[07.21.08] Monday Night Recap
- July 21, 2008 - posted by chicago wedding photographer nate mathai

categories: Modern Events, Personal, [MNR]
tags:

interested in booking? Head over to the the contact page or shoot me an email to info@natemathai.com

• [Photo Challenge] I know I posted it late, but the month’s almost up for July’s challenge! Get on it and send them in!
• [Turning 24] This past Thursday I celebrated my 24th birthday…man am I old! I started with work from 9-5 (I know…I should have taken the day off, but I need to save my vacation days). Afterward, I came home for dinner with my family and girlfriend, and then the two of us went to watch a movie in the park. A rather relaxing night.
  Last year, I made a point to respond to each person who wished me a happy birthday, but this year there were way too many sources! Text messages, phone calls, e-mails, facebook, twitter, IM…I just couldn’t do it! I’m thankful to all of you who did send messages though…if it makes you feel any better I did read them all!
  Oh, when you get this old, you rarely receive physical gifts, really…but my girlfriend came through yet again (isn’t she the greatest!):



• [Indo-Pak] I remember going to helping out with the Indo-Pak tournaments in the early 90′s since my cousin ran them, and this year I went back as a photographer. I’ll have a write-up once I process the images, but here’s what you get for now:






• [Girl Seeing] That’s a very loose translation of what Saturday held for me. It’s an Indian tradition for the groom (to be)’s family (elders) to go to the house of the bride (to be) and see the girl…and so on Saturday my family went to visit my girlfriend. About 15 from my side of the family drove over there, sat around and stared at each other, ate dinner, and returned. In the end, I think everything worked out because nobody is going to call off the wedding :)
• [Summer League] My season is over. Sadly, I wasn’t able to take any pictures this past week either! I was shooting Indo-Pak earlier in the evening, and made it to Summer League just in time for the last 3 games of the night, 2 of which I was playing in (we need more photographers!). The good news is we finally won! We had inter-league games, and we pulled out the first win in OT, and the second one we pulled away at the end. Even with those two wins, though, we weren’t able to get into the playoffs because of the point differential. Ah well, we played the spoiler determining the fate of a couple of teams in the West. Looking forward to seeing EVERYONE there next week for the playoffs and All-Star game!
• [Wedding Planning] Man is it busy! My sister’s wedding is this coming Saturday so it’s a last minute crunch on seating charts and details and such. The good news is I’ll have a lot of things taken care of and organized for my wedding next year! Yay for silver linings!

Jiju and Soumy (and Baby Abigail)
- July 17, 2008 - posted by chicago wedding photographer nate mathai

categories: Modern Portraits
tags:

interested in booking? Head over to the the contact page or shoot me an email to info@natemathai.com

I remember the younger days with Jiju. Being cousins and all, we had a lot of family parties and such, and I still hear him claiming he was Michael Jordan and the famous Indian actor Mamooty. Now he’s all grown up, married a little over a year ago, just had his first child, and is finishing up seminary. It’s crazy to see how much we grow over the years, yet still how much we retain our character.
I went over to take a few family pictures with Baby Abigail and the inlaws, and followed it up with little portait session of just Jiju and Soumy. They had their wedding in India (and I wasn’t doing international destination weddings at the time :) ), bu really wanted to have some portraits of just the two of them…and of course I was game!
We started indoors for some family portraits:

Isn’t she precious?

The rain let up, so we decided to take their portraits out by a lake nearby…

The winds picked up, though…which was entertaining, but a bit hard to control…

So we took the shoot back indoors…

Jiju, Soumy and Abigail…I had a great time shooting you guys. Definitely looking forward to seeing Abigail grow up this year!

Happy Birthday!
- July 17, 2008 - posted by chicago wedding photographer nate mathai

categories: Personal
tags:

interested in booking? Head over to the the contact page or shoot me an email to info@natemathai.com

24. Wow, I’m old. God is good, still. It was a rather crazy 23 with many ups, downs and changes in life, but all with a purpose (much of which I’m still looking to figure out). All things considered, I’m thankful.

I realize you people come here for the images and not for the words (it’s OK, I’m still going to write stuff :)), so here you go. In the past year there’s been a handful of images from my younger days posted on Facebook, so I figured I might as well post one from ‘way back’. Enjoy! (I was rockin’ the orange way back then too!)

Happy 17th Everyone! Celebrate it well!

::EDITED TO ADD::
Like last year, I was planning on responding to everyone who wished me a happy birthday…but this year I was receiving it from too many sources! I had around 100 on Facebook, a couple e-mails, some texts, a few phone calls, some twitter ones, gChats and a blog comment (plus the obvious face-to-face). SO…consider this message to everyone who contacted me through those sources: THANKS!