Andrew Strobridge

November 6, 2009

Shuuh! (South african for, “oh my!”)

Well people, it has been quite quite some time since my last post and for that I am terribly sorry!

Much has gone on since I last posted. First there was the filming of the Anti-Human Trafficking PSA which had been in the works for some time. It’s amazing how much work you can put into a thirty second advert. Days and hours and nights and loooots of paperwork.

You can watch it by clicking here.

This is what we had to turn into an airport.

This is after we had turned it into an airport.

The ever so heavy RED and I.

After each shot everything has to be reset and the continuity, hair, and makeup people do their thing making sure everything is exactly the same in every shot!

Quick touch-ups in between shots.

The plan.

Wide sot of the set.

After that started the school of story telling and digital photography which I am the proud leader of. I have 18 very talented students from 9 different countries. (I think it’s nine… maybe not) We are in the 5th week of the school (out of 12) and they have improved an insane amount. Many of them had never touched an SLR camera before coming to the school.

A couple weeks ago, there was a film shoot for a fast food chain called “Kauai” going on down at the beach. I knew some of the guys making the ad so they called and asked if I’d take some photos of behind the scenes. I walked down there with my camera to see the bizarre scene of a woman in a swim suit with a sandwich and a smoothie laying on the beach surrounded by a film crew. It’s actually pretty funny to see what it looks like behind the adverts. Not quite as “cool” as it looks on TV. Anyway I took the photos and they really liked them so I got some extra cash from that and some other potential photo jobs!

The guy on the left bringing in the new smoothie owns/started the company.

When I’m not busy leading the school or taking photos, I do a lot of movie watching (much like at home). I know that’s probably pretty lame to a lot of you because I’m in africa and you think I should be going on safaris and stuff, but it sure feels a lot like home here… so I watch movies. I mean, I do other things too. Like getting outside and eating out and visiting local hot spots. Stuff like that. I have seen penguins and Baboons too. Penguins are great (I’ll post photos next time) and baboons are terrible. Worst animals ever. I decided I would rather be killed by a shark than a baboon. Think about it. No contest.

The staff on my school consists of me and a girl from Ghana named Jessica. She’s very helpful and fun to work with! This past week and a half the students have been learning photoshop. One of the things they have learned is facial retouching. Before they learned this, Jessica and I decided to take some photos of ourselves in the studio and retouch them just for fun to show the students. Here is what we came up with. You can call these our “staff portraits”. hahaha

My hair is longer these days.

Jessica should be a model.

I’ve been living here for long enough that it’s pretty normal so I’m not sure what you would like to hear about so I will stop here. But please, if you have any questions or would like to see photos of anything feel free to ask. (Just ask in a comment below I guess) Anyway that’s about it! Until next time!

1 Comment

Filed under South Africa, Travel, boredom

Tags: Cape Town, Kalk Bay, South Africa, PSA, Roxy Louw, Kauai, Portrait, Baboons, Sharks, Penguins

July 28, 2009

Bad news… But not terrible

Yes it’s true… My external hard drive broke. For those of you that do not understand the gravity of this situation, just imagine you work out of your home, and all your hard work is in your home along with some of your cool fun stuff. Now Imagine that your house burns down. And you don’t have any time to save anything or recover anything after the fire. Long story short. All my photos are gone. All my photos from Japan and Israel and here and there. Everything except the low res copies that I might have uploaded on here. Soooo I don’t have as many cool photos to show you. I know I know, that’s the only reason you look at this blog anyway. But Just think, everything you see from here on out will be fresh and new and amazing. For starters, I have a few photos from the last few days that I took post accident. So check ‘em out and enjoy!

As you can see from these three photos, I have been messing around with long exposures in the evening as well as cross-processing in post. (messing with colours)

For those of you that are wondering what exactly I’ve been up to here is an update.
At the moment I have 4 things going on.

#1. Working on anti-trafficking adverts for the world cup.
#2. Helping out staffing a video school.
#3. Planning the photography school that I will be leading in October.
#4. Working in the graphics department

The Anti-trafficking adverts are going really well and it’s so amazing to be working with such amazing people. I’m working with a very successful advert director who is from here in south africa. I am also working with the steady cam operator for the movie Blood Diamond. He also was the camera operator for a Coke ad, doomsday, the upcoming free Willy 4 and a number of other bug budget productions. I will definitely be learning a lot working with these amazing talented people.

Staffing the video school is pretty chill. I grade their work sometimes and help out wherever needed.

The Photography school is going to be AMAZING! We are lining up some amazing speakers and topics such as Ad photography, Fashion photography, Landscape/Nature photography, Band photography, and Photo Journalism Just to name a few! It will be so rad but I will fill you in on this more as time goes on and we make more plans!

And the graphic design work I do is pretty random and mainly stuff like dvd covers and what not for other projects they are currently working on here.

Anyway there is a quick update for all you wondering people out there. And now for all you non-wondering people, I have a few more photos. These were taken Pre-Accident but luckily were still on my cameras memory card when the tragedy struck. Last weekend we went on a drive to my friend Marike’s (Muh-Ree-Kuh) house and spent the night so that we could go to a town called Franschhoek (sort of like Fron-shook) the next day. Franschhoek Is about an hour away and is in wine country. Far away from the Ocean but still very beautiful. There are tons of ritzy vineyards and what not. Anyway here are a few of the photos. There’s probably more to come because we have a lot of fun photos of this little road trip.

We got there at night and drove up some mountain.

The drive

Marike stalled the car on this dirt road. We're actually moving backward in this photo.

Wine Land

Jumping over Franschhoek (Marike, Saskia, Shane, Me)

We had a picnic here. Then took about one million and a half photos.

Anyway that’s about all from last weekend. And I almost forgot. Here is a photos of the building I live and work in.

Sorry for taking so long between updates! I get crazy busy! I’ll leave you with this self explanatory photo. Bye!

6 Comments

Filed under Art, Photography, South Africa, Travel, Uncategorized

July 4, 2009

It’s been a while… and I’ve moved for a bit.

Well it seems like I haven’t updated my blog in a bit. Oh well. There probably wasn’t much to say. For those of you who don’t know I’m now living/working in Cape Town, South Africa for the next six months. I Just got here on Monday and am finding that it’s a pretty rad place. On my way here I spent the day in London. I had never been there before and it was pretty cool to check things out for a day. My buddy @samdelves who lives near by met me at the Victoria Coach Station and took me around to see the sights.(Thanks man!) First we went to Buckingham Palace. When we got there we found out the changing of the guard was taking place which was pretty cool to see.

The Palace

Bobby

The Guard

From there we took the underground around London and saw a few more key sights.

Me at piccadilly circus

Ben and I

Big Benjamin up close

On the tele

The House of Lords on the River Thames

House of Parliament, Big Ben, and the London Eye

I have a ton more photos but this is taking forever so I’m moving on. You get the point.

By the time I left London I hadn’t slept in well over 30 hours so I ended up sleeping 10 of the 12 hour flight! It was great! I made it to Cape town and was picked up by Shane. (after waiting an hour.. thanks for that man) He took me to me new home for the next six month. It’s in a part of town called Kalk Bay. It’s very nice. Instead of trying to explain it I’ll just show you some photos and cal it good. All these photos are from within a 5 minute walk of my house because I don’t have a car. But later I will show you a more broad view of Cape Town.

Out my bedroom Window

Another one out my window.

Across the Street

My Neighborhood

Fish & Chips down by the bay

I’ll leave it off there so that I have more photos to post later. Over all it’s pretty cool here and the weather has been super nice and warm so that’s good! Talk to you all soooon!

5 Comments

Filed under South Africa, Travel, Uncategorized

Tags: Big Ben, Cape Town, England, Fish & Chips, Kalk Bay, London, London Eye, South Africa, Travel

April 27, 2009

Yann Tiersen and such.

Well I’m back from chicago and had an amazing time there! I met my friend Josh (who let me stay at his house! Thanks man!) and we drove into the city where we met up with my friend Amanda who had some of her friends along with her. Me and Josh went to see the movie Coraline and I really really liked it! (Maybe a bit scary for little kids though!) Anyway, then we went to the Yann Tiersen Show! It was so awesome! I loved every second of it! And luckily I knew about 3/4 of the songs and the other 1/4 I really enjoyed as well. Here are some photos of the show for your enjoyment!

The Man Himself

Singin and playin

Really cute singer/flutist

Yann and bass player playin hard!

I wish you all could have been there to hear how awesome it sounded! Moral of the story: GO SEE YANN TIERSEN

6 Comments

Filed under Art, Music, Photography

Tags: Amelie, live music, show, Yann Tiersen

April 20, 2009

Another check off my “must see shows”!

There are a few musicians/bands that I REALLY want to see before I die or they die. I got to see one of those last November when I saw Coldplay in Denver at the Pepsi Center! (It was amazing!) Tomorrow I get to cross anther off my list because I am going to Chicago to see Yann Tiersen! If you don’t know who that is, he’s an incredible french musician who has made music for movies including Amélie and Good bye Lenin! I don’t think he comes to America on tour very often so when I saw a few months ago that he was coming to Chicago I was very excited!

Check out that^ video to hear some of his music! (about 1:05 into the song there’s some amazing arpeggios!)

Anyway… Not a lot else goin on. Work was canceled tonight because of the weather so I’m goin to get some Pizza and live music at the rosebud!

2 Comments

Filed under Music

Tags: Amelie, Yann Tiersen

April 17, 2009

I got a job and other swell news from the north.

This past week has been quite good. I told you that Caleb and I have a band called “Sailor Beware”, but I didn’t tell you we have another band called “Big Tree Little Tree”. Big tree little tree is for our songs we write that are too funny and weird for sailor beware. It just so happened that we had an opportunity to write one of those funny songs. My sisters friend Stacy got dumped by her boy friend (poor girl) so we decided to write a song called “Stacy” to try and cheer her up. We made sure to make it extra cheesy and cliche and hilarious. Then we went and sang it to her. I think she took it more serious than we meant it but still… she really liked it. Then we recorded it for fun. It’s not a very good quality recording because we have zero equipment but if you want, you can hear it HERE.

