Exhaustion!

Phew! I can't remember a time when I was so exhausted! Yesterday, I modeled for the Beckstead shoot. It was awesome! I'll post pictures once I get them from the photographers. I really liked some of the photos that I saw on different photographer's laptops at the end of the day!

Then - Andy and I tailed along to the evening shoot and shot the other model who came along. It was definitely a great learning experience, but I felt SOOOO uncreative and out of it. I'm not sure if I was just exhausted and hungry or whether I was just dealing with a serious mental block. Either way, it kind of took a little of the fun out of it. We're shooting again tonight, so I'm hoping to "get my groove on."

The deal is - I think it is difficult to shoot another's person's set up. I mean sometimes, the set up and the light is so awesome, you can be really creative with it. And then other times, I feel like there are only a certain number of shots I can pull from one pose in a certain location. Maybe I'm limiting myself, but I had a hard time with it. Plus shooting in a workshop environment is frustrating because as soon as I had "the perfect shot" lined up, another photographer would get in my image and then by the time they left, the pose was different, the light was different, another photographer would get in the way, or we were moving on to a different location. Frustrating - but still a good learning experience. I've definitely started analyzing pictures differently. As I was going through my google reader this morning, I found I was critiquing and learning from images in a new way - studying the use (or lack thereof) of lines, light, and shadows. It was revolutionary for me.

Well that's it for now. I really need sleep or ibuprofen or something. I feel dead on my feet - and I'm sitting. :D

What do you do...

When you're at home sick? Why, you blog of course. And Photoshop stuff. Pending Elisha's approval, I've gone ahead and popped up a new logo for the blog. The old one just didn't have enough "pizazz." What do you think?

About Me!

So - I'm going to do a quiz about me. I think they're silly, but I'm in the mood for silly this morning.

My relationship status is:



My favorite color is:



Right now I am listening to:



My favorite movie is:



My favorite Disney princess is:



My dream vacation is:



Traveling around Thailand, India, and Asia

I drive:



My favorite dessert is:



What I grow up, I want to be:



What I love most in life is:



One word to describe myself:



I was born in:



My phone is:



My eye color is:



My hero is:



My favorite flower is (It's a 3 way tie):







My haven is:



Music

A book I want to read:



All of them!

Blonde or brunette?



Oranges or apples?



I miss most:



being outside in God's creation.

Andisha Studios?

So Andy and I have been deliberating about changing our studio name to something more memorable and more "us". So we are narrowing our ideas down and trying to come up with something creative that has meaning and sounds cool. It is a little more difficult than you would think!

So what do you all think about these three ideas?

1. Andisha Studios
It is actually the nickname we got while we were dating because apparently Antioch guys combine every "Antioch" couple's names into one name once they get really serious. Ours became Andisha. :D

2. Fiore Studios
It means flower in Italian and we just like the way it sounds. It looks nice graphically too. :D

3. Stick with "ea photography studios" and just brand the heck out of it so that everyone remembers it is EA, not AE, and that the website is eapstudios.com.

What do you all think???

OMSI!

I've officially been told that Andy is going to start blogging on our blog. Hehe. He was initially against the idea of having a new blog, but he's been so impressed with my awesome blogging skillz.... haha. Actually, he is just getting excited about sharing our lives with our friends and keeping a kind of journal that we can look back on together. So he's going to be contributing too. You'll be able to tell who is blogging from now on, because we'll be signing off with one of our names.

On to the fun stuff - OMSI!!

Who doesn't love OMSI?! My dad used to work there when I was a kid and I loved it! It was the coolest thing! I got to go in "off-limit areas" like this glass cat-walk over the lobby area.



Anyway, enough childhood reminiscing. We went with J&C who are our new favorite Corvallis married couple! They are pretty awesome as individuals and photographers. We love talking to them and just hanging out. I've become an avid blog stalker of their personal blog and just love getting to know them more. We were all raised in Christian families, we all love photography, we all love music (they like Opera and classical!) and the list goes on and on. It's exciting to make new friends who are fun and who inspire you.

I found the "hair machine" at OMSI. I love this silly device. I think it is great how your hair goes all crazy-like. See? Isn't it cool!



Okay, so my hair isn't super crazy in this picture, but Andy didn't put the super crazy hair picture online probably because he liked my facial expression in this one better.

Here's T-Rex - actually it's T-Rex's close Chinese cousin. Hard to tell I know.



J2 was really scared of the dinosaurs at first, but he slowly acclimated and was able to be around them for a little bit without clinging tightly to his daddy.

