The book, “DON’T READ THIS…” is about how to gain all you deserve in life. It’s a guide on breaking through your own fears and doubts and seeing and believing in your own “self value”. The key of which is realizing that that value should not (in fact cannot) be affected by external opinion, if your mind is strong enough.

Dõv does a great demonstration of this principle. He takes a $100 bill and hurls insults at it, crumples it up in his hand, throws it onto the ground and stomps on it in disgust. Then he asks the question “How much is it worth now?”. Of course, it is still worth $100. If you really know your self value, it doesn’t matter what anyone else might think.

I’ve known my friend, Tvrtko (whose parents could have bought an extra vowel or two for his name), ever since I was a kid. When I graduated from high school, I joined his band and we played music together in various configurations (from duet all the way to 6 piece bands) for a full 20 years…. mostly we played weddings, so besides photography, I’ve also been to hundreds more weddings as a musican.

Anyway, back to my story… I played with this software and then posted the image up on Facebook, just for fun. It never get tired of how much a simple photograph can affect people. So many people who know Tvrtko commented and “liked” the photo. Tvrtko ended up calling me on the phone and we had a chuckle about the photo, and about years gone by. He told me a friend of his in Los Angeles saw the image and called him on the phone too. They hadn’t corresponded in a while, and it was the photo that inspired him to just pick up the phone. I think that’s pretty powerful (and wonderful).

I say “some more” because of course I’ve taken tons of pictures of them already, but it’s been a while since we’ve done a real “session” together. Their parents wanted to have some great photos done while the weather was nice, and before the girl’s new sibling arrives in the fall… yay, another subject to shoot!

I pulled a few different images to post here… I wouldn’t want to repeat myself for the Facebook crowd! These ones are on the whole a bit more casual, whereas these cover the day more fully I think!

Well, except maybe for be the The Netherlands losing the World Cup final on Sunday to Spain. The guests from Holland were surely disappointed. It was that octopus’s fault.

Me: “Hey, can you guys lay down on the grass here?”

Dave: “Sure, I’m allergic to grass, but why not!”

Saturday is going to be a lot of fun!

Well, it actually happened… Over the week, I even got to go to Nashville with her where she recorded a vocal track for an upcoming release. The vocals was recorded and produced by Bryan Lenox, a Grammy award winning producer. If you look closely at the shot of Bryan working in the studio, you can see the Grammy just sitting by the control board, humbly displayed for those who care to notice.

The idea for the multi-day shoot was to capture many facets of Tajci, showing different looks, and different sides of her life and personality. I’ve only begun to go through all the images from the week, and these few are but a peek at what we created together. I may post more at a later time, if there is interest!

Luka and his wife weren’t sure how I could get nice shots right in their home (as opposed to going to a studio), but that is just the kind of thing I enjoy doing. That is, coming into my client’s environment, where they are really the most comfortable… especially when there are children in the mix. All we did was move a couch and coffee table out of the way, I set up my lights, and voila – instant photo studio!

After shooting a bit indoors, we took the kids down to the park at the end of the block and had some more fun with them. I think we did well!

A few things that we really cool about their wedding were: their wedding “cake” was actually a pie (Zoltan’s favorite dessert), the fact that Zoltan is an avid photographer himself, and was even a professional a few years back (him trusting me to be his wedding photographer meant that much more to me), and the fact that Sarah’s 98 year Grandmother was in attendance… how special is that!