Rebranding and Relaxing
- September 26, 2009 -
As most of you know, I’ve had some big changes in my life recently (ie. getting married about 6 weeks ago), and taking a little time off game me moments to plan out for the upcoming year. I’m expecting some big things in 2010, and I really wanted to push my own creative boundaries in the process. In addition to just a business-perspective change and such, I thought it was about time to bring on a little bit of a new look. For those of you who are reading this on facebook or in your favorite rss reader, then you probably haven’t noticed anything, but I re-tweaked my site for an bit of an updated new look! Go there to check it out!
For starters, I’ve got a new color! The color actually came when I started to furnish my new office (which I’ll post pics of soon), and the lime green just fell into place. It’s that little burst of energy that I think I needed.
So the look is just the beginning of changes to come up from this time moving forward. The other major thing you’ll notice is the new branding on my images. You like? I do!
Enough about branding, this past weekend, I had the pleasure of going on a ‘family vacation’ with my wife’s immediate family. 9 adults, 4 children, and a lakehouse in Wisconsin for the weekend was a great time for me to get acclimated with the family better, and for them to get used to me. There weren’t any huge activities planned out, which was good as things were pretty chill most of the weekend and I was able to catch a breather as well.
Most of our time was spent in the basement of the house, as there was table tennis, a billiards table, and foosball to keep us occupied for most of the time. Here’s a little frame-by-frame of my intense battle with my father-in-law :)
The house was right on the lake, so we went down there a couple times for some fishing and a little water fun. My father-in-law loves to fish, so he was out there early every morning, and I caught a few as well! The house also had a paddle boat, so some of the family took the kids around the lake. However, my wife’s team had a few issues and needed to get ‘rescued’, and you can see the a video clip below…
I’ve posted a handful more on my personal facebook page, so feel free to ‘friend’ me and check those out as well. All in all, a nice weekend with family, and a great escape. I’m back at editing and getting ready for a busy October! Thanks so much for all of your patience during this past month as we got settled into married life, but you’ll definitely be hearing more of me now! :)
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | 
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[2009.09.14] Monday Night Recap
- September 14, 2009 -
- [Da Bears] Wow, that was a rough one. Cutler threw 4 picks (3 of which looked like he thought he was supposed to throw to Green Bay), Forte couldn’t really get anywhere, and to top it all of, Urlacher is out for the season. But I won’t jump off the bandwagon just yet. If there was an upside though, I’m pretty impressed with the speed of Johnny Knox. And Devin Hester looks like a much better receiver than he did a year ago (though he still runs sideline to sideline on kick returns instead of end-zone to end-zone).
- [Fantasy] Seriously had a rough first week for my fantasy squad. Every single player underperformed which basically lost it for me. Here are some issues that I ran into:
- Bernard Berrian has been out with a hamstring injury, so he has not practiced with Favre yet- he scored 0 points.
- The Ravens D got me a total of 3 points…seriously?!
- Adam Vinatieri didn’t even attempt a FG
- it also didn’t help that I was going up against MJD, Tom Brady, and the Giants D the way they performed this weekend.
- [Budgeting] I’ve been using Mint.com for my personal money management for a few years now, and news just got out the Intuit bought it. I’m still not sure how things will change yet- I’m not too fond of the Quicken online version, but their desktop software is great, so hopefully it blends beautifully.
- [Glee] The first season of Glee is FINALLY starting up. For those who never heard of it, it pretty just follows high school students as they try to resurrect their Glee club, and they have some amazing cover songs already. Definitely got it added to my hulu queue. For the record, I’ve never been in any choirs or vocal groups (outside of the church choir that didn’t cut anyone when I was trying out, and an acappella group that I helped start), but this definitely made me wish I could sing iwth others again. Oh well!
- [Kanye] Seriously? The man puts out hits like none other, but his VMA stunt was a bit immature, if you ask me (yet on point with what we’ve seen from Kanye in the past).
- [Picture] You want one? Check yesterday’s post from the weekend wedding! :)
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
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Rolly + Ben : teaser
- September 13, 2009 -
Are you kidding me? These two set off the night yesterday! The party was definitely popping all day, but here’s a quick pre-wedding portrait tease of just the girls- enjoy!
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | filed under: Modern Weddings belvidere banquets, chicago wedding photographers, christ church of oak brook, elk grove village, illinois, oak brook, wedding No Comments | add a comment
[2009.09.07] Monday Night Recap
- September 7, 2009 -
- [Labor Day] Happy Labor Day! Did you know the holiday originated in Canada out of labor disputes? Wikipedia has all the info! :)
- [Grill Off] Today I had a Labor Day lunch at my sister’s place, which was more than just a lunch. We held a special grill-off between my brother-in-law, brother-in-law’s brother, and my dad. Their job was to make burgers- starting with just ground beef, they seasoned and and designed their dishes as if they were competing a Top Chef. The real joy: myself and my other brother-in-law were the judges! Our burgers were specially made and plated, as they were going to be judged based on 3 criteria: Presentation, Taste, and Originality. When all was said and done, my brother-in-law came away the big winner. Looking forward to judging more of these events in the future. :)
- [Wedding Pics] Remember how 3 weeks ago I got married? And last week I posted images from the honeymoon in Jamaica? Well, it just keeps getting better because Kenny Kim just gave us our images this weekend! I mean, seriously!?! He is the man! Big ups to Kenny, David Lai, and Abbie Carter for working with us and getting us some great images from the day- we are more than satisfied! He’s posted a few on his blog and on facebook, so be sure to check it out! You can see a slideshow of the images here, as well.
