A Photo of a Photo Shoot

Love this picture (by ATM photographer, Don): our creative director, Vicki, directing a photo shoot of ATM staffers donning the season’s hottest shoes (from Zapatos) for a spread in an upcoming issue of the mag.

Favorite Things Friday

TGIF! Are you ready for the weekend (and yes, this might be a rhetorical question…!)?

Here’s a few of the things we in the ATM offices have been chatting about, and, yes, looking forward to all week long.

Chama River and Brewing Company’s Green Chile and Ale Fondue, which I can’t even type without getting ridiculously hungry.

The Def Leppard/Poison/Cheap Trick concert tonight at Journal Pavilion. (If you go, keep an eye out for Liz, our photo director… she’ll be rocking out in full hair-metal regalia—well, maybe not, but she is excited about the concert.)

Bubonicon. Yes, some of us are closet (and not-so-closet) sci fi and fantasy fanatics.

More about these next week, but we’re already getting ready for the New Mexico Wine Festival in Bernalillo next weekend, and the State Fair the weekend after (is it seriously almost September? And the summer went where, exactly?).

What are you up to this weekend? Got any favorites to share with us?

True Confessions of an ATMer: I’m (Now) a Coupon Clipper

For the first blog from the ATM Advertising Department, I wanted to write about something cool. And fun. And about something that you wouldn’t know about the Magazine just by looking at it.

It’s no secret that here at Albuquerque The Magazine, food is not only something we love to write about—indulging in the city’s always-eclectic and creative cuisine has become one of our most beloved pastimes. That’s why our annual Food & Wine issue is always one of our favorites to put together.

After publishing last year’s edition full of all things food, we collectively decided that in the future, the issue needed something more—and that something was more food. Enter the first-ever Albuquerque The Magazine Ultimate Restaurant Guide.

Creating the Restaurant Guide was, quite honestly, a labor of love. From the first time I saw Tom (our Senior Graphic Designer)’s first design concepts to the moment I folded and tore out my first coupon (which was for an amazing buy-one-get-one-free smoothie deal at Keva Juice), I was enamored.

However, our rose-colored lenses faded ever so slightly when we realized that we had less than 3 weeks to put the piece together. The next several days became a whirlwind of Liz (our Photo Director) visiting 45 restaurants to shoot photos, Lexi and Jess compiling more than 40 perfect food-related lists, and me collecting from the restaurant owners mouth-watering menu samples and awesome coupon offers. I even recall one occasion upon which Tom and I found ourselves on an after-hours phone call to our printer to make triple sure the coupon perforations were in just the right spot.

Tom and I are now tighter than ever, and I inadvertently learned the basics of Adobe InDesign. I still laugh because I was probably more excited than anyone else in the entire city to pick up the Restaurant Guide and use my first coupon. The Guide now lives happily in my glove compartment. I hope there’s one in yours, too.