I’ve been trying to work on some portraiture lately and after playing around with a 50mm 1.8 f I think I’m really enjoying it!
Also, my sissy, Mahnaz, has been helping me out with some commercial style editing since I work mostly in documentary style.
Here is my first attempt at some [commercial] Photoshop retouching, tell me what you think!


My brother is here from Iran and he’s here to stay. He was away from the States for 17 years and this is it. This is a big change, I know because I did it too. I have no idea what’s going through his mind. As today was day 1, I took him around town and we ran what felt like a million errands. He was excited and nervous about so many things. I would say he’s still a bit confused and misses Iran more that I ever did…
After a long day of running around, meeting a couple family members, and stuffing on good ol’ American cheeseburgers he went out to the patio and started up his hookah. He looked like he was deep in thought so I brought out my camera thinking he’d tell me to put it away but he didn’t care… So I took a few more.
Everyone, Bijan Benjamin Abbassi is back home.




Bijan read poetry to me. It was beautiful. I had missed old Persian literature.

On to the next poem.

Proud Iranian.