Can You Drive With One Hand?

We just returned from a conference in Las Vegas. Road trips with the boys consist of lots of questions by Mateo, lots of snoring by Lucas and a never ending loop of “I’m hungry, I have to go to the bathroom and I dropped my [insert various toy names here] can you pick it up?” All in all, the boys travel pretty well and life is good.

As we hit the home stretch between Kingman and Las Vegas, little Mr. Butter Fingers can’t hold onto a toy for more than 12 seconds and we eventually tire of picking them up. I don’t like to stretch for things while driving and Andrea gets a little motion sick turning around all the time- she can’t even read in the car or work on the laptop (which is sad, I’d really like to get some productivity out of her on these five hour trips

After a spell, Mateo begins a new line of questioning. Everyone asks if I tire of this- he asks a lot of questions- and the answer is absolutely not. Right now, I know everything in the world, I’m Google and Wikipedia all rolled into one. In a few short years, I won’t know diddly.

So this starts out about cars.

“Daddy, can you drive with one hand?”

I answer with a yes and a quick rundown on how it’s safe now, on the open road, with no turns, no traffic, etc., but not always. He’s not really convinced, so I wave my left hand in the air, so he can see I’m only driving with the right one.

“Daddy, can you drive with the other hand?”

“Well, sure I can”

Not taking my work for it, he kind of insists, so I switch hands and show him my free right hand, which he can easily see, as he’s seated kitty corner from me, behind Andrea.

So he continues…

“Wow, that’s great. Now can your reach down there and hand me my plane?”

Cover Shoot at The w Hotel in Scottsdale

We recently had the Artisan team out at The w Hotel shooting the cover for Finest Wedding Sites Magazine. Here are some of our favorite images, though we still can’t fully decide.

It was the grown up equivalent of a bunch of kids in a candy store, every direction you could turn your head was something fun to shoot. The colors and textures are amazing, you won’t find an unadorned surface in the entire hotel.

We started out in the bar, moved on to the library and eventually made our way up the stairs and into the Zen Garden, where they have the most unique ceremony location in The Valley. They actually build an acrylic stage right over the Zen Garden that you have to see  to believe.

Then it was on to the Presidential Suite, where sadly, our thinly veiled suggestion of needing the suite for the rest of the night was not approved (well, okay, maybe we weren’t really planning on working through the night and might have been considering calling some friends over for a little party…)

Run time 2:18 | 77 images | Music

Troon North Golf Club Wedding Brochure Design

Ok, maybe we’ve gone a little radio silent lately, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy. This is a quick look at a design mockup for Troon North Golf Club’s new wedding brochure. They are currently engaged with a company that specializes in sponsored brochures, but just about all of the preferred vendors at Troon North Golf Club have gotten together to offer this counter proposal. We hope that they can disengage with the current sponsored brochure company and opt for this design (crossing fingers is optional, but it can’t hurt).

Artisan has been a preferred photography vendor at Troon North Golf Club since 2005 and have photographed many splendid weddings there, but since this is a group brochure representing all of Troon North’s preferred vendors, we’re going to break tradition here on the Artisan blog and show you another photographer’s work as well. The design includes some of our good friend and fellow preferred vendor Anne McCarthy’s work too, from One Fine Day Photography

Hope you enjoy the mockup, we’re still fleshing out the text and other details, but we think it gives you a really good feel for what weddings at Troon North are like.

Artisan Newborn Collage: The Madrid

We’ve been busy ordering a bunch of new, fun stuff for our studio lately and this has got to be one of my favorites! While this cute little collage is officially known as the “Madrid” (A gallery wrapped canvas, of nine images, 20×20 or 30×30), it’s affectionately known in house, as Artisan Baby Bits. This does lead to some rather strange work conversation at times- “Where are we with Julie’s baby bits?”, but it really does sum it up nicely.

We also have a new variation that should be in soon and we’ll post a few photos as soon as we can.

Kathleen & Allon’s Engagement Guest Book

A little ways back we posted Kathleen & Allon’s Engagement session and have been meaning for a while now to show their guest book for their upcoming wedding.

This is a new style of a guest book for weddings, one that’s photo based and you can sign directly on the pages (provided you have the magic pens- make sure you never try writing on photos with a standard ink pen, it’s more like denting them than writing).

With this style of book, we tailor the engagement session images to focus a little more on negative space and leave lots of room for signing.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

You can add only one book on page

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