Beauty is Truth » portraits

saad and mahroo: family-to-be session

beautyis — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:48:55 +0000

i shot them and he shot us … or, my husband and i got together with the madly talented husband-wife team at s2s photography, whose wedding i helped shoot back in february of 2009, and we took pictures of each other’s families. now, mahroo, with whom i grew up in the raleigh muslim community, is expecting their first child next month. i couldn’t be more excited to see these two become parents, inshallah! i must add that these two met us (at the j.c. raulston arboretum in raleigh) the morning after shooting a loooong wedding, so, saad and mahroo, i thank you for being troupers and coming out to meet us anyway!
my family’s shoot is up on s2s’s blog here. can’t wait to meet your baby inshallah!

Protected: iqbal family: virginia portrait photography

beautyis — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 01:41:12 +0000

Protected: the ameen family: maryland portrait photography

beautyis — Mon, 17 May 2010 17:01:14 +0000

Protected: family pictures: maryland portrait photography

beautyis — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:23:25 +0000

wintry portraits

beautyis — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:22:35 +0000

i had an unexpected chance to meet these three lovely sisters today in gaithersburg, in the kentlands area, and take their pictures on the one day of gorgeous sunlight, just-above-freezing weather, and just-barely-passable road conditions that could have made a portrait session possible. yesterday, no roads, tomorrow, more snow – but today? beautiful! thanks so much for contacting me, ladies; it was my pleasure to work with you, and hopefully you’ll get to see the rest of the shoot very soon!

happy new year!

beautyis — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 08:50:13 +0000

okay, so i’m not much of a new year’s person, to be honest. BUT, i do love good times with good friends, and i happen to have a bunch of gorgeous, unbelievably photogenic friends who are really good sports with me and my camera… so i took my equipment over to my friend humera’s house tonight to get some portraits of the people i love. my plan was to practice doing some off-camera lighting… but i’ve only succeeded in realizing even more how much i have to learn about it, so there’s only, like, one shot in here with flash. otherwise… i mean, i was shooting with a canon 35mm 1.4L wide open on a 5D at ISO 1000… why even bother with the flash?? have i mentioned before how much i love this lens?!
humera, jawad, aatif, rubina, shaf, imran, and my growing family hassan, rabiah, issa baba and baby imani – thanks so much for a wonderful evening!

couple shoot: tilt-shift experiment I

beautyis — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:27:06 +0000

the setting was sweet: georgetown, late afternoon, an unseasonably warm and sunny november day with a startlingly blue sky echoed in the potomac. the equipment was exciting: i rented a tilt-shift lens (canon 45mm 2.8 ts-e), which (from what i understand) is intended to offer advantages in architectural photography related to perspective and depth of field, but also makes for fantastically dreamy kinds of portraits and i wanted to try my hand at this after seeing many photographers i admire use it regularly, even for weddings. and the couple? perfect! well… don’t take my word for it, please adore their cuteness yourself

maryam: two months old!

beautyis — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 05:26:18 +0000

wow… i think maryam is actually almost three months old at this point! it’s taken me a while to get these pics up; my family visited canada last week (niagara falls and toronto), and i haven’t even been through those pics yet!
but i did want to share these few at least! maryam grows more adorable each time, mashallah, and i absolutely loved the green shalwar kameez that her grandmother made for her this time! any smiles you see in these pictures (we had to work hard on them!) are mainly the result of her two uncles telling her crazy stories and trying to make her laugh i can’t wait for the next session!

baby teaser

beautyis — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:01:25 +0000

i have a bit of a backlog and am still working on the last wedding i shot, but i did take maryam’s two-month-old baby pics yesterday and wanted to share at least one favorite i picked out to play with when i should have been doing something else!! she is sooooooooo cute, mashallah! and we had a little conversation this time, yes we did
much more to come…

maryam: one month old

beautyis — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:42:50 +0000

when sara contacted me about taking maryam’s one-month-old pictures, i couldn’t believe it had already been a month since i shot her aqeeqa! it was so amazing to see how much she had changed already! she started off with plenty of smiles and she really seemed to like the camera… at first, at least. we had a great time, but we wore her out – as you’ll see at the bottom of the post. i had forgotten how expressive and curious even such young babies can be – and i finally got to hold her this time! i’m so excited to be able to not only see, but to capture the changes as maryam goes through the incredible journey of a baby’s first year of life. plus, i get to hang out with her mom at least once a month!
since we did this shoot at my house, because i’m currently carless, we did have to negotiate around my son and his toys; in the end i tried to have musa lie down for a few portraits too – so… i’m just gonna throw a couple of those in at the bottom, too
here she is: