Drew

As you can see I never post on here anymore. I am trying something new and its called tumblr. hopefully it will be simpler and allow me to update more frequently. I have some exciting plans so we will see how that pans out. Here is my new Blog address -

strobridge.tumblr.com

(I just updated the link it was wrong! Sorry! Thanks for catching that nuno)

I guess I should start by saying I am now back in the United Stated after six months in Cape Town South Africa. I got back about five days ago. I was there leading a school at a place called “Media Village”. The school I was leading was called the “school of story telling and digital photography”. I had 18 students from 9 different countries. It was an incredible experience and I learned so much. I know so many of you have so many questions, so I will attempt to answer some of the more popular ones I have received in this post. If I don’t answer any questions you may have, please ask them in the comments section and I will reply in the comments section. Who knows maybe it will turn into a discussion. Those are fun. At least on facebook they are.

Where did I live? –

I lived in a small coast town called Kalk Bay, about a thirty minute drive from downtown Cape Town. It was super chill and RIGHT on the ocean!

Were there lots of wild animals around? –

I didn’t live in the wild. I lived in a town. Very near a big city. With that said, I saw dolphins, whales, Baboons, penguins, squirrels, birds, and some cats and dogs. Oh! And the day I left a guy got completely eaten by a great white shark right down the road from where I lived! Crazy!

Was there a big language barrier?/Was it hard for me to communicate? -

Again, I did not live in the wild and believe it or not, although South Africa has 11 Official languages, English is up there on the list and I think every person I ever ran into spoke it.

Was it a big culture shock going there? -

No. Out of the fourteen countries I have ever been to, South Africa seemed the most like Home culturally. There is however a very large gap where you have on one side extreme poverty and on the other side extreme wealth. Besides that, they go to the movies on the weekends and shop at the malls just like we do here. Although, I think I would have to say out of the fourteen countries I have been to, South Africa Definitely hates America/Americans the most. (I don’t want to generalize and say all of the, but a lot do) Or at least they voice it much more than any other people group I have been around. So in that sense, not much like here. But other than that, it is very similar culturally.  The scenery on the other hand is breathtaking and one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!

Was it a big culture shock coming back home? -

Nope.

Who’s that girl in your facebook profile picture? -

Her name is Eunhae and she’s my girlfriend. I met her there in South Africa and fell for her in no time. I think this paragraph will have a lot of smiley faces Yes, her name is Eunhae and she is the most talented creative person I know. She is also the best girl a guy could ask for. Yes, as many of you know I was extremely happy being single. I loved where I was and loved life. But when I met her, as happy as I was being single, I knew that being with her would only make things better. And that’s when I knew she was a keeper. We fit together like a puzzle. An extremely difficult, 1,000 piece puzzle with a repetitive pattern on it. (maybe only the puzzle people will get that) I hope you all can meet her someday because she will make you smile. Aaaanyway… enough mushy stuff…

Where is Eunhae from? -

Korea

What is next for me? -

With so many hopes and dreams who knows. As for my immediate now, I will be in Michigan for a while. The longest “while” in about five years. I will be learning Korean and hopefully doing some photography teaching here in west Michigan. If you are around please come visit I’d love to catch up. As for after Michigan, I will keep you updated as time goes on.

You are all going to hate me but I decided (just now) to not post photos on this post. Yeah I know, that’s two in a row. My computer gives me problems and I need to resize my photos before I put them on and sort through them and it just becomes a pain. I know many of you just want to see photos and I don’t blame you, I want to as well. (even though my last post had more comments than any other post in my blogs short history) I promise that the next post will be a photo post. I might have said that before but I really promise now. (That’s terrible I know. Please forgive me.) I will start compiling them tomorrow.

Until next time…

     That’s a quote from one of my favorite movies and it doesn’t quite apply to me. But I was wondering today if I relate to that statement more than I feel I do.

     My “motto” (if you will) for the past few years has been to “Make the most of my time on earth”. I think I’ve done pretty good at that. I’m 22 years old and have seen and experienced things most people don’t see or do in their entire life. To put that quote into context, it was said by a real man named Jean-Dominique Bauby. Jean-Dominique (or Jean-Do as his friends referred to him) was the editor of French Elle magazine. In 1994 he had a stroke and was left paralyzed and basically laid in a bed for the rest of his life only able to blink one eye. Long story short, he wrote a book by blinking his eye while someone recited the alphabet. Aaaaanyway, I think you can see why he would say something like that, right?

     “But what about you Drew? You’re so lucky! You get to go all over the world and have fun and do all these amazing things! Why would you say such a thing?!”

