I kept hearing from other parents about how there is this time while raising your kid where your whole job becomes keeping them from killing themselves. I thought this was hyperbole until my toddler decided it was his time to prefect the art of the face plant. Now, hardly a day goes by where he doesn’t crash test dummy himself in new and exciting ways I’d previously not conceived. To add to the excitement of his new hobby, he’s also made the creative decision to occasionally get so worked up that he'll hold his breath and pass out after parkouring onto his face. Apparently this is an inherited trait as my mom has told me all my life about how I’d get worked up about something when I was his age and hold my breath until I blacked out. I have no memory of any of this and used to just think she was being dramatic. Karma’s a son of a bitch like that. Now that I have a front row seat to my own freak show. I’m not joking. The other day he decided to practice a new move and fell right onto his eye. Thankfully the edge of the coffee table was there to catch his fall so he could acquire a new shiner to show off to the ladies. When he did this, he fell down and started to cry so hard that sound stopped coming out. I scooped him up and held him close knowing he’d soon go limp. This is when the fun part happens that mom didn’t tell me about. After he passes out he also stops breathing. It’s tough to say how long this whole event was (time seems to distort when you’re in battle) but I’d estimate that this particular episode was somewhere between 3 and 10 seconds long. I rubbed him, then began patting him on the back getting more and more aggressive as time went on. Finally, and all at once, he stiffened his body and took a big gasping breath as he slowly regained consciousness. Dazed and confused, he slowly woke up as if he’d just taken a long nap. The above explains the black eye in the following photos. The rest you’ll have to ask his mom about.

When I create portraits, one of the most important things to me is that I don’t look back on them years later and hate them. I’m never more aware of this then when I’m capturing portraits of my son. As a parent I am reminded fairly regularly how fast kids change and how little time I have to capture every stage. If I miss one of those stages, it’s gone forever. Should I decide I did a poor job somewhere down the line, I can’t go back and re-do it. It’s something I’m hyper aware of, and I hope future me approves of the job I do when I look back.

Today’s post features my headshot session with San Francisco mural artist Maxfield Bala. Max is an amazing mural artist who has created murals for some well known companies including: Dropbox, Mountain Dew, The Hard Rock Hotel, Coca Cola, Samsung, DHL, Lagunitas Brewing Company and much more.

Earlier this month I learned that my sister Jenn and her family are moving away. I'm simultaneously sad that they won't be living close by and excited for them as they take on this new chapter of their lives. Although they aren't moving cross country or anything drastic like that, they will still be far enough away that we won't get to see each other nearly as often as we have been. So before she left, we made a point to get together and try and get some portraits of her kids.