However, J2 did do really well with the ABC computer. Here's him and mommy learning their ABCs.



My favorite thing of the day? It is a tie between the papercup airplane device (which we have no pictures of) and the really cool circle spin-ny thing. Very descriptive I know. Here's some pictures of J2 being mesmerized with putting random things onto the spinning surface. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of me being mesmerized with putting things on the spinning surface. lol.

Daddy and J2



Preparing to throw the ball -



The release -



J2 discovering the joy of puppet shows (who doesn't love puppet shows?!) -



And that he has a mouth -



I think most of us had our faces buried behind a camera for most of the day. We all love taking photos WAY too much. So here's Andy doing that photography thing -



Anyway, the day was an absolute blast! I couldn't believe how well J2 did in the drive to and from Portland! What an awesome kid! J&C did well in the car ride too. ::grins like she's hoping someone got the joke::

So that's it for now! I'll probably post more later when I get a chance to look through the pictures myself.

e

Mongolian Grill

My husband rocks! He knew that I couldn't blog about some fun stuff we've done recently until I had photos to put with them, so he edited and uploaded photos for me! Isn't he nice?!

So, we went to the Mongolian Grill the other night with Jesse, Amy (my old roomie), Jon (Jesse's bro), and Heath (some random dude). We had a blast! We just met Heath last week when we all went out to DQ and had some very deep conversations about God and whether God allows for divorce in abusive situations, whether it is better to stay and "suffer for Christ's sake," etc. It was a very thought provoking conversation which really made me pull out my concordance and Bible and do some research. I'm interested in hearing other Christians' thoughts on the matter...

However, our Mongolian Grill trip was less theological and just plain fun. We talked about Amy and Jesse's upcoming wedding, life, food, computer games, and just other random stuff. Then I pulled out my camera and happily snapped away. Remember - I'm releasing myself from perfection in non-client photos, so these are not perfect. It is REALLY hard for me to relax because I judge myself by the quality of my work, by whether people like it, etc. So this is a growing process for me. I'm making a statement - it's okay that I'm not perfect.

By the way, when did "okay" stop being a word?? My spell checker comes on when I type in okay and wants to change it to OK. Weird...... I love how English has deteriorated over the years.

Finally - here's the pics!

The love birds -



The other love birds -



Heath and Jon making fun of all "the love birds"



More Heath and Jon -

Chai tea

So I have much to blog about this weekend (we had a blast by the way!), but I want to wait until I get all the pictures uploaded and I can blog in conjunction with them. Posts are much more interesting with photos!

For now, I'm just going to ramble because I'm tired and I think Andy's sickness is starting to try and attack me. Bleh. So Andy's really sick. He can't even talk. It's funny because it felt like we were playing charades last night. He points at his head, I ask "medicine?"; He points at me, I say "you love me?" He nods yes. lol. And on and on. It was pretty amusing, but I have to admit I don't do well without conversation. By the end of the night I was feeling pretty grouchy because we hadn't really talked all evening. I think I must be spoiled with such a wonderful caring husband who always spends a lot of time talking with me about my day, my feelings, etc. Being spoiled like that makes me forget that not everyone has such a wonderful marriage relationship - which makes me sad. At any rate, for some reason, it was so weird not talking that it made me really grouchy when I should have been sympathetic. Now, thinking about it, I'm just grateful that my husband is so wonderful to talk to when he has a voice. ::grins::

So now I'm at work and I have a sore throat... So if anyone tries to call and you hear rahhsrehaffle ashfa ehdf , it means I can't talk anymore either. :D

Anyway, I'm a strong believer that chai tea solves a lot of the world's problems. As testimony to that, I went to work, brewed myself a strong cup of chai with sugar and milk, and I'm suddenly feeling a sense of contentment. See? Chai = contentment. Actually, that's blasphemy, but I do really REALLY like chai tea. ::grins::

Speaking of chai, we found the coolest store this weekend. J&C went to Portland with us for a really fun day (which you will hear about more later), and on the way home we stopped at a mall (Washington square??) and they have a TEA store!! Isn't that amazing? A whole store devoted to tea. I am still a little confused about how they stay in business, but I had fun sampling teas and enjoying all the unique teapots. I believe I even saw a YiXing teapot! I couldn't verify it because they had their price tag right over where they put their YiXing symbol... Either way - it was very cool.

Just for you - I'll add a picture of a cool YiXing teapot.

I own this YiXing teapot -



And I think this one is just neat -



Anyway, I need more tea and then I should get busy doing work stuff. Ciao!

e