It's been such an emotional whirlwind of a year as most of you may already know.
From planning my very own wedding, getting married, my wife immediately going in to the hospital as she battled with acute liver failure, spending three full months in the hospital with her, my uncle passing away, my New York Mets making it to the World Series, to working, shooting, weddings, and running a business all at the same time.
I can't thank everyone enough for all the incredible support you have all provided to not only me, but my wife, and my family.
All of my clients being incredibly understanding of my personal situation, and being so accommodating with our business working timelines.
This blog post is to not only thank you though, it's also a post of hope and joy. As my wedding season comes to a close, I had the incredible opportunity to photograph three weddings this past weekend.
This first was one that I was invited to second shoot for my friend Justin Muir of We Laugh We Love. Justin is incredibly talented, an incredible photographer, musician, and an awesome dude. I met Justin back in college, and if not for him and his rock band, Monty's Fan Club, I would have never met my wife.
I met my wife at a concert at my school, where she did not attend, but was there with a friend to see the band. That's the short story part of it though. As I photographed this past weekends wedding with Justin, I thought back at all that happened this year, and how it all became full circle. Becky is now on the road back to recovery, and I was photographing a wedding with a guy who's partially responsible for me meeting my wife for the first time. I say partially because Justin wasn't the only one responsible, but we'll save that for another time.
So the next couple of days, I had 2 more weddings. The first was with my friends Amy and Anthony who I've known and had a friendship with for years, and the other with Cinzia and Shaun, who I met through my brother because Shaun is the lead singer of the band my brother is in.
Sure, we can say that was a great weekend. But a very big reason it was extremely special is because my wife, Becky, was able to attend both of them with me as we were also invited as guests and not just as vendors.
This truly meant the world to me. It was so great to officially go out, dress up, even though I was technically working, with my wife by my side as she got to spend some time with me while doing something I love, taking photos.
But that's only part of it too. Because she is doing as well as she is, just to see her able to go out to such joyous occasions and share those moments with her again was awesome.
I feel as if I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Sure, it's been an emotional year, but it's more importantly made us grow together and understand the true importance of all that life has to offer. The fact that Becky is now feeling better and we can have these special moments again is really all that matters to me.
It's really helped me understand even more why photography is so important. Yes, even more important than I felt before. Take photos, take lots of them, cherish the moments, the memories of that moment will stay with you forever.
Because of photography, Becky and I look at our past, present, and give us preparation to capture the moments to come. No matter how bad times get to the best moments in the world, capture it all.
I have a ton of photos of Becky while she was in the hospital, documenting everything through the camera lens on my phone, and even though I don't have the photos from a big fancy camera, they still hold as much meaning to me as I can ever imagine. Photographer Chase Jarvis said it best, "the best camera you have is the one that's on you."
This couldn't have been said better. With that, I leave you with a photo that means so much to me. I don't care if it's not the sharpest image in the world, it's what it means to me, and the memories I will hold forever. A photo taken by my second photographer, Magdalena Niziol, at one of this past weekend's wedding of Becky and I.
