Blake

Over the past 10 years I have made many friends thanks to the interest that I have in cars. Many of those friendships were made over the internet, on discussion forums.

Thanks to Justin’s slammed Civic, I was able to make another friend.  I spotted his car in the parking lot at Jimmy John’s and asked if he would be willing to let me shoot it.  He shrugged his shoulders and said “sure”.

We ended up meeting on Woodward a few days later to shoot his Civic (9 hundo), which is when I found out he was going to be having a son in the very near future.

Blake entered this world on August 7, 2012 which is when Justin messaged me and asked me if I would be willing to take some infant photos of him.  Since I had never really taken infant photos, I figured I would give it a try.  There is a first time for everything, right?

I drove up to Imlay City, MI to do the photoshoot at Justin’s girlfriend’s (Stacey) parents house.  I got to finally meet Stacey along with her mother and sisters.

Half way into the shoot, Blake was hungry, so indoors he went to get some lunch.  While we waited, Justin and I chatted it up.  I ended up finding out he was 24 years old.  Something I didn’t know and was actually interested in finding out.  I just felt weird asking him the question directly.

As the chat session went on, he informed me of something else that I did not know about.  I saw him check into Great Lakes Cancer Management a couple times on Facebook.  I didn’t know what the deal was nor did I want to ask.  I figured he would inform me if he ever wanted to.

Justin was diagnosed with stage 2 lymphoma in June of 2011.  The doctors said they were going to use the strongest dose of chemo because the lump on his neck grew from nothing to gigantic over night.

“They told me that I could die from the strength of the dose and that I would never be able to have kids after the treatment was over.”

Justin survived the treatment and defied what the doctors said about him not being able to have kids after the treatment.

Seeing him hold his son after he informed me of this made it very hard to hold a tear back.

“Things happen for a reason.  Some things are meant to be.  Blake happened for a reason. Blake was meant to be.”

Now, onto the photos…