Heading to North Carolina!

Ramin and I are heading to the coast of North Carolina tomorrow through Sunday. His family reunion is being held there so it will be nice to meet his dad's side of the family. We're not too sure of all we're going to do there other than golfing :P I also want to go to the beach and look for beach glass. A friend at work suggested I do that and I'm excited to see if I can find any and bring it back! So anyway, we'll be gone for those few days. I'll probably post pictures sometime next Monday :) See you all then!

Family Time

We got our new studio set up at our house for Atmina and we decided that it would only be fitting if we tested it out on ourselves first :) Here are a few pictures of Ramin, Chris and me at the studio. We also got some of Jill but I'm waiting for approval first before I post them. These will all be posted on the Atmina Blog as well :) Hope you like them!

Crazy Rain

As you may or may not know....Utah has been experiencing some of the weirdest weather I can ever remember! We've had SOOO much rain lately it's kind of ridiculous. It was so rainy a week or so ago that everyone had mushrooms growing in their grass!! It dried for a few days this week but tonight we had another storm. Ramin and I were home in the office and I happened to look out the window and saw the most awesome rainbow ever. Ramin decided to take a panorama of it and here it is!!

Tilt-Shift Lenses?

Apparently using tilt-shift lenses can make these scenes from Switzerland look like miniature models. Very cool to see!

gottardo nord from fb1 visuals on Vimeo.

Boom Boom Pow

I posted this video a couple of weeks ago on Facebook, before anyone even liked this freakin song :P Now everyone is into it! Go figure! I get hooked on the video every time I watch it cause it reminds me of the video Dad bought way back in the 90s sometime called The Minds Eye - turns out Bob bought it as well :P Anyway, it was all computer animated stuff BEFORE computer animation was a big deal. I remember bringing the video to school and everyone being amazed by it. This song reminds me of it, actually the video reminds me of it. Also, I like those people in the stripes for some reason...I also like their move at exactly 2:26 in the video. Dunno why, it goes good with the music :P Anway, even if you're not into pop music, just check it out, it might grown on you like it has everyone else ;)

Have you seen Atmina?

So I just wanted to make sure you were all aware that we do have our photography site up and running...it's not the official site, it's only another blog for now until the real site is up. We do have www.atmina.com registered but for now check out the Atmina blog HERE! Jill and I are so excited with the progress and response we've received so far. July will be EVER busier than June has been. It's so great! We're waiting for our studio equipment to arrive as we just bought some. Check out the blog and the pictures and leave any comments you may have!

OFFICIAL

Now I'm REALLY official. Here are my diplomas saying that I actually have a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy AND Psychology! I didn't get frames for them yet because they actually look really nice in their little red folders :P I think I'll worry about getting a nice frame when I get my Master's - maybe I can find a custom frame that holds THREE degrees!! If you find anything like that, let me know mmmkay?

My blog is personal again!?!

Soooooo to keep this blog personal again, I've decided to create a blog just for our photography business. The blog will suffice until we get the website completed...hopefully by the end of July. Chris and Ramin are tirelessly working on their own project right now ;) So for now we have Atmina's Blog. Yes, the name of our business is Atmina ~ Photographic Memories. Atmina is Latvian for "memory". Why Latvian you ask? No reason, it just sounds cool ok? :P

So the blog is hosted on Blogspot for now. Ramin wants me to set a Wordpress blog as well because apparently that will coordinate with the website easier. So tonight I will probably work on that. I have also advertised the bunk out of Atmina on Facebook :P That's where a lot of our appointments have surfaced from. I plan to create a separate Facebook page for Atmina as well. I still have LOADS to do like create our logo (it will be something close to what you see at the top of the Atmina blog). I also need to create some pricing brochures to hand out to people. I need to get some mailing labels made and all kinds of fun stuff. THIS is what I like doing. Sure I like editing the pictures as well, but Jill ultimately has full domain over that for the super creative stuff. I just like changing lighting and contrast and such :P I like running all the "back end" stuff for a business. When we used to play school my favorite part was recording the grades for my imaginary pupils :P Screw the teaching, let me calculate the grades! That's how I am here, screw the actual taking of pictures, let me deal with all of the other stuff that comes with it! ;)

So from now on I'll be posting personal happenins on here again. My first order of business to get some pictures taken of my newly acquired degrees that arrived last week. I can't wait to show those off!!

Busy Busy

I'm excited! Jill and I are starting to get things going with this photography stuff! We offered free on location sessions to friends and we've already got a ton of bookings for the month of June! This is so exciting and I'm so glad we've got great friends to help us and let us use them as guinea pigs. Although, to give fair credit, Jill has been taking great pictures for a long time!

