Today, I turned 34. I know, I know.

Old.

I’ve been thinking about this coming year. It represents a lot of milestones in my life. Things are changing a lot for amy and me, in so many respects. Our photography business is growing by leaps and bounds. We’ve decided to take control of our diet and fitness, after years of letting both languish. We’re purchasing our first home. So many things are happening, It’s going to be a good year. Or at least an exciting one. And today is the start of my 35th year. It seems like a significant number to me. 35.

For a long time, birthdays were not something I looked forward to. Today I was thinking about one of my favorite books by Shaun Tan, The Red Tree. It’s a beautiful and profound picture book that Amy gave to me as a gift a few years back when things weren’t going so well for me. I had left a lousy first career to end up in a second one that was even worse. I was in the middle of an agonizing and prolonged identity crises. I had no idea where my life was going, and I felt completely aimless. I spent years in this sort of directionless void, and I literally dreaded every passing birthday. It was a symbol of another wasted year. Then, one year Amy gave me this beautiful little book. Much of the beauty of the book comes from the amazing illustrations, which I can’t reproduce here, but here is the simple, beautiful text.

Sometimes the day begins
with nothing to look forward to
and things go from bad to worse
darkness overcomes you
nobody understands
the world is a deaf machine
without sense or reason
sometimes you wait and wait
and wait and wait
and wait and wait
but nothing ever happens
then all your troubles come at once
wonderful things are passing you by
terrible fates are inevitable
Sometimes you just don’t know
what you are supposed to do
or who you are meant to be
or where you are
and the day seems to end
the way it began

But suddenly there it is
right in front of you
bright and vivid
quietly waiting
just as you imagined it would be

I really can’t tell you how much that text spoke to me when Amy gave it to me. And how much it spoke to me because Amy had given it to me. Because Amy believed in me.

It took me awhile, a lot longer than I wanted it to, but I did end up finding my path. Right in front of me. Just as I imagined it would be.

Today is the beginning of my 35th year. I’m not dreading it. I’m excited about what is coming. I’m anxious, and nervous, and scared, and incredibly excited. So I’ve decided to document it with a 365 project. One picture a day for 365 days, documenting the year leading up to my 35th birthday. I’ve been wanting to do a 365 project for several years, but I always chicken out because taking one photo every day worth sharing with the world doesn’t sound like an easy task. But I’ve decided now is the time to give it a go. I’ll be documenting it on my tumblr. Which you can always get to from the menu bar above. And from time to time, I’ll post some of my favorite photos here. So if you just want the cliff notes, you’re good, but if you’d like to come along for the whole ride, just add my tumblr to your favorite rss feed.

I’ve set up a couple of rules for myself. 1. My photos for this project are not going to include client work. Instead I want to push myself to document things from everyday life, to challenge me to look at my photography in different ways. 2.It’s not so much about setting up shots as it is about documenting what I see, so that means a picture with whatever camera I have with me. Sometimes it’ll be my compact camera, sometimes it’ll probably be my iphone. Sometimes it might even be one of my Nikons, but my goal is to keep it simple in terms of equipment and lenses. 3. I’ll post a photo every day even if the photo that day sucks. That’s maybe a permission more than a rule. I’m not going for a pulitzer here, so somedays the photos might not be much.

I’m so excited about the next 365 days. here we go.

our godson, kian came for a visit today.

It was nice to see his parents too.

My day, at a glance. (Okay it wasn’t today. It was a lazy saturday we enjoyed over the weekend.)

noon

midnight

Abigail is really getting into it.

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I love Christmas. I love the whole season. I love the music, the food, the parties, the bad movies on ABC family. (Holiday in Handcuffs!) And I love decorating the Christmas tree. In fact, that’s probably my favorite part of Christmas. Growing up, it was always a family event. We’d bring a tree home, dad would spend what seemed like hours getting it into a stand and strung with lights, while we waited impatiently to adorn it with ornaments. We didn’t have one of those matchy trees. Martha Stewart would not have been impressed. But it was decorated with years and years of memories.

Every year my grandparents sent each of us a new ornament for the tree. They would arrive a few weeks before christmas, little wrapped packages meant to be opened early. Ornaments that grandma had hand-picked, each one of them unique. Sometimes we all got a variation on a theme. Some years they were all magnificently different. The arrival of those ornaments was always my favorite part of christmas. We filled in our tree with home-made ornaments. Ornaments made out of styrofoam and glitter and macaroni and play dough. Pieces we made in cub scouts, and sunday school. You probably wouldn’t have found two matching ornaments on that whole tree. Maybe Martha wouldn’t have approved, but it was a tree filled with memories, and I loved it.

These days, Amy and I usually put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving. It’s still my favorite part of Christmas. We both have ornaments from our childhood that go up. We open up a bottle of champagne and string up the tree with lights and wooden cranberries, and talk and laugh about our Christmas memories, both our memories growing up, and the memories we’ve made together over the past 10 years. I love our Christmas tree.

