Project: Cork Board

2 weekends ago I embarked on a project to build a huge cork board for our office. I got a little over zealous when I ordered the cork because I ordered twice as much as I ended up using. I was thinking a WALL of cork, but after realized that Jordan and I don’t have a car big enough to transport huge wall sized sheets of wood… totally had a “man moment” and was all thinking that I’ll just figure something out later. I don’t have too many of those moments. Usually, I’m on top of things and the details that accompany them. Anyways, it all worked out and now we have a 6′ x 3′ cork board in our office and it took me about..oh…12 minutes once I got it hung to fill it up with big posts, big to do’s, and big ideas. Bet you didn’t know that I am artsy AND handy :D

Want some personal advice? If you ever have ideas, goals, plans, or things you just never want to forget, write it down really big and tape it to the wall. Some place where you will see it all time and be reminded of it. Some place that it will haunt you. Not like putting it in a drawer, in a file, or in a book. I’ve found that I need to get those things out of my head and onto paper. And even more so put someplace that I consistently see it. Otherwise nothing really happens with them. I have to see it up. Then I make steps toward pulling it down.

Rivadeneyra Family

One of the greatest benefits of doing photography is that it has allowed me to reconnect with so many old friends. Jason and Megan are another one of those instances.

Jason and Megan both lived in the same dorm as me at SDSU (Olmeca!). Megan was down the hall on my same floor and Jason was in the room directly above mine. My roommate use to get very annoyed with the “guys upstairs” making to much noise and would take a broom and bang on our ceiling in protest. Jason is a drummer so what do you expect, but he never bothered me. Megan and I were really good friends and she is actually the one that invited me to check out Flood Church and started a group of us that went every Sunday night a 9pm (yup that’s how we use to roll). Flood turned out to be a major influence in my life, both spiritually and personally, and I wouldn’t be where I am today if it didn’t influence my decision to peruse a career in the digital and graphic arts.

Fast forward to the present, Jason and Megan have a wonderful and lively little boy and contacted us about doing a family session with them. Their little boy had a couple of trademarked moves that we were privy to capture. One, jazz hands. Two, the pirate walk (they said he can walk normally but chooses to kneel on one knee and takes a step while dragging the knelt leg—PIRATE WALK!) and this boy can BOOK IT doing his pirate walk. Three, pirate walk with jazz hands (definitely see below).

Santone Family: Newborn (Twins!)

Back in September, we received a very special email from a totally rad couple, J.P. and Meghan. They were expecting not one, but two (!) newborns in the coming weeks and wanted some fabulous shots of their babies’ first days at home. We knew we would love this family right off the bat, because as it turns out, they are good friends with our own amazing wedding photographers, Rico and Rachel, who had actually referred us to them for the shoot. (Thanks, you guys!)

Turns out we were right, because J.P. and Meghan pretty much rock. The two are teachers at a high school in the Riverside area (teachers always get bonus points from me), super sweet and friendly, and Meghan is quite the crafty mama (check out those ridiculously adorable crocheted hats below- I might just pay her to make my babies cute things someday). See if you can guess the theme of the twins’ nursery from that first picture below- such a great idea for a twin nursery! Plus, they introduced us to the amazingness of Nature Valley’s sweet and salty bars (I highly recommend the peanut and dark chocolate flavors).

Mitchell and Madi are our first twins shoot, and we definitely learned some things from the experience. For one, twice the amount of babies means twice the amount of shooting time. You’d think it wouldn’t take much longer, but those two had their sleeping and eating schedules completely synced… to be opposite of each other. This meant that one of them was always perfectly asleep while the other was fussy and ready for some food. There was a lot of “pass the baby” going on that day, with quick switching between who the current focal point was, so we ended up with tons of shots of them individually. Luckily, we managed to get some good shots of both babies together- happy and full- at the very beginning and again at the end.

It’s funny, almost every family with young children (and one with teenagers) that we’ve shot for has wound up asking us at the end of the shoot if their kids have completely turned us off to the idea of having our own anytime soon. And every time I can genuinely say not a chance. And after this shoot, I want twins more than ever! ;)

-J

Taking A Stand Against Internet Censorship

We have never gotten political here on the blog, but when some major websites that I use on a daily basis all take a day off in protest, you can’t help but take notice.

From what I can gather, there are 2 bills going through congress right now (called SOPA and PIPA) that threaten every aspect of your internet experience by blacklisting websites that “potentially help” users infringe on copyright holders. This means that any site where the users violated copyright law without the knowledge of the website, would be prosecuted and blacklisted without warning or appeal. From what I’ve heard this means they could take down wikipedia, youtube, tumblr, etsy, etc. or even go as far to not allow you to share a link on your Facebook page.

I’m no expert on the matter, for sure, and am just looking into the situation, but Splendid Communications paints a pretty scary picture for how these bills could effect wedding photographers and threatens our business in one very realistic scenario (and I am sure that there are many more scenarios that we haven’t even thought of yet). She even links to another article that explains in great depth about the SOPA bill and what it says. Definitely worth a read.

So what can you do about it? I found that you can send your senator an email about it on americancensorship.org, plus there is a cool info graphic that they created  explain the situation here.

