a technical note, on this particular morning the sun was nowhere to be found. It was actually fairly dark, and while I do love using natural light whenever I can, sometimes you have to be ready to use a flash, otherwise the images can end up flat and people have raccoon eyes, full of shadows. Thankfully I always have portable gear in my trunk, and we made our own light!
Sure, it’s easier to wait for a sunny day for portraits. Does that mean you should always do it? No way… J & T’s mother wanted some portraits of her boys, and it just so happened that due to scheduling, we could either choose to shoot on Tuesday (when it was wet), or wait until Saturday (when it was going to be cold). We chose wet, and got great stuff.
We decided to start the shoot in New Hope, and work our way across the bridge into Lambertville, NJ. J & T have a ton of energy and personality, which always makes for fun pictures!
In November I shot these portraits of “E” on a warm Thursday. She’s got these beautiful eyes that you can’t help but love…
Hunter chose the city of Reading to give his senior portraits an urban vibe. You can see more pictures here…
10 days later and I find myself back from Africa. I had traveled with 2 other men from my church to explore ways we might work with some Ugandan churches in meeting some of the needs there, and after nearly 32 straight hours of travel, it was wonderful to see my family again yesterday. Now I’m hitting the ground running once again, and if you’re waiting for a reply to an email or voicemail, it will be coming in the next day or so.
The trip was incredibly good, and I believe what we gathered will be very useful. I’ve hardly even begun to process the experience in my head, and I have a feeling it will be some time before I’m able to truly sum it up. For now, it’s enough to call it a story of redemption, not despair. That’s about as poetic as I’ll get in my current jet-lagged state.
I brought back many, many images, though I haven’t looked through all of them yet. As time goes on, I will be sure to share more of them with you, although I believe it may be a while before I’m able to. This is simply one that I liked visually. I am looking forward to telling some of the stories that go along with the rest.
I’m headed out of the office for a few days, and will be spending the time in Uganda. It’s definitely not for vacation, but it will certainly be a change of scenery for me and I hope to come home with some great images that I look forward to sharing at some point. At any rate, I will be out of the reach of phone and email until returning to the office sometime around January 18, and I’ll be returning emails and calls at that point. Happy New Year!
You may remember Zach & Laura from their wedding a year or two ago… I love celebrating with my wedding couples when they welcome a new family member. Little man “B” was born a few weeks before Christmas, and we spent some time taking these pictures shortly after…
Here are a few favorites from a shoot I did a while back. Even though it was late autumn, sometimes we get lucky with a lot of sunshine and warmer weather… these fun, energetic kids took full advantage of the day and had a great time running around. All I did was keep up. :)
