I love movies. Any kind of movie. Comedy, drama, action, thriller, romantic. I’m a big fan! Of the movies. I could watch movies all day long every day. But there are only a handful of movies that I want to see more than once. You know…those movies that you could take to a desert island and watch only those 10 movies over and over till forever. Well I didn’t mention before that I LOVE MUSICALS! LOVE! THEM! There’s something so magical about a good musical. It takes you to a place that doesn’t exist in real life. In real life people very rarely break out into song and dance in the middle of normal conversation. But in musicals anything goes!

Moulin Rouge is one of my top favorites. I’ve seen that movie more times in the last decade than I care to admit. It transports me to Paris, and a place of truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, LOVE! Well, if you’ve seen it, you know that it begins with Ewan McGregor’s character typing his story in Paris on an old typewriter. And I’ve been in love with how they incorporated the story telling with the typewriter. It begins and ends with the typewriter and the story in between is the story that his typewriting is telling. So, that’s clearly where the inspiration came for my promo video!

So, I’m totally cool with being in front of a still camera. I think it’s really fun. My girlfriends and I used to pretend we were models growing up, so I just think it’s a blast to still play pretend. But it’s a whole ‘nother story when you talk about the moving picture. Ya know…the talkies. I was TERRIFIED of being in front of the video camera, and even more so, I was afraid of TALKING on the video camera. There was just no way that was going to happen, I hate the sound of my own voice, and I knew I would cringe every time I saw the video. So I had to come up with a solution. And that’s when I decided to have the typewriter keep writing my story along the bottom of the screen. Actually, now that I think about it, Mary Frances said we should have captions and I laughed, but then realized that the typewriter writing would actually work perfectly. So, then it came time for a script. And I knew I wanted it simple. Because I’m simple. I think things clean and simple. So, I thought about the old Dick and Jane books…“Look, Jane. Look, look. See Dick. See, see. Oh, see. See Dick.” And I simplified it even more! And that’s the story of how the Amanda Rae video came to life!

Now, tell me…what inspires you??

PS…there are two quotes from Friends slipped into this post as my subtle way of saying Friends also inspires me.

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Amanda Rae Photography from Floataway Studios on Vimeo.

Soooooooo…did you guess…Mike is officially joining my team! He has been my biggest supporter and now he is my first employee! Well, I guess he’s more of a partner, but I do get to tell him what to do. Mike’s role in the business will be as my permanent second shooter. So from now on, all photography collections will include two shooters. I’m so excited for 2010 and all the weddings we’ll be photographing together!

The video will now be posted on my website. I would love to hear what you think of it!

Also…I just noticed that I hit my 500th blog comment in my last blog post! Thank you Amber for being lucky number 500. And THANK YOU to everyone who has stopped by and given some love. We’ll have to do something really special when we hit 1000!

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If you are one of the people we met yesterday, feel free to take a look around my blog and website to see more of my work. If you are interested in meeting to discuss your wedding further please email me at amanda@amandarae.com. I would love to invite you over to my studio for a consultation, or if you are in Santa Barbara I’m more than willing to come up to you (I’ll take any chance I can to stroll along State Street!). Please keep in mind: my studio can only take ONE wedding per day. I already had one bride from the show contact me for a date that I’m now booked so don’t let that happen to you!

We also got to meet some amazing vendors. I’m always drawn to other photographers because we inherently have so much in common and I love talking shop! We already have plans to meet up with a few of them which makes the whole show worth it for me! Our booth was situated next to Salon Del Mar and we got to watch them in action doing incredible makeup and updo’s for brides, and we were directly across from Pure Joy Catering that had an incredible display and some delicious food samplings!

If you are one of my regular blog followers, here are some pictures for your enjoyment! I’m just realizing that I was so busy with everything that I didn’t take any pictures of Mike! AH! I’m going to include my new favorite picture that I took of him the other day when we were out location scouting. Seriously, Mikey, I could NOT have done yesterday without you! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your love and support and heavy lifting!

Me in the booth:

Dork in the booth:

Soooo…my booth design mostly comprised of what will forever be known as “the Cardboard Project.” I had to think of something lightweight to hang from the drapery and I took my inspiration from Anthropologie store displays. If you are familiar with their window displays you know they use a lot of unexpected materials to make exquisite pieces of art. Thusly, cardboard picture frames! I think they turned out pretty great, and so many people at the show complimented them! I’m thinking of using them in the studio too.

This is actually a sneak peak of something that will be revealed in the next couple weeks:

Love this guy:

2010 is starting to shape up to be an amazing year at Amanda Rae Photography! I can’t wait to see all the weddings come to life!

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