Anoosh Ensemble broke the taboo!

On February 27, 2011 "Anoosh" Dance Ensemble’s Annual Concert will take place in Glendale, California. We were privileged to work with this ensemble in earlier years by videotaping their performances. For their event’s promotional posters & tickets in 2011, a special photo session took place at Ani Studio.
The quality of our work being the most important factor, and unlike the traditional photos of a large group used in ads which are either blurry images or group shots, we suggested to show one member only from the dance ensemble on the advertisements that represented the whole group. The Artistic Director and Choreographer, Mrs. Anoosh Markarian, agreed with our idea and the result, as you can see is a high quality image on a self explanatory, inviting and attractive poster.

Above, are some snapshots and drafts of the final design.
We would like to thank Mrs. Markarian for her trust in Ani Studio, we are glad that she agreed and let us use an individual portrait to design the poster and we hope other artists will as well realize that it will not harm the other members or students to use only one individuals photo, and wish her and the performers even more success.

Also thanks to Arnist, Talin and Ariga for helping us to shoot the Boston-Kermesse advertisment.

"Boston-Kermesse" video ad, A great teamwork experience.

Boston-Kermesse ad. draft 01 from Studio Ani on Vimeo.

On September of 2010 an open air festival was organized at the grounds of Armenian cultural/educational center. Ani Studio was requested to design a video ad to be broadcast on Horizon TV network. It's one of the first videos we upload on our new channel on you-tube.

The basic idea was to slide show the images of musicians and add their names in between, but we thought it would be more interesting to add some more real characters and mix them with photos of the absent artists. Vahag from Ani Studio is playing the duduk (Armenian musical instrument similar to flute), Anoosh dance ensemble was kind enough to support us with three of their finest dancers and Haroutunian family generously allowed their kids to star in our ad project. Many thanks to all of guys and hope to meet you in future projects.

Who can shoot a Doberman?

We recently had a pet photo shoot in our studio. While we had a busy week of shooting children for Christmas cards, later in the week our friend Edward brought in his Pet Dog and we thought to try a photo shoot. Unlike what you see in this shot, he is not easy to handle, and it took Edward a while to convince Jasper to stay still.

Doberman's are smart dogs and quite sensitive to the flash light. I've taken photos of smaller dogs, but big ones like this or German Shepards and Collies are not a fond of photo shoot. We hope as this young Doberman grows he will eventually allow us to take better shots of him.

And we even shot portraits on new year's eve...

Angineh, while being our friend, is a great model as well. It's not her profession but she pose really well and she is indeed photogenic. Christmas holidays was a great opportunity to take some shots of her while we were out of town in a cabin. I took about 50 good shots and these five are among my top favorites. This experience proved to me again, that location of shooting has lots of impact on results despite using studio lighting. The wooden decoration along with an Elizabeth era double bed had formed an unique environment for a fashion photo-shoot.

As I said the session took place hours before the new year and had we have more time we probably would try some other spots in the cabin as well. The reflection of the flashes on the wooden walls applies a very warm tone to the subject and gives a lovely warmth to the skin.

Hope you enjoy watching these shots. As I said it's the model that has to get the major credit for this session, since not many can lie so flawless and calm on a bed while 20 or so other people are dancing in the room next to it. ;-))