- [1frame] So I decided to start with another little personal project right now. I call it “1frame“. On my blog, in my galleries, up on facebook, I show so many images to tell the story of a day. But to challenge myself and my creativity, I asked myself- ‘if I was limited to one frame and a few words, would I still be able to tell a good story?’ And that is what my goal is with “1frame”. I want to continue telling a compelling story, but with fewer words and just one image. So if you’d like to follow along on this little personal project, head over to my 1frame site: http://1frame.natemathai.com/ .
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | filed under: Modern Weddings, [MNR] chicago wedding photographers No Comments | add a comment
The Odirakallumkal Family : teaser
- September 7, 2009 -
My love is still with weddings and e-sessions, but its always a blast to get a fun family every now and then! Here’s a quick tease from yesterday’s session (and this was just within the first few minutes of shooting!):
Happy Labor Day everyone!
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | filed under: Family Lifestyle Sessions, Modern Portraits chicago wedding photographers, devonshire park, family, illinois, lifestyle, skokieBaby Evan : Portraits
- September 3, 2009 -
Although I ‘officially’ took the month of August off, I did manage to make a quick trip to photograph some portraits of the newborn baby Evan. You might remember the family from their family session last year. They now have a new edition, so I jumped at the chance to take some quick pics for them.
I don’t think he initially cared for the shoot, but big sister Izzy helped calm him down.
Of course, we couldn’t just be taking pictures of the hands and feet of Evan, so we finished off with this one of Izzy-
It was my pleasure to come and serve your family in this way- a great break in the midst of the madness of wedding planning! :) I’m looking forward to watching Evan grow up through this years!
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | filed under: Children and Newborn Sessions, Modern Portraits chicago wedding photographers, family, hoffman estates, illinois, lifestyle, newbornI’m Back!
- September 1, 2009 -
- [Vacation Complete] As most of you know, I got married this past August 15th, and so I took a break from photography for the month of August to give my attention to that. I did take care of a few e-mails here and there, but that was about it. I must say, it felt great to just let go of it all for 1 month, but I’m so excited to jump back in! I start shooting again this coming weekend, and still have some shoots to edit/post and albums to design. So clients, I’m back and ready to go! I also finally have internet at my new place, so I’ll be much better at responding to inquiries and e-mails now, so keep ‘em coming. :) I skipped a Monday Night Recap for the past few weeks, but this will be a long “Tuesday Morning Recap” instead.
- [Wedding] The wedding was great, but definitely flew by. Massive amounts of props to Kenny Kim and his team for covering the event- he was up at around 4am with an early start at my wife’s place since we had a morning wedding, then pushed straight through the afternoon reception. We’re so excited to see the images that he was able to capture that day, but now it’s just a waiting game. He did post a quick teaser for us the day after the wedding, so here’s a pic of my beautiful bride during the ceremony:
My wife told my I was not allowed to have my iPhone on me throughout the wedding, so once we were waiting at the church I gave it to my best man. Prior to that, though, I was on twitter and fb all morning :) Kenny actually tortured me a bit by twitpic’ing Nithya at her house, but specifically told me not to click the link- took a lot of self-control but I avoided it.
We had a guest list of about 700 people, and to our surprise there were little to no issues! Double props go to all our friends who coordinated the ceremony and reception without a hitch- we’ve been getting great feedback with how everything went that day, and it truly was because of all the help we got. Thanks guys! (you all know who you are) - [Honeymoon] After a few days of family obligations and attempting to get settled, we headed out to Sandals in Montego Bay, Jamaica. We got there right when tropical storm Bill left, so the first evening was a little dreary/cloudy, but everyday after that was beautiful! We had a few cons with this location: (1) being about 15 minutes from the airport, throughout the day you hear the planes taking off right over the resort- totally a mood killer when you’re trying to relax on the beach. (2) a lot of the resort was constantly under construction; a main pool was never open, workers were always painting/cleaning different areas- just didn’t feel “finished”. (3) The room/beach was smaller than what we expected [but still great]. The internet just made it look so much bigger! (4) Some of the restaurants had meals on their menus that weren’t available. Kind of a sad.
Outside of those small things, it was great. The service was amazing, we had our room cleaned like 3 times a day, the food was satisfying, beaches were nice, activities were a blast…what more could you ask for?! The two main excursions we did were zip lining and riding the dune buggies through Jamaica. Both were amazing experiences. We also went tubing and (attempted) kayaking in the ocean. If you want more details on it, hit me up! Here’s a short glimpse at some of the images we captured from our 5 days there. You can see more on my facebook page (personal, not fan page). Oh, and all images are taken on my new Canon G10- definitely my new favorite piece of gear!
They also had a live cultural show every night, and this one group blew us away! They were steel drums group, and they just played pop covers songs throughout the night. They had so much energy and were amazing, I was surprised with how many songs they did! Here’s a video of them doing Rhianna’s Disturbia on the steel drums…a bit long, but they start dancing at the end…
- [Getting Settled] Since coming back, we’ve been in a constant state of ‘getting settled’. Many errands to run, a lot of details to set up at the condo, and responsibilities of meals with relatives now that we are married are taking up our time a lot, so things have been very busy. In total, we’ve got almost all the major things we need taken care of to finally have a comfortable place to live. The main thing now is I need to get an office desk and a comfortable office table- that’s the one unfinished room. So if you are still thinking of getting us a wedding gift, something along those lines would be great! :)
- [Internet] One of the toughest things for us was not having internet at our place immediately. It was one of those tasks that never got accomplished pre-wedding, so it was delayed until after the honeymoon. After thinking long and hard, we decided that we would only get internet service, as my wife isn’t much of a TV watcher to begin with. It was a tough call for me, as there some staple shows for me (sports on ESPN, CSN, TNT, America’s Best Dance Crew, Lie To Me…) that I won’t be able to catch anymore, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Instead, I’ve set up a boxee/hulu/mediacenter box connected to the TV, so we’ll see how this works out.
- [Repurposing] First, I took a really old HP desktop (late 90′s) I had, completely wiped it clean, then just put an OS on it and connected my printer/scanner to it in the office. I set this one up as a print server so we can run any print jobs through it from wherever we are at (my wife appreciates it). I also set up a network drive for all scan jobs so they are available on all computers. Little things like this make life so much more efficient.
Then I took my old Vaio desktop (early 00′s), put Hulu and Boxee on it, and connected it to my TV. I still have quite a few files/folders on there I need to backup, but this will soon become our media center. I need to transfer all our audio files to it, and then it will be the hub for all audio/video. If I start hosting clients over, I’ll have a direct link for client images for easy viewing on the big screen as well! The hulu/boxee setup allows us to now catch up on cable shows, just a day or so after it airs. This definitely will make not having cable internet easier. So far, so good. The only main issue now, is that I only get live sports on CBS, NBC, ABC, WGN, FOX…I get most bears games, but now only a handful of Cubs/Bulls games. And no more World Series of Poker. I digress, I think I’ll be able can handle it.
Oh, I also brought along my old NES. That’s right, the original Nintendo Entertainment System. I went vintage with my entertainment. I need to buy another controller and maybe pick up a few games here and there, but you can never get enough of the classics! - [ABDC] Last night, the wife and I caught up on America’s Best Dance Crew (through MTV.com, as it’s not on Hulu). I haven’t been as vocal about this season as in years past for 2 reasons: (1) I was too busy with wedding planning/marriage/honeymoon that I never really had time and (2) the crews this year are terrible. Terrible might be a gross overstatement, but compared to the last 3 seasons, none of these crews jump out at me as being extremely creative and on point. The two that I like the most are Rhythm City and Massive Monkees- but again, I haven’t been blown away by them. Hopefully in future episodes, these crews will step up their game.
- [Fantasy Football] It’s that time of the year again! This past Thursday, my friends held our Fantasy Football draft- 12 teams, 1 winner. I didn’t fair too well last year, but I’m feeling better about my squad now, as I was actually able to be at the draft. What do you think of my current squad?
QB: Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers, Mark Sanchez
RB: Pierre Thomas, Ronnie Brown, Tim Hightower, Leon Washington
WR: Calvin Johnson, Bernard Berrian, Chris Chambers, Justin Gage, Jabar Gaffney
TE: Visanthe Shiancoe
K: Adam Vinatieri
Def: Baltimore Ravens - [Cici's] Ever heard of Cici’s Pizza? They do $4.99 pizza buffet- all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad, soup, dessert. Drinks are an additional $1.79. They just opened one up about 10 minutes from my place, so I dragged my wife with me to stand in line for the grand opening! we got there about 30 minutes early, and the line was already huge (first 100 people got a free lunch buffet once a month for a year). I started to lose heart but we did stay in line until the end…
And for a $5 buffet, it’s good food! I’ll definitely be there once a month (not sure if the wife likes it as much as I do, though…)
be sure to visit the contact page if you’re looking for a chicago wedding photographer, available nationwide.
natemathai | filed under: Modern Weddings, Personal, [MNR] chicago wedding photographers, Personal No Comments | add a comment
