Andy's Idea Factory

Photographing a wedding is a fun, magical experience for me; I feel like each wedding is its own unique adventure that is propelled by the personalities of the couple and their families. But it can also be a stressful day if the events are hurried, so I have a thorough checklist that I prepare for myself to make sure every shot request gets taken, my equipment is up for the job, and the day flows smoothly for the bride and groom. Having planned my own wedding, that experience now lends its expertise to my day as well. Before the wedding: I always meet with the bride and groom several weeks or months beforehand to discuss their expectations and their package of choice, but then we meet again the week or day before their day to go over the site and day of events. It's often easiest to meet just before their rehearsal to see the location once again. I take these meetings to double check: List of formal and informal shots the bride has requested Wedding colors Number of guests and

It's been quite a while since we've had a total McGuyver moment in our house, but last weekend's kitchen maintenance was worth a quick post... At some point last month our freezer started getting warmer, ever so slightly at first, until this month, when it started making water in the ice container. We pulled out the ice tray, cranked the temp knob to max 9, and waited. We turned it on and off, we cranked the fridge temp... nothin'. Then our fears manifested- there was a considerable amount of water in the foot pan. After asking around, it sounded like we were going to need a new unit entirely, but luckily we aren't inclined to give up that easily. So we pulled out the unit (unplugged it and turned off the water for safety) and I took off the back panel to find 10 years of nasty, furry dust, as well as a pan full of water. Neither are easy solutions, apparently. I tried to vacuum the dust out with the hand held and the big vacuum, but that dust wouldn't budg

Because the market is always changing, early this summer I logged several weeks of research on the subject of Photobooks for a wedding I'm doing later this month. After reviewing dozens of sites, I only came up with about 6 that stood out above the rest. But I had overlooked one that has turned out to be one of my favorites: www.Mixbook.com Mixbook is similar to several other sites in its ease for beginners, offering dozens of templates and programming that's easy to learn. But where Mixbook excels is in some key areas for me. Their tutorials are quick and extremely helpful, from choosing themes to getting ideas to general help, these short videos are an asset to this website for sure. Mixbook offers a huge variety of packages, many different sizes of books and tons of themes, from weddings to baby books to yearbooks, Mixbook definitely makes the design process more fun than its competitors. Within each design set are dozens of page layouts to choose from, from 1 to 20 pi