     You’re very right. I’ve been very blessed (not lucky) to be constantly going to new places and seeing new things. I love it. I have never regretted it or thought I would want anything different. But for some reason today, I sort of had a new look at things in a way I have never thought about it.

     I think it started when I couldn’t get a ride to church so I decided to listen to a sermon from my church back in Arvada. (I love that church!) The sermon that I happened to listen to was about friendship. Not something you typically here a sermon on but it was actually really good. He said that the time we live in, in America, we live in the loneliest society that has ever been on the planet. Now that seems strange considering all of the ways technologically we have available to relate to each other. But even with all of this we are such an isolated society.

     I’m sure you’re wondering where I’m going with this, especially with that interesting quote at the top of the page. Well let me just say right now that I am not depressed. Not even close.

     I’ve never been the guy that wants to stay in the same town I grew up in, go to Uni right down the road, marry my girlfriend, raise my kids, and die all in the same place. I’m sorry if this is you but I just couldn’t handle that! I would probably go crazy and then I would probably be depressed. In fact I used to think very lowly of people who chose that life. But that was dumb of me. Like I said, I want to make the most of my time on earth. So naturally, I have been the guy to take every opportunity I possibly can Especially if it involves traveling somewhere! I will look for these opportunities if I have to but for some reason I don’t usually have to. They tend to fall in my lap. I don’t know why but I do enjoy it! ☺

     I love my life! I couldn’t be happier! So with all this excitement and adventure in my life, why do I feel so lonely today. People I love and care about surround me, Great friends that I have made over the past months. I was thinking about what my pastor said about friendships. Friends are for serving. What? Yeah, that’s what he said. He talked about David and Jonathan in the Bible. Jonathan wanted to serve David. It’s not about what you get out of a friendship. It’s about what you can put into it. That troubled me. I have loads of friends on just about every continent. I constantly meet people that I connect with all over the world. I love it. It’s great. The only problem being, I make friends in 3-6 months and then I’m off on my next adventure. As much as I love all the people I meet, and as much as I connect with them, once that 3 months is up, that’s it. We are still friends. I still care about them. We talk online. But we don’t ever grow to be any deeper friends than 3 months friends. It’s nearly impossible over facebook or skype. I have hundreds of friends. How many of those friends really deeply know me. How many of those friends do I really deeply know. How many of them know my hopes and dreams and my fears and what makes me happy. How many of them do I know that well? How many of my friends am I able to serve? That’s the big question. How many of my friends can I always be there for? The answer to that question made me uneasy because unfortunately it is very few. With the busy life I lead of going one place to the next, it is impossible for me to always be there for my friends. It’s even pretty dang hard to be there for them just some of the time. It’s impossible for me to know when someone’s having a bad day. It’s impossible for me to celebrate a birthday with them. It’s impossible for me to bring them chicken noodle soup when they are sick. It’s impossible for me to hug them when one of their family or friends dies. Basically it’s impossible for me to spend any sort of time with my friends. Which of course is bad for friendships.

     Like I said I have tons of friends. But when I try and think of real, close, Jonathan/David type friends, friends I can cry to, talk about anything with, friends who can tell me I’m being an idiot, friends who I can tell them that they are being an idiot… one or two come to mind. And unfortunately, I don’t get to see them very often at all.

     So now I will attempt (key word) to bring all of this randomness together. I said I used to think very lowly of people who I thought were stuck in a bubble and not going anywhere with their life. I thought they were missing out on so much. I thought that their life must seem like “a string of near-misses” like Jean-Do talked about. I thought that to live like them must feel a lot like Jean-Do felt like but only they were choosing it. But today I feel slightly different. I feel sort of lonely. I feel sort of tired. I’m wondering if I might be missing out on some things. Am I too busy trying to get to new places that I miss things? Are there “moments of happiness I let drift away” because I’m so eager for what’s next? I’m still don’t want to settle down and stay there till I die. I can’t. I still have so many places to see. I will see them. I guess my view has just changed on who is missing out. Maybe those people back home are missing out. In fact I know there is a lot they are missing. But I don’t think they are the only ones. I’m pretty sure I’m missing out on a lot too. And I feel really bad for they way I thought about how people choose to live. You are you. I am me. I’m sorry if I thought you should live differently. I don’t think we can look at our lives and see the things we are missing. The “string of near-misses”. We need to look and see the things that we have. I am blessed with a family that loves me. A God that will never leave me. More amazing opportunities than you could shake a stick at. What do you have? I don’t think I’ll stop moving on my adventures, but I think I might start to slow down a little and try and appreciate what I may have been missing.

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!

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!

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!

     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

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!

     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!