Following the excitement of having a new song, I decided to design a poster for big tree little tree. It turned out pretty cool. We are pleased.

Last night my dear friend Charlotte told me she has been sick and was knitting so much she decided to make an online boutique. I asked if she needed any design work done and sure enough she did. She’s starting it out on a site where she can’t control how it looks so much except for a little banner at the top. So I made her a little banner and it was officially my first graphic design job. She said if it does well there she will get her own web site and I can do some design work on there for her. As soon as she gets the store set up I will definitely put a link on here to her store. After five drafts of the banner design, I think we came up with this one.

At least, that might be it. She liked them all equally so maybe she will use a different one. They are all similar. So if anyone needs any design work done you can let me know! I would be glad to build up a portfolio of design too.

GET WELL SOON CHARLIE!

The last bit of news is that I have job now! I was hired on at the drive-in cinema and my first day of work is tonight! I’m very excited it seems like a great job! So come visit me at the movies soon!

Make sure to keep sending people to www.andrewstrobridge.com/portfolio to check out my photography portfolio! And keep checkin back on my blog for new stuff!

April 12, 2009

Hap Hap Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I have a nice treat for you. What’s that you ask? Well, the start of my portfolio is up! You can check it out HERE, or by clicking the “Portfolio” link at the top of this page, or by typing – www.andrewstrobridge.com/portfolio – into your internet browser. Easy Peasy right? There are a bunch of photos up but keep in mind this is only the start! If you like what you see, tell your friends and family to check it out! SPREAD THE WORD!

April 9, 2009

www.andrewstrobridge.com? Yeah… sorta

Ok first of all apologies for not posting photos this time again. I know I said I would have some shots from my portfolio up but I decided to go all out and that’s why there is a bit of a delay on that. You probably already noticed the new look to my blog. It probably isn’t as “cool” looking but I did it for a good reason. I’m hopefully going to get more traffic through here from people who want me to take photos for them. I wanted to make it nice and simple for them to find what they need. In the process I changed a few things. First of all I changed my “About Me” page a little. Check it out. Secondly, I added a new page called “Portfolio”. This is where my portfolio will be. Right now it just says “Coming Soon” but I will fix that ASAP! And the last change I did was get a domain name so it is easier for people to remember. So now to get to my blog all you have to do is type “www.andrewstrobridge.com” or just “andrewstrobridge.com” into your browser, and it will bring you here. It should be pretty easy to remember, but if you like you can still just go to “www.thequarterdeck.wordpress.com” Don’t worry! Both addresses will take you to the same place! I am making business cards too and I think “www.andrewstrobridge.com” is probably easier to remember not to mention looks better on a card. I hope this doesn’t all throw a tangle in all of your perfect worlds. But thanks for hangin’ with me with all these changes! Oh I almost forgot! I have a twitter now so you can follow me on there if you have one, or just look on the right side of this blog and you can get updates from there. (If you don’t know what twitter is, it’s basically a dumb thing where I post what I’m doing every second of the day, and you can read it and know what I’m up to… It will be much cooler when I’m famous!)

Thanks again for hangin’ in there with me! I know this is probably pretty boring without photos! Take my pole to help make the world a better place!

1 Comment

Filed under Photography, Uncategorized

Tags: Changes, Photography, Poll, Portfolio

April 6, 2009

Not much to say today.

hello world.

How are you today? I wanted to share a cool interview with a cool artist that I read. Every day i check a number of blogs and web sited that have to do with art because there are many inspiring artists out there that you’d never get to see or hear about if it weren’t for the internet. One of them that I check out is the blog of Promise Tangemen. This is the blog where I read the interview with Barton Damer. He is a great artist and a Christian and his interview with Promise really changed the way i think about a few things. You can check it out HERE.

Well if you checked that out I hope you enjoyed it! This past week I got to hang out with Caleb (My neighbor) a lot which has been real nice. I find him very agreeable. Hopefully we will be bringing you some rad photos hoots soon. Speaking of, please tell your friends and family and your favorite bands that I want to take photos of them! I neeeed a little money before my trip to south africa! Gots ta pay the bills!

Caleb and I have been (for a while now) making some music. We have a musical project we like to call “Sailor Beware”. Pretty awesome huh? The other night we went and sat at “the Rendezvous Cafe” for a while and drank a ton of coffee and when we came back to my house we broke out every instrument we could find and decided to start recording a song. We only got the guitar and Accordion track down before we got tired. Hopefully we will.

Speaking of music, all this past week I have had the song “Elephant Gun” by Beirut stuck in my head. If you haven’t heard it, check it out on youtube. It’s got a great music video as well!

Sorry I don’t have photos for you today. I know that it is what most of you check my blog for. Tomorrow I will post some older and not so older photos as a sort of quick “Portfolio” so you can show all your friends and family how awesome their photos will look if they chose me to meet their photo needs Until then, just scroll down for some photos from Japan!