We purchased a lot of cute props for children's photos this week. We're also looking into getting some studio equipment and lighting. I've also found some great professional places to print the images. I've been doing major research and having fun doing it too! Don't worry though, we are taking things slow. We realize we're not going to be successes right away, in fact it may take years. But we're willing to do what it takes to do things the right way. We want high quality. Jill is very passionate about art and she wants her pictures to be special and meaningful. All too often we see photographers who just point the camera and shoot, they don't have any feeling or emotion built in. Jill doesn't want to be someone like that.

This weekend I plan to really delve into my Photoshop skills. Chris is also getting me some more photo editing software to play around with as well. That really is the stuff I like! I'm just excited to start getting pictures taken and building our website! If you wanna know what all my free time is devoted to lately, it's this project!

More Re-touched Photos

Please share any opinions about the re-touches. Some of them are more drastic than others cause I was playing around with the ways in which I can edit photos. I still have a lot more to practice on but this gives me an idea of what we can do so far :)

Original

Retouch

Original

Retouch

Original

Retouch - enhanced eyes and mouth (I experimented with colors)

Original

Retouch

Original

Retouch - very extreme colors but very cool

Original

Retouch - very subtle color enhancement

Original

Retouch - not quite sepia but also contrast

Damn I'm Good!

I LOVE Photoshop! Best tool in the entire world and we're lucky to have it at our disposal! Just check out what I was able to do with one of Jill's photos. I adjusted color and contrast and made it EVEN better (in my opinion of course) - please share opinions on if you think it's better or not! I'll probably continue posting more examples as I continue re-learning Photoshop (it's been years since I used it last for major photo editing).

Original Photo
Retouched Photo

Free Photography!

For as long as Jill and I have been friends we've always wanted to have our own business together. I've wanted my invitation business for a while now (I've blogged about it in the past) and Jill always wanted to do something artistic - she is very talented. For as long as we've been friends she's been taking pictures of us together non-stop! Almost all of the pictures I have of myself were taken by her. The one at the top of my blog is one example ;)

So the time feels right for us now to start making things happen. We're going to start out getting her photography business going. She's already good but of course everything can be improved upon. With the help of Ramin and Chris we're going to build a website but first, we need photo examples to put on the website! Jill is good with outdoor location settings so that's what most of her photos are so far. Eventually we'd like to build a studio in either her house or ours, depending on she moves.

Anyway, we're offering free photo sessions to anyone that is interested. We need to gain experience and hone the skills needed to do this professionally! I'm learning Photoshop again in order to retouch and enhance the photos and Jill will be doing photography classes. We are both totally serious about this. Eventually, once I can afford to buy a nice printer, we'll add in the invitation side of things to our business. So we can produce both wedding photos and invitations!

We've already got one family lined up to take some pictures with (thanks Becky!) and hopefully we'll get some more through word of mouth. I'm using the power of Facebook to advertise this venture as well spreading the word around work! Jill is doing the same with her friends and family!

Wish us luck cause we're in for a long ride! It will be fun though!

Here are some examples of Jill's recent photography!

Sellin some stuff...

If you or anyone you know likes Lia Sophia jewelry - please check out my auctions on eBay right now! I've got so much Lia Sophia that I've never worn some of it! So I'm selling the stuff I never wore :) It's all new and comes in boxes. Check out my auctions by clicking HERE!

Here are my items:

Happenins

Holy crap! Can Lady look any cuter?!?! We were out in the yard this weekend and she decided to sit on the porch and watch over us. I love her feet hanging over the edge! And yes, she has her sweater on still because she shivers in the house after we got her groomed a few weeks ago. She's an old lady with poor circulation now ;)

We cleaned up the East side of the backyard this past weekend. What a MAJOR difference. This side was A LOT harder than the West side because it had more weeds and rocks in it. It took us about 2 hours but it was totally worth it!

And then we have our tree! It's hard to tell from the picture but it's at least 12 feet tall now. I remember early last Spring of last year that I showed it to my mom and Bob and asked if they thought it was really a tree. I remember Ramin really didn't think it was but I knew in my heart that it was a little tree. It was only about 6 inches tall at that point. Now, just a little over a year later it's fully growing! I trimmed it up a few weeks ago and ever since then it's just exploded at the top growing all kinds of leaves and branches. I'm so excited because I LOVE watching things grow! It's kind of in a crappy place in the yard but I dare not risk moving it hehehe. We think it's some kind of maple tree :)