Fresno-Art Hop
This was the first ever time when we had a privilege to display our work at the local show called Art Hop. It was totally last minute thing. We were contacted by “The Loft Gallery” on Monday, and by Thursday we already had all our prints mounted and ready to be displayed. Btw, if you any photographers are looking for a great and awesome photo lab, we would definitely suggest White House Custom Colour (WHCC). They are really quick and have an amazing customer service – we were impressed.
We’ve never done anything like that before, so we didn’t really know how many people were going to show up, what they are going to say, and what we should talk about. But it turned out to be fantastic. We were so impressed with the amount of people that came to visit us there and all the great feedback we’ve received on our work. Of course, chocolate chip cookies, appetizers and wine added more comfort to the settings and let us enjoy great experience of showcasing our work.
So, we wanted to thank Luke Moritz for having us at his place and helping us display our prints. We really appreciate it and are looking forward to do things like that more often.
here is what was going on that evening…
Portland/Seattle trip
And these are from our recent trip to OR/WA. We really enjoyed a break from scorching heat of Fresno and dry, yellow look of central California. Its beautiful up there – so green and refreshing! Check these out:
Album!!!
Its finally here! Well we’ve been wanting to share this beauty for a while, Let us introduce to you our studio sample wedding album. It is a 11×14 flush mount, custom designed and printed album by Renaissance. This thing is a pure joy! And with lifetime warranty guarantees a fantastic product for the rest of your life! Of course, to really appreciate it, you need to hold it in your hands…
Justin turned 1!
Today is August 1st – Justin’s Birthday. It is amazing how quick time flies. So many things happen in such a quick period of time, that it makes you wonder if days became shorter since you were a child. I remember it was an excruciating pain for me, as a kid, to wait till school is over and we could enjoy summer break – days went so slow. It seemed, back in childhood, time passed by so slow, that you will never become a teenager. It is all upside-down now. With every year flying by, it reminds us that we’re getting older and it looks like the 30s are not too far away now.
Of course its a happy day for us! Justin is now 1 year old. We’re very blessed to have such beautiful kids and are extremely excited for the challenges ahead of us, to raise them to become good people. So, if any of you, readers, waned to wish Justin happy birthday – you’re welcome to leave a comment…
And here is a couple of snaps from yesterday’s party:
Pismo
It was in the middle of the week, when we decided to set everything aside and take a day off. Personally for me, it is really hard to find time for rest. A lot of times I feel unproductive and useless if, for instance, I take fishing trip – deep inside it feels wrong not to do anything. But lately, I felt like I’ve been living my life without enjoying what I’ve got. Have you ever felt like you work for something so hard and in the end you don’t have time to enjoy it, because you’re really busy? So, it certainly felt like that for me. It seemed like I work really hard to do good to my family, while never really taking time and enjoy the very people that are so precious to me. It is a great experience to actually take time and enjoy your family. So, last Wednesday we took off to Pismo Beach. It was awesome. I got to hang out with my family and enjoy their personalities. How fun it is to discover new things about people you love! Even though, it was only one day trip, there is something unforgettable about it. Something that will have very peaceful, beautiful memories filled with love and care. We’ll definitely try to do it again…
And below, check out our family time photos: my gorgeous Yana and two of our boys Nathan and Justin 
Silence for a week – is it worth it?
Honestly, this week wasn’t even anywhere near a great week for us. Its been one those “roller-coaster” week. At first there were a whole bunch of positive news. Things that we really hoped for didn’t work out. It made us sad and grumpy, another thing that sort of made this week weird is Nathan, or actually not having him here. He spent the whole week at his cousin’s place up North, in Sacramento. Joseph and him always have tons of fun. They’re like noise generators And in fact, that noise we really missed. It seemed very unusual to have quiet and peace in our place. Nobody is bugging you for ice cream, no one makes so much mess, no one wants to play ball with you – kinda boring if you ask me. So, we really miss Nathan and can’t wait for him to get back here. It was also, very unusual to go to park today without Nathan. We thought Justin would have just as much fun without his older brother. But he didn’t care about the swings and slides, all he needed is to eat GRASS! So, Nathan being away is definitely not worth it…
WPPI – convention
As I said in the previous post, I had a great opportunity to be at WPPI convention this year. For those who don’t know what it is: WPPI is wedding and portrait photographers international. And it’s held annually at Las Vegas. This year there were 15000 photographers from around U.S. and probably the world. There is two parts to the convention. One is the trade show. There were two huge rooms full of everything and anything that is anyhow connected to the trade. It took us two days to see everything! I was mainly focused on finding more info on different wedding album makers. I was really impressed with a couple of them and will be doing a separate post on that. The second part of the convention was the Classes. I had a pleasure to visit Jesh De Rox, Jim Garner, Jasmine Star, Justin and Mary Marantz, Marcus Bell, Roberto Valenzuela, and Matt Mendelsohn and Greg Gibson’s platform classes. The whole thing totally rocked my world and got me very inspired for the year ahead of us. There is uncountable amount of things and practices that we want to change and add to our business. So, we hope by the end of this year we’ll become a better studio to serve our clients as much as we can. For any photographer who wondered about WPPI – you shouldn’t. Its worth the time and money.
These are some photos of the convention and a few abstract expressions in the infamous town of L. Vegas:
With John Mireles
Yana & Tim ~ Anytime
We finally got our Monterrey trip folder edited and done. So these are some images that we took of Tim and Yana. This Yana is a totally different Yana. She is Tim’s Yana. Well, my Yana and Tim’s Yana are friends. And…… what else… they both have the same first names Anyways, Tim and Yana are such a great and outgoing couple. We felt very relaxed and easy being around them. No wonder the whole session took on a very romantic side. And it was a great pleasure to record all of that in these images below. To recap the whole day, we definitely will try to come back to Carmel again, and definitely will try meet these guys more often!!!
