North Carolina Fun!

Here are some of the pictures from Ramin's family reunion in North Carolina. We spent most of our time on the awesome beach and in the pool and therefore we really didn't take the camera with us very much. We're also waiting for the official reunion photos - I'll post those when I get them!

Here's Ramin's dad at the beach house. There was a mass birthday celebration - his birthday was actually today but we all celebrated it last week with the family!

Angela (the wife of one of Ramin's counsins) brought this really fun game called Bananas. It's like Scrabble, only you build your own board. Anyway it was really fun and we played it 2 nights in a row. I think I need to buy this game ;)

Ramin and I at the beach house after the big dinner his mom helped to make. It was GOOOD!!

Ramin's mom, Fatima, and me on the pier at the beach. We had so much fun walking along the beach and picking up shells. You wouldn't even BELIEVE how many shells we collected between the two of us. We also found some beach glass too!

Here's Ramin's mom with Angela's son Riley (I think that's his name, so many names to remember!) - they look so cute here!

Anyway, it was a fun trip and went by too fast of course. Now it's back to the hectic life of work and starting the photography business up. Don't get me wrong though, this is some of the most fulfilling work I've done in a LONG time, mainly because it doesn't feel like work! I'll post more about it later.

Back!!

Phew - we're home and safe! We have a BLAST in North Carolina. I'll be posting pictures I gather up from everyone on here for you all to see. I am burnt, I spent a bit too much time in the pool and lost track of time :P We also had fun on the beach! It was great meeting much of Ramin's family on his Dad's side and it was great spending time with his mom and dad as well. It was hard learning about 30 people's names but I think in the end I did it! Jill and I have a busy week with our photography stuff but I won't forget about this blog and keep it updated :)

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!!