Life

Amazing photos, amazing coworkers

It pays to know a professional photographer.

I’ve talked about my coworker and friend Tony Richards before on the blog. He’s our department’s kick ass photographer.

It’s not often that I am the subject of Tony’s photo shoot. If I’m involved at all, I play the role of photographer’s assistant (i.e. the person Tony gets to boss around). Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a shoot as the subject! The result was too fun not to share.

Enter the most BAD ASS picture you’ll ever see of me (or possibly another human being) in your life:

JessBadassBAM!

OK, how cool is that!?! My whole team — we’re the creative department — recently just did a quirky photo shoot so we could have fun photos for our website. Of course, my prop was a hammer 🙂 That shouldn’t surprise anyone.

And if my badass picture wasn’t cool enough, I had to share these photos, too.

JessAndChrisBattleShot

Chris (the guy I’m knocking out) and I were helping Tony set up for a boxing-themed shoot. I often step in as the “model” to help Tony get his lighting just right. Since we were both around, we put on the gloves and put on a pretty good show.

JoyceVsVictor-28Mar14-5 (1)

I won 🙂

Like I said, it pays to have an awesome photographer as your work buddy. Mad props (I know no one says that anymore) to Tony and his awesome photography skills. You are crazy not to peek at his website: http://tonyrichardsphoto.com/

Speaking of work, the magazine that Tony and I work on together came out earlier in the week 🙂 We took the lead on this issue, which was a crazy, stressful and awesome experience all at the same time. I am so happy that it is out and looking pretty!

SmithBizPic

Happy Friday! Enjoy your weekends. I plan to finally get outside and work on a few furniture projects. Woohoo!

Life

Operation: Beautify Conference Room

Oh my goodness am I excited to share this project with you all! Months ago (monnnnnths), I volunteered to breathe some new life into our conference room at work. We are the creative department at our school, yet our conference room was rather bland. It was a little beat up, too.

Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards

We here call this color “nicotine yellow.” Doesn’t that just scream creativity?

No? That’s what we thought, too. So we formed a mini committee and brainstormed ways to beautify our conference room.

First and foremost, we needed COLOR! Two of my coworkers and I pow-wowed on the floor trying to pull in colors from our lovely carpet. We decided to go with two tones of green, with a lighter color on top and a darker color on the bottom.

Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards

The color alone was a huge change for the better, but there was still work to be done.

After some discussion, we decided to fill the walls with pictures that represent the University of Maryland and our students. One one wall, we did a huge canvas triptych. On the opposite wall we did a gallery style wall with more than 20 canvases. We added an oversized clock to the back wall, and the room months in the making was finally complete.

Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards
Courtesy of Tony Richards

You know I loved working on this project — so much fun. It was a treat to work with so many of my coworkers on this to make our space so much more colorful and fun to be in.

Here’s a close up of the triptych:

(From my iPhone)

And here’s a panorama shot:

(From my iPhone)

A special shout out to my coworker, Tony Richards, who took these fabulous photos so I could share them with you. He is our photographer and videographer and has several photos displayed on our wall now. He also has a fantastic blog that you should check out, http://www.tonyrichardsphoto.com/. Seriously… click that link! You won’t be sorry.

See, isn’t his work amazing? Here are a few of my favorites from his blog:

http://www.tonyrichardsphoto.com
http://www.tonyrichardsphoto.com
http://www.tonyrichardsphoto.com
http://www.tonyrichardsphoto.com

Thanks for the photos, Tony.

And thank you for stopping by! Happy Friday and have a fabulous weekend