Just a quick check in more for a friend than for me. As many of you know I'm friends with author, Bernice McFadden. We've known each other since the late 90's back when people answered landline phones, having a cell was a commodity (not to mention the phone was huge) and everyone had a pager either hooked onto their belt or at the bottom of their bag.

I was beyond honored when Bernice asked me to shoot her for the back cover of her new book, Glorious. She told me, "I need something different, something new," with a blahze sigh as she's prone to do.

I remember being excited and then immediately scared. How am I supposed to do this? I'm just snapping pics of my baby. What if I screw up? Instead of caving to these fears I focused them and began reading up on lighting and portraiture and practiced on my daughter, my most willing and able subject (I am creating a monster, by the way).

Good thing, because Bernice's Brooklyn brownstone is a dark and sensual place, best for writing and other unmentionable activity --- not so much snapping photos. But I set up as best I could, I struggled for sure trying to make it work and after three hours I saw it in her eyes that she was done.

It took me a couple of weeks to pick the best shots out of the 400 or so that I took, but I got it done. This morning, I put together what I thought was a really nice Flash presentation with clickable links and etc., etc., until I watched it and saw that it looked like crap. Not willing to spend anymore hours sitting in front of the screen I whipped up the following slideshow (that I'm not too thrilled with) of a couple of my favorites. I wanted to shoot her coming out of the shadows/darkness as it's been that kind or road for her for the past year or so. Also she's a force to be reckoned with like light, one of the strongest forces that I'm aware of. Light always overpowers darkness even if it's the size of a pinhole.

Check out the world of Bernice McFadden. She also blogs over at Naki.

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I'm trying something new...

I've found a new place to add my two cents called Hub Pages. Check out my first article: Dad: As Easy As A, B, C. Please fan me over there as I'll be adding to it from time to time.

Otherwise...

You can find me with author, Bernice McFadden over at Soul Portrait.

I'm also doing the nature/still life thing over on Flickr,

& I'm never farther than a tweet on Twitter.

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And please, please, please visit the links I've posted regarding the Disaster Relief efforts over in Haiti. Aid is getting there in the most feasible, reasonable manner as quickly as humanly possible considering the conditions. But this means nothing to a group of people without food, water, shelter, clothing and hope. As of this morning an aftershock hit the nation and registered 6.1 on the Richter Scale.

The aid has to keep coming even after it ceases to be "the right thing to do."

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My life changed forever on January 14, 2006 at 7:04am. You could say the change wasn't sudden since it began nine or eight months earlier when God plopped my daughter into my wife's belly... (I know this is incredibly inaccurate but if you know how the process works, why belabor it?) But it was sudden because she showed up one month before her prospective due date...

Today my daughter is four and I remember her entrance into this world as if it were yesterday. However I have almost totally blacked out of my consciousness the following:

• Diapers - disposable undies made of paper for pee and poop. I can't believe I ever touched those things.
• Formula - at $25 a can (back then) I was overjoyed the day my daughter began eating solid food.
• Graco Infant Car Seat - it's almost mind boggling that I carried her everywhere in a bassinet. I spent nearly two years carrying around a human being like a woman carries her bag. Don't miss even a second of it.

If I never have to do these things again. It will be too soon. But that's just the guy in me talking. As they say, never say "never."

I've been a witness to many miracles in the lives of others and my own many times over. But the day my daughter was born, I was an eyewitness to God's handiwork and it humbled me like no other experience in my thirty-and change years on this earth.

I know I stated I wasn't going to blog this month, but she is my most precious present and deserves her shine here at the place where she is my inspiration. She is a gift to me for me to share with the world. I strive each day to be up to this task and do it to the best of my ability --- even when I make mistakes.

It's been an honor and a privilege so far.

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Happy 2010!

I'm still gone, but couldn't help but make mention that January is National Mentoring Month.

If you're on Twitter, it's trending today. Check it out... #mentor.

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