artalicious

Let's just say the evening started out like this (bonus points if you see what's wrong):



And ended like this:



Ha ha! ok, it didn't really go down EXACTLY like that. The first photo is true. I can't spell and was in a hurry and didn't run spell check. The second photo is a great example of the face I make when I try to drink wine. Needless to say, I don't drink it very often. And now that I know what my face looks like, I may tone it down a bit!

In reality, the night started off really slow. Like, soul-crushingly slow. I didn't realize it until later, but our stretch of building was listed as last on the tour. So there weren't a lot of people coming through, and those that were there, were fancy art connoisseurs. I have nothing against art connoisseurs (I hope they buy my art some day!) but when you ask people like that if they'd like to have their photo taken being "decorated by Valentine's Day accessories," they give you a look that can be loosely translated into "are you high?"

I'll be honest, after the first hour of glares, we were ready to pack it in and visit the other studios. We were sure we'd misjudged the event and the crowd. Fortunately, our friends Luma and Tracy showed up and they were kind and posed for us. At that point, I think people saw them getting their picture taken and the crowd was picking up (and drinking a bit more) and we started having a much easier time of things.

We had some people who felt this way about Valentine's Day:



Though they made up at the end.


Our good friends Leah and Katie showed up and demonstrated the best way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Another nice fellow stopped by and did a wonderful job modeling our "St. Patrick's ears":


Another friend of ours, Nicolette, came with two friends. They were creative!


Then, we helped a family embarrass their teenage daughter.


We ended the evening with these three. Who decided they wanted to find their own props.


All in all, the evening turned out really well. We met lots of new people (and remembered to get email addresses this time) and took a lot of fun portraits. The rest of the pictures can be found here.

I'd like to change a few things about our studio set-up for the next show. We need more art up on the walls for those who don't want a photo taken, but are interested in photography. Hopefully I'll also have some illustrations or paintings done by that time as well. I think we're also going to have to come up with photo ideas that are more creative and perhaps a little less cheesy.

And now, for the gratuitous pet photo! Today's GPP is of little Boo, our female cat. This was her first Christmas with us, when she was still young and innocent and let us stick tiny hats on her head.


This photo was used with several others in our Christmas cards that year. This photo is up in our studio and she got lots of compliments. Though I'm not sure we could convince her to be quite so well behaved anymore.

~JML

Posted in: Holidays, Portraits, RAD, Studio on February 9, 2009 at at 9:48 PM 1 comments    

I thought I would put up some images that we've been taking in the studio (and by "we" I mean "mostly Robert").

First, we had an open house of sorts with all of the other studios and the gallery. We took holiday portraits for anyone who was brave enough to step in front of the camera, and there were some fantastic results!

Here's a great one of our friends' kid hamming it up. When I asked her if he practiced this a lot at home, she looked at me and said she's never seen him dance like this before!



Then we got this cute image (which I took, not too bad I think!):



We also took a holiday portrait for our friends, Katie and Rhiannon with their dogs, O'Malley and Oliver. There was much waving of toys and shaking of treats and wearing of antlers (on the dogs). They went with this one for their holiday card.

We then thought it would be a great idea to traumatize our own dogs, so we brought them over to the studio and made them do embarrassing things with holiday decorations. No animals were harmed during this photo shoot, but I can't say the same for the decorations.

Here's Keira, plotting our demise as soon as this is over.


Aggie gets pissed off. Keira hits the floor.


All is soon forgiven. Much kissy face is seen.


They make up over a meal of holiday garland. Lovely. I launch myself at them to make sure they don't swallow any. Damn dogs.


The rest of the images can be found by clicking here. We ended up picking 4 different photos and printed them out with funny captions and put those in our holiday cards.

Next up will be some of our model photos we've taken for stock.

~JML

Posted in: Animals, Dogs, Holidays, Katie, Kids, Portraits, Rhiannon, Robert Hill, Studio on January 12, 2009 at at 1:15 PM 3 comments