nadiya & khuram: wedding
January 30, 2012 | Filed Under wedding posts | 17 Comments
i can’t tell you how excited i was to start my new year off with nadiya and khuram’s wedding! i’ve known nadiya online for a little while now and we have a lot of friends in common – both “IRL” and on facebook :). she is herself an artist and photographer – a beautiful soul inside and out – so was truly honored that she asked me to take some pictures at her wedding! it turns out also that i only had a few degrees separation from khuram, too – he’s the cousin of a friend of mine, and knows my own family (previously unknown to me though!) anyway – held at the nur center in falls church, virginia, their ceremony was beautifully simple, bringing together nadiya and khuram’s families and closest friends to celebrate with them. thanks so much, both of you, for letting me be a part of this!
aamina & ibrahim: aqiqa
January 29, 2012 | Filed Under baby, friends | Leave a Comment
sara and i go about ten years back, to when we were both students at college park. we still live close by each other, but after marriage and first kids, have found it harder to keep in touch face-to-face. so it was a crazy surprise when she facebook chatted me one day late last summer (2011) and each of us suddenly found out the other was pregnant – both due in november!
however, sara was actually expecting twins! as twins often do, they came a little early – aamina and ibrahim, welcomed home by their insanely adorable two-year-old sister mariam. by the time the twins’ aqiqah (traditional islamic head-shaving ceremony) was planned for january, i was so excited to have recovered enough from my own childbirth to be able to photograph the event. in fact, the aqiqah was the first night i had taken zayd out of the home to someone’s house for an evening – and he didn’t cry once! at three months, the twins already had such distinct personalities – hope these come through in the pictures!
so – hooray for babies, and for picking up the camera professionally again seven weeks postpartum :)
2011: year in review
January 12, 2012 | Filed Under photography, portraits, wedding posts | 20 Comments
so everything takes me a while with the whole new baby and two kids instead of one thing… here, two weeks into the new year, is a selection of my favorite images from wedding and portrait sessions through 2011. at the very end down below, there’s an image my second shooter amber wilkie took of me (five and a half months preggo and looking a hot mess after eight hours of shooting) with some of my most awesome clients – osman and lubna, at their walima in july in DC. and the very last image, i just blogged prior to this – but it might be my most favorite image from all of 2011 :) thanks SO much to my family, all my clients and my amazing second shooters for taking this journey with me last year – can’t wait to get started on 2012!!
all the reasons i’m a wedding photographer…
December 19, 2011 | Filed Under baby, family photos, personal | 21 Comments
…all come down to this. meet my newest, born at 4:19 a.m. sunday, november 6, 2011. born just before dawn on a time-change sunday morning, just like his brother five years ago. born a week and a half early, before i could finish all my editing work for the year! born on the day muslims around the world celebrated eid al-adha, the festival of sacrifice, as over two million pilgrims completed the annual hajj pilgrimage in saudi arabia. we have two eids every year, and give gifts to each other on those days, just like christmas. i can’t help feeling blessed to think that god gave me this gift on eid day… not just baby zayd, but the new brotherhood with my firstborn, musa. there is nothing more beautiful in this world to me.
i do also want to say thank you to all of my 2011 clients who waited patiently for their pictures throughout my crazy last trimester and after the birth! i am of course taking a little break from shooting, but should be back in business early in the new year – so yes, i’m taking 2012 bookings :)
in case you’re interested… the first few pics are from the hospital/ride home; i did a little shoot with both boys when zayd was six days old. at about two weeks we shaved his head – an islamic tradition for newborns – and those images were not taken by me but by my wonderful friend ayaka, who happened to spend the night when i went into labor and stayed home with musa while we went to the hospital; the later images are from around the one and one-and-a-half month marks.
