We did our first photo shoot with Mayz this evening so I just wanted to post a few of our favorites:

I just had to post a photo of his crazy monkey toes!!

Mayz Mukherjee was born on Thanksgiving Day 11-22-2007 at 1:37 pm. He is 8 lbs, 11 oz and 21 inches long.

Here’s one of mama and Mayz snuggling together

Here are a few photos of him just minutes after birth:

Well, this morning Cheridy’s water broke, so we’re currently in the hospital and waiting for this show to get on the road!!
This morning her contractions were very even at about 5-6 minutes apart, but now (9 hours later), they’re very uneven and coming from 30 seconds apart to 10 minutes apart and some are lasting 30 seconds and others are lasting 5 minutes. It’s very weird. Either way, the doc makes it sound like we’re going to be here for a long time. Right now, we’re just passing the time. We spent the first few hours coming up with baby names, then visiting with my parents, then sleeping a bit, then watching tv.
We have a really nice room with a nice view over a golf course. Cheridy has a great adjustable bed which she can move around to get into different positions to help her stay comfortable. There is also a couch and few comfy chairs, so we really have a nice room which is great. There is even wireless internet in the room which is fantastic!
So far, her contractions haven’t been painful which is good, but at this point, I think it might be better just to get it over with.

Here’s Cheridy feeling pretty good:

Today we did some photos of Jake. He has a bit of a melancholy personality which was best shown off with serious expressions which he did really well.
We really enjoyed our shoot with him because he was very different than most of the kids we work with. Jake’s been through some tough things and he’s working through some difficult issues.
He told me it was ok to share this with everyone which I’m really glad because it’s rare to meet someone who’s going through a conscious battle that he knows isn’t over yet. Jake carries two bandannas, a black one to represent the darkness and struggles, and a red bandanna (shown in the last photo) to be his personal symbol for hope and the future and it was a real blessing for us to be able to get a photo of him holding that.

This afternoon we did an engagement photo shoot for Dave and Karlynn. Some of my favorites were when Karlynn laughed and we were able to catch a really fun moment.

The room is now all set for our baby’s arrival. I’m pretty low maintenance when it comes to this kind of thing and I didn’t really care about painted walls and cutesy stuff. However, my father in law Denis loves to paint and he came over and really fixed it up and made the room look nice. Cheridy and my mom picked out paint colors and then most of the furniture was either donated or from Craigslist where we found some great deals. The only thing we need to put up still is the blinds which are on their way. So, although this initially wasn’t too big a deal to me, now that it’s done, I really like it and I think it looks fantastic! I’m really looking forward to getting some cool baby photos in black and white on canvas and getting those up on those red walls.

After coming home from City Mission, Cheridy and I decided to have a “no photo” day where we did nothing related to our photography business. This was the first day like that…probably all year. We spent the day cleaning our house and cleaning out our storage room and all sorts of stuff which was nice to get done.
In the evening we had some friends over to hang out. Keesha and Bobbie who’s wedding we shot earlier this year, and Ron and Amy who’s wedding we shot last year.
We’re really should have taken some group photos to post on the blog but…we didn’t, so here are a few photos that I have:

Keesha and Bobbie on their wedding day (obviously!)

Ron and Amy (when we did some family pics for them last Christmas)

Jeff, one of the men in my Thursday morning bible study group lives and works fulltime in the Brightmoor community in Detroit with an organization called City Mission.
Every year, they deliver food baskets to the people in the community around Thanksgiving and Christmas time. Cheridy and I have done this through our own church for the past few years, but decided not to this year since she’s supposed to give birth any day now. However, my friend Pete (also from my mens group) was heading down there to help pack and deliver those food boxes on Saturday so I ended up going down with him to help out.
At City Mission they give out boxes with fresh food. The people in the area don’t have access to fresh food because many don’t have cars and there are no nearby Meijers or Kroger stores. So, the food boxes that City Mission packs have apples, milk, chicken, bread, butter, peanut, jelly, eggs, potatoes, etc.
There are 800 people in the community that they wanted to deliver food boxes to, but they only raised enough money to do boxes for 200 people.
They will be doing this again at Christmas time, so hopefully they’ll be able to raise more money. If you want to help out or learn more, please visit http://www.city-mission.org/.
Thanks to Pete and Jeff for getting me off my lazy butt to get down there and help out!

This afternoon we had a good time hanging out with Noah and Dena for their engagement shoot:

I played around a bit more this afternoon. I’m really having fun with this and am FINALLY seeing some skills develop. It’s been a long and frustrating road with this program, but I’m starting to get it. However, I still have a ridiculous amount to learn still related to brush work and artistry.

I’m really getting into this Corel Painter stuff and having a good time exploring new brushes and painting techniques:

Recently Dr. John Pradko and his wife Paige opened up a new building to move their medical practice into. They designed a built a really nice space and then purchased fine art gallery wraps from us to decorate every room. The final results were stunning and it was a real blessing for me to be able to see some of my travel photography printed large and hung in a public space like that. We’ve gotten so busy with the weddings and portraits that we haven’t spent very much time promoting the art itself. Here are just a few of the rooms: