There was a time when others used to run around town with cameras and take pictures which would hang on the walls of restaurants and other places in/around this city of ours and I would say to myself, "I wish I..."

IF we could rewind to circa 2007, my friend Kaboo (pictured above) looked me in the eyes and said, "I can take a couple pictures of you if you'd like." One has to remember that 2007 was still the MySpace days and there wasn't such a great outlet social media wise like we have today. No one had ever approached me or offered up an opportunity, beforehand, for me to see myself and to be completely honest, I was always afraid of what others thought, cuss, I still am to this day!

In typical fashion, I hummed and hawed about the idea until one night out and about, Kaboo corned me and asked if we were going to make it truly happen or not. Since I am afraid of so much, I convinced another friend of mine at the time to join us for the "shoot".

To this day, I couldn't even tell you how many pictures Kaboo squeezed off but I can tell you that this was the first time I paid anyone to capture me and I can also say that in the end I still wasn't happy with the way I looked despite her efforts to clean up edges, adjust lighting, or simply reassure me that a pose/picture looked good.

IF I could find her and apologize to her now, I would (I mean she did get paid), I would tell her, "Thank you for taking your time to use your craft on me." You see, what I'm learning is life can sometimes be in focus or out of focus for that matter but in the end it's meant to capture so much.

As I look at the picture above, I'm not honed in on the fact that I'm smiling, I'm honed in on the fact that something caused her to smile, something caused her to pause and want to lend a hand; from her patience and attention to detail, I've probably taken a few thousand pictures, some with me in them and others without, I'm certain.

I can easily turn to this picture and say, "And so it began, the first birth of Nemi..."