This year, we’ve found ourselves so busy. It seems like just a few days ago we were beginning 2010. Starting out a new adventure with lots of hopes and fears, and not really quite sure how things would go. Now we’re already looking back on one of the best years we’ve ever had. We’ve been so busy, in fact, that we never managed to get our tree up. Here it is, Christmas eve already, and our Christmas decorations are still packed away in the closet.

So this year our Christmas tree looks a little different.

Martha probably still wouldn’t approve, but I love it. Like always, it’s a tree filled with memories. Cards from our friends and family and clients. Each card a different memory, and a lot of stories filled with laughs and tears and every emotion in between. We are so incredibly lucky to have so many wonderful people in our lives.

Merry Christmas, friends. We hope your holiday is filled with love and laughter of family and friends. And maybe a few bottles of champagne.

We’ve had a busy year. It’s been far busier than we expected, and that is nothing but a good thing. But as we come to the end of the year, and the holiday season looms, we are definitely tired. We decided we needed to stay put this thanksgiving, instead of traveling.

Fortunately we didn’t spend it alone. We spent our day with our friends kathryn and rami. Kathyrn prepared an amazing spread and we fully indulged. Turkey, and all the sides. It was wonderful. Not to mention a double dose of dessert, which included kathryn’s delicous pumpkin flip, made with homemade pumpkin vodka, and ricotta brulee with brandied cherries. Kathryn will post the recipe for the flip on her food blog soon, so be on the lookout for that.

We’re back home now, a cold front has settled in. We’re bundled up on the couch cuddling with the pups. We’re thankful for our amazing friends and family, for our life together, for our amazing photo adventures, and for our wonderful clients.

Our happiest thoughts are with you today, and we hope you are enjoying time with your own family and friends.

As a photographer, I spend several hours a week behind a camera, and about a bazillion hours a week behind a computer. whatever it is, whether it’s sending emails, or preparing contracts, or doing the books, or processing photos, all of it gets done from the same chair. A lot of it gets done to the sound of Bravo reality television, i’m not going to lie. Bravo is a great station to have on when you can’t actually watch what is happening. Because it’s all the same.

But I also spend a ton of time listening to music. Lots and lots of music. Amy and I have a real fondness for mix tapes, or playlists as the cool kids call them. We make them all the time. On road trips we’re each responsible for at least 3 80-minute mix CDs, each in contrasting tone. And Amy’s been making summer mixes for years now, many of which have become legendary among our friends (amy is a little bit brilliant with the mixes). So this year we decided to make it a seasonal tradition, and we both made not only summer mixes, but fall mixes as well.

I’ve been listening to this mix for about a month and I’m not trying to brag or anything, but it’s the best mix ever heard by human ears. As you can see, it was so good, Amy put on a cape and went dancing in the forest.

I thought I’d share it here, so you guys know what I’m listening to while I’m working on your photos. So here it is, my fall mix tape, 2010

1. I was Married Tegan and Sara
2. Sweet Disposition The Temper Trap
3. So Much Trouble Matt Pond PA
4. Shine a Light Wolf Parade
5. Cathedrals Jump Little Children
6. Cataracts Andrew Bird
7. Rootless Tree (Live At Fingertips) Damien Rice
8. The Sun Melpo Mene
9. Perfect Speed 13 & God
10. Sleepyhead Passion Pit
11. I’m Gonna Hate You When You Go Slow Runner
12. Blindsided Bon Iver
13. Stable Song Death Cab For Cutie
14. White Trash Heros Archers of Loaf
15. We Did It When We Were Young The Gaslight Anthem
16. Forever Young Youth Group
17. Spiralling Keane
18. MoneyGrabber Fitz & The Tantrums
19. Sleepyhead (Stripped Down Version) Passion Pit

Gentle Readers, the mix is so good, It would be a crime for you not to hear it. So, I created a play list for it on Grooveshark, so you can hear the whole thing for free, here.

And if you love it so much you have to have it on your ipod, I’ve also created an iTunes iMix for you.

Give it a listen, and let me know what you think. And hey, while you’re on Gooveshark, why don’t you make a fall mix tape of your own, and send it our way. You’ll need a free Grooveshark account to create a playlist, but it’s free. Be kind, share the love. Once you have your perfect fall mix ready to go, Just share your playlist and send me the link. I’ll post links to anyone who sends one along so we can all get in on the fall music goodness.

Fess up, who here was part of Columbia House? You know, Columbia House. Back in the days of CDs you’d get 15 CDs for a penny each plus $20.00 shipping and handling, and then in exchange, you were “obligated” to buy 10 CDs in two years at the low club price ($45.95 plus $20.00 shipping and handling).

I can’t even tell you how many times I joined columbia house. I’d say about every 6 months or so, I’d rip that cardstock ad out of People magazine and check off the 15 CDs I wanted for a penny each. The choices were pretty limited, and usually there were only like 6 CDs I really wanted so then I had to find another 9 discs, but at a penny each, it was still a good deal. (This is how I first discovered some of the greatest acts of all time. Bobby Brown, Yanni, Bel Biv Devoe.) Then, the trick was to get that first regularly priced CD in the mail, and just hold on to it for as long as possible. Don’t open it, just keep it safely stowed away for a few months, and pretty soon, you’re getting threatening letters from Columbia House demanding that you pay for the CD. Sure, it probably isn’t good for your credit score, but when you’re 12 you don’t have a credit score, do you? So you let 5 or 6 of these letters come, which is a trick, because you have to confiscate them from the mail before mom and dad sort it and wonder why their pre-teen is getting bills in yellow envelopes marked FINAL NOTICE.

Then, when you’re confident that Columbia House is not interested in continuing its partnership with you, you put that CD back in the mail marked Return To Sender, and back-date it by about 5 and a half months, and voila, suddenly you don’t have to meet your 10 CD minimum, and the 15 penny CDs are yours free and clear. Then you just wait for next month’s People magazine so you can sign up again. It was a brilliant plan and I used it to build the most impressive music collection in my high school (if by impressive, you mean completely lacking in direction, and bordering on schizophrenic). I always wondered how Columbia House could possibly be making a profit. I mean who’s dumb enough to fulfill that obligation? But people must have, because they’re still around.

Well, this post isn’t really about Columbia house. It’s about my marriage. This past July my amazing wife and I celebrated our 10th year of marriage. And when I say celebrated, I mean we chased an entire tube of chocolate chip cookie dough with a bottle of Totts and watched The Devil Wears Prada on FX. Again.

This is a travesty, yes, but the truth is, we’ve been so busy lately, and busy leads to exhausted, and exhausted leads to spending any and all down time in stretchy pants that better-accomodate large amounts of fast-food binging and TV on DVD marathons. We’ve been using all of our time off to focus on photography projects for so long I don’t even remember exactly what real time off feels like. If I do occasionally get a night off, I just sit here in my underwear on the couch drinking orange fanta and staring at my closed laptop, feeling guilty for abandoning it. The good news is, we’re in this together, (me and Amy, not me and my laptop) so I don’t think she’s too mad at me for not planning something amazing for the big 10. Also, after I cut the tube of cookie dough in half, I let Amy choose which side she wanted. Sharing is caring.

But surprisingly, I think we both felt a little let-down. Yes Meryl Streep is amazing in that movie. Yes, the second bottle of Totts was better than the first. That’s maybe fine for a 9th anniversary, but 10 years, that should be something special.

So, We decided to join Columbia House.

Sort of.

We Joined the Zagat Wine Club, which basically based their business plan on the wild success of Columbia House. They send us 15 bottles of wine for like a dollar each, and then every couple of months they send us a case of reds. Only the difference is the case they send is really reasonably priced, and I don’t have any intention of sending it back after six months of withholding payment. (People don’t think it’s as funny when you’re in your 30s.)

I got the idea a couple of nights ago when we decided to open a bottle of red to go with dinner and I went over to the wine stash to find this.

What you see there is 3 bottles of white and 1 bottle of rosé that we keep around because as good wine drinkers, we feel we should. We’ve been trying to start a small home collection of wines for a couple of years. We’re not trying to invest in wines, or anything. I’m not going to hold on to a bottle so that in 20 years I can tell my kids I can’t afford their college over a glass of Bordeaux. We Just want a nice, balanced home collection of drinkable wines, so we can open something up on a whim, or have friends over on the fly. But we suck at it. We drink it faster than we buy it, and when we do buy it, we tend to go straight for the wines we know because that wine section at Central Market makes me hyperventilate. Eventually we end up with this exact scenario, a couple of ratty bottles of neglected whites that don’t compliment our cookie dough at all.

So I decided we should do something nice for ourselves to celebrate a decade, and there’s more than one way to celebrate. Maybe a spectacular getaway to Spain isn’t going to happen this year, and maybe the closest we’re going to get to a nice meal is super sizing our McDonald’s that we’re eating in one hand while we’re processing photos with the other. But that’s not the only way to say “thanks for putting up with me for 10 years.” 6 to 8 giant cases of booze is another good way. And maybe this way, on our eleventh anniversary, instead of Totts we’ll have a nice Zagat-approved pinot noir to chase that cookie dough with.

We’re pretty excited. All of us. Maisy’s been watching for the UPS guy all weekend.

This is Amy’s sister Emily. Emily lives in Istanbul, turkey, where she teaches English. She was home for a few weeks this summer, and we made the trip to East Texas a few weeks ago to see her.

The east texas woods are always so pretty, it’s hard not to want to get out and take photos, so we took Emily out for some photos.

You guys, how talented is my wife? I’ve been trying to convince her to pick up a camera for awhile. She’s invaluable to me on shoots, helping make styling and creative decisions, helping clients with posing, and helping me make editing decisions. She’s got a natural gift, so i’ve been trying to get her to learn camera technique for awhile. I’ve finally convinced her to pick up the camera, and on this shoot, Amy really took the lead. I was the second-shooter, and a lot of these images came from Amy’s camera.