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My 15 Minutes of Fame.

I have been taking pictures for a little more than 5 years and it is now that I feel that I am beginning to hit my stride as a photographer.

Last weekend 4 buddies and I met in Downtown McKinney, Texas to hang out and take pictures of each other. This is something we do regularly as a way of encouraging and teaching each other.

On this particular meetup I asked one of my friends to whip out her iphone and record me. I then posted the video we had made to this blog as well as YouTube.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that a resident of McKinney had found my video and blogged about me! So there you have it; my 15 minutes of fame…well, kinda-sorta.

HERE is the link to the blog post that I am talking about.

Positioning A Model.

What can you do to make the pictures you take more interesting? This video has an answer to that question. Enjoy!

Special thanks to:
Selam – Model.
Katie Welker – Videographer.
Rags Kanyi – Talker & Editor
McKinney, TX – Location

Thank you so much for watching this video.

Senior Prom Photoshoot

The other day, I received a message from one of the girls I used to teach Sunday school. She had blossomed into a lovely young lady and this fact was made abundantly clear by her request.

She was about to go for her senior prom with two of  her buddies and she wanted me to photograph the three of them. I quickly said yes to her request, it was just simply an honor.

We met at the Prairie Creek park in Richardson and here are the images that we made. Enjoy!

3 Pretty Girls.

Thanks for checking these pictures out. I more than appreciate your support.

Uhuru Clothing: Join the Movement.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Thomas

When Thomas walked out of a mall in late 2007 not having had any luck finding an African themed t shirt, he made up his mind to design his own African shirts which he named Uhuru Clothing. Incidentally, Uhuru means freedom.

Fast forward 3 years later and the label “Uhuru Clothing” has been embraced and donned by Africans and non Africans worldwide.

A few months ago my world and the Uhuru Clothing world collided and the result was a photoshot. Thanks to Thomas, I was given the opportunity to photograph the Uhuru Clothing line. I must say that it was a really cool experience. All the models were easygoing, creative and professional.

Big up to :
-Debbie, the make up artist along with her Kobi Kenzo make up artists who did an amazing job making the models look like a million bucks.
-My assistants Katie and Ras who made my work 100 times easier by their ideas as well as doing everything I asked them to do.
- The Uhuru Models. You all rocked!!!!!

So without any further ado, here are some of my fave images from the Uhuru Clothing photoshoot. Also don’t forget to check out the Uhuru Clothing site. Enjoy!

Thanks for taking the time to scope out the pics.

Cool Black Polaks

I had been craving to do a sports shoot for a while. Thanks to a reference from a friend I got to meet with these two awesome chaps. They also happen to be Black Polaks which I think is awesome. I really did not know that there were Blacks in Poland but evidently there were and are.

Dennis and Bartek were really willing to work with me and these were the images that we created.  As usual I appreciate you scoping out my blog. Enjoy!

special note:

This past week Poland suffered a great loss. It’s president and higher ranking politicians died in a plane crush. My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Poland.

Down Town Plano : Jasmine

The very first thing I noticed about Jasmine was her eyes. If the eyes are the windows to one soul then I think she has a really cool soul. She Facebooked me after seeing the pictures I had taken of her friend Sirhiz and after some back and forth communicating we decided to meet in Historic Down Town Plano for this shoot. Jasmine is studying Criminal Law and something tells me she’ll make a darn good Criminal Lawyer.

Enjoy!

Our Visit to Croatia

Today I had the privilege of photographing a lady whom I am really lucky to know. She was so much fun to photograph and patient with me as I set up and photographed her on an insanely windy day.

We took pictures at a place in McKinney, TX called Adriatica. Adriatica is supposedly a Croatian village. I really did not see any Croats in the vicinity nor did I hear anyone speaking Croatianese. Maybe them Croats had gone for their lunch break by the time we arrived.

Any-who, without any further ado, here are the images;

African Cowboy

This photo-shoot was really challenging. To begin with, the day was so cold! They said (and by they I mean the weather people) said that it was going to be cold, windy, snowy and rainy. To my surprise they were right! As a result, I had to cancel two shoots, two shoots which I had really been looking forward to doing. Though I had canceled the two shoots I was determined to have a shoot come rain, come shine coz I needed to post a blog.

Enter Andrew the Kenyan-American Cowboy. Well, he’s not really a cowboy but he’s a photographer, born again Christian, music remixer, dreamer, artist, actor, philosopher, future celebrity and all around nice guy. Andrew was determined to be photographed no matter what “they” said. He inspired me to go on with the photograph even though it had began to snow.

For fear of my fingers freezing, we had to take pictures for 20 minutes and then jump into Andrews car for some car heat. We actually did the 20 minute and jump thingi for around 2 hours. The reason we didn’t use my car was coz my hand me down 1995 Cutlass Ciera’s had a heater that im positive broke down as it rolled off the assembly line back in ’95.

Any-who, This shoot taught me to push myself to make good images despite the hali ya hewa (state of the air/weather). Think about it, when things in life don’t go as meticulously planned you have a couple choices;

1. Throw your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care…oops I got a little carried away, I meant to say that one can either throw ones hands in the air in surrender or…
2. Face the challenge creatively and hope that something good will comes out of it.

Andrew and I decided to do the latter and here are the results of how we turned lemons into lemonade.

Jazz Photography

The other day I asked myself, “self, what was it that inspired you to begin taking pictures?” This was my answer “To be honest with you I really don’t remember, but one thing I know is the feeling I get when I point the camera at a subject and press the shutter. The feeling is indescribable.”

I got the same indescribable feeling when I photographed a friend today. My approach for this session was to think of it as a jazz session. Jazz is a really neat music genre, it’s all about feeling, melody, improvisation, and teamwork and much more. Enjoy the images that came out of the session:

I truly appreciate your visit and support. I also would like to thank videographer and artist Sirhiz for taking the time to pose for me.

Thanks for visiting!