Our getaway
Couple of weeks ago Emik and I took a trip to Monterrey with our 2 little munchkins. Oh, how we looooved that place!!! One day surely wasn’t enough to browse around the town, especially with 2 kids. So, we decided that we MUST take another trip, but this time WITH OUT our boys. Also, another great motivation to visit Monterrey and Carmel-by-the-Sea was to go crazy and take A LOT of photos. And that’s what we did. We met up with some friends to do a photo shoot, which will be in our next post…
One of the reasons why I absolutely love taking long trips is because I get to spend many hours driving with my husband, and talking alot about random things, such as why is there always so much trash around the carseats in our car, or how to improve our bussines,( wich I think is the subject we talk most about). For those who dont know Emik, he is a very smart guy, and I am a lucky girl to be married to him.
So, while we were driving, listening to iPod and talking, we got really inspired by listening to a podcast by pro photo show on the ideas of how to market your bussiness. It was very refreshing, convincing, and convicting. We understood a few key concepts and realized that there is many things that we still have to learn and that we need to change a few things in order to succeed… we will be working on that
but for now here is some photos from that day
this is Emik showing off in my sunglasses
Disney on Ice
I was waiting for this time for about four years. It was my wish to take the boys to Disney on Ice event. There would be no point in doing it any time earlier, because simply they didn’t care about it. But after watching all these awesome cartoons, and actually caring about them now, we felt like the time finally came. And it really WAS a lot of fun. Nathan and Joseph(our nephew) were thrilled to see their favorite heroes come alive and perform on ice. The boys’ favorite character was the red racing car McQueen, or as Joseph said “Tacqueen” . The coyotes weren’t so much in favor, and of course in the scary parts Nathan felt like he needed to go home, and Joseph said “the coyotes need Jesus, then they won’t be so mean!
here are some precious moments from the experience…
My Coins
Growing up I had two main passions in my life. First, I was a big fan of soccer and everything around it. When summer would come and we would finally enjoy sunlight and warm weather, I would literally spend all day on the soccer field. My schedule usually looked like this: 8am – wake up, 9am – going to play soccer, 9pm – back from a soccer field. And even when the winter would come, often times we would gather to play some “football”(the actual sport where you use your feet to play it in the snow. It was a lot of fun. That’s why, I guess, I didn’t know how to change oil up until I was 18. Most of my free time I would spend trying to dribble the ball around a pile of snow. Geeky, I know.
And the second hobby that occupied big part of my free time was collecting coins. For some reason, I really loved collecting coins. At some point of my childhood I even thought to become a numismatist. A what? You would ask… Yeah, numismatics is a study of coins. In my collection I had coins from over 66 countries. Just by looking at a random coin, I used to be able to tell you the country it is from and the kind of a metal that was used to make it. Totally useless for me today, but at that time it seemed like fun.
Here are some coins that are sitting in my closet to this day!
Justin
Today Justin turned exactly 6 months. He is a big boy now! I don’t even know how much he weighs – all I know, its a lot! It’s almost impossible to carry him in a car seat in one hand. We’re very blessed two have to handsome boys. As I said in earlier posts, being parents changes people a lot. Besides being ticked from not sleeping through the nights, those changes are mostly positive. So, it was great for us to experience handling a newborn again. The first week the baby slept through most of the days. He wasn’t very loud, but had this funny, squeaky voice that still pops out once in a while. Unlike Nathan, Justin is a very mellow boy. He likes to be kissed, hugged and teased all the time. He also is a very happy baby. The only time he cries is when he is sleepy or hungry, which makes it much easier for us. We’re also very pleased with the way Nathan (4 in March) handles the new role of being the Big Brother. He deeply loves Justin and enjoys making him laugh and smile. He brings so much happiness and joy to our household – we can’t imagine our lives without this little bundle that smiles all the time!
Here he is
The Little Gym
For the past year we have posted a lot of photos on our blog. It was even weird to call it a blog, because we rarely ever wrote anything. So, from now on we wanted to change it and make our blog more personal, so that people who read it would actually know about who we are. In other words: we wanted to make our blog a blog… As for the readers, I thought, it would be fun to read something with many grammar and spelling mistakes – I’m sure you guys will have a good laugh!
So, we wanted to start off by getting little insides on what we do as a family. When you have two little kids, there can’t be too many activities that exclude them. Or, to be more precise, out kids totally consume most of our time and energy. When you become a parent your whole purpose of life changes in a very unselfish, serving way – purely out of love for those little “monsters”. Speaking of “monsters” – our Nathan,the oldest (he’s almost 4), has enormous amount of energy. The phrase “you got to go to sleep” is a curse word for him. He rarely ever takes naps and is running full speed all day long. So, Yana and I have decided to sign him up for the Little Gym. We thought it would be a great place for him to develop his motor skills and of course drain some of that energy. And he did. Besides that, despite the fact that he is so energetic, Nathan was always a really shy boy. It would take a long time for him to get used to a new person around him. Yet, after graduating this month from his class that problem does not exist anymore. We thought that the staff there was very friendly, understanding and knew what they were doing. Whenever a child didn’t want to do something, they would be very nice and kind to the little ones, and never made a big deal of it. So, by the end of the semester all of the kids felt very comfortable around there and were able to make their last performance in front of all the parents! We are very strong supporters of the Little Gym – try it out, your kids will love it!
These are a couple of shots from Nathan’s last performance…