I made the below image in response to the situation. Feel free to repost, share, pin, or use it in any way to promote free speech and the current internet experience. (Without fear of prosecution of copyright infringement. I wont come after you.)

Image and design by NEXT TO ME STUDIOS. Custom font by CAAVA DESIGN and available for free use here.

Wedding: Mike & Katie

Seems like we were just on holiday, but today brings us yet another new day off to enjoy at home. Or in our case half at home, half in Old Town with one of our favorite families to do a maternity shoot for Baby #2. We’re all crossing our fingers over here in San Diego that the rain is over and we’ll continue to have good weather for the rest of the day.

You know who had awesome weather on their shoot day? Katie and Mike. Their wedding day was the gorgeous blue-skied, sun-beaten day that every bride wishes for. The Mission Bay setting was a perfect match for the day’s weather: blue ocean, blue sky, and lots of greens and browns to complement.

I think Chris and I are seriously lucky that we have always had wedding clients who are super relaxed and just want to enjoy their big day, and of course, Katie and Mike were no exception. We already had an inkling of this after the fun time we had doing their engagement shoot, but I think it was confirmed on the wedding day about the time the fake mustaches starting showing up. And it always helps when you have a super duper wedding party standing by to keep things light and funny (and mustachy), and yelling sporadically for more smooches from the bride and groom. (Which Katie and Mike of course complied to.)

All in all, we had a blast hanging out with these two on their special day. Thanks for the taco bar, you two, and the chance to throw rocks in the ocean to see the red tide!

- J

Prologue – Wedding: Mike & Katie

I’ll be brave when you are frightened.
You’ll be strong when i am weak in the knees.
I’ll be calm when you have had enough of these rushing waves.
You’ll be the oxygen i need.

–Sleeping at Last, Tethered

Here’s to 2012

We’ve been noticing lately that everyone’s been doing these ‘year in review’ blog posts. I’ve done this myself in years past, on my personal blog. And while it’s great fun to spend a few hours looking back on the past 12 months and picking out handfuls of photos that seem to showcase the nostalgia of the year, my delightful husband had a different idea for our end of year blog post. While 2011 was great, and we loved the people, places, and pets we’ve posted already, 2012 is where it’s at now, so here’s a quick look ahead at what’s to come on the Next to Me Studios blog.

- J

Holidays with Jack and Sawyer

New Years is just around the corner and I can’t wait to start the new year. I love the idea of looking back over the past year and making goals and plans for the one to come. One of our resolutions is to add a bit more of our personality and happenings to our blog because we thought it would be fun. That way, not only do you get to see our work, but you get to see a bit of us. So since we haven’t pulled down our first Christmas tree just yet, we thought we’d keep the spirit going with our favorite subjects, Jack and Sawyer. They are new addition to our home as of this year and this was their first Christmas (we had a lot of first this year). They are just 9 months old and still have a bit of the that rambunctious kitten in them. Because of them, we had to hang the few ornaments we have real high on the tree. And though we’ve caught them several times scheming for the ornaments, they sure enjoyed playing underneath the tree as well. You’ll see them up on things that they shouldn’t be on (if you can spot them). But before we start yelling, shooing, and water bottle squirting we always have to snap a few shots of their antics. Happy almost New Year everyone!

– C

We like to play “Where’s Jack” in these (and NO, he is not suppose to be where he is):

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Engagement: Ben & Brittney

Can you believe it’s almost Christmas?! It sneaks up on me every year. But thanks to a couple of vacation days last week and the magic of Amazon.com, we have all our shopping done. It is always a good feeling to be able to check that off the list (and I love making, and then checking things off lists). We are having Christmas at my parents house, and I don’t know how your family does it, but for mine it’s an all day event filled with tons of food, hot wine, and shenanigans like marshmallow gun fights and gifts where what’s on the box doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what’s in the box. Yeah, we’re tricky like that. If you want to check out a little glimpse into our Christmas, I made a stop motion slideshow last year that you can see HERE.

In Studio news, we shot our last wedding of the year last weekend and have a newborn shoot right after Christmas to close us out. That means we shot 7 weddings and 29 other sessions this year! And we can’t wait to start our second season. We have to say a huge THANK YOU to all our amazing clients this year. Thank you for letting us share in a small part of your lives, allowing us to create our art by capturing your moments. You are all truly amazing.

Speaking of next year, Ben and Brittney are getting married in August and we can’t wait. Brittney is the cousin of the wife of one of my best friends (who you’ve seen on our blog quite a bit HERE and HERE) and we were even in their wedding together a few years ago. It’s crazy to me to find out how we are all connected. For their engagement session we went romping around the beach at UCSD and I remember Ben commenting after we had them walk up and down the beach 4 or 5 times that they must be the worst couple because they couldn’t even walk together correctly for the camera. We wanted one of them to walk in front of the other, and all they wanted was to walk next to each other. Clearly, they are not the worst couple ever. Far from it! We had the best time following these two around, and we can’t wait to follow them again on their big day.

– C

Prologue – Engagement: Ben & Brittney

“Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Adilynn & Braelin

My goodness! We have been trying to get this post up for over a week now! And as much as I’d like to say that we’ve been slacking and just plain lazy, it’s the exact opposite, we’ve been crazy busy. Definitely not in a crazy bad way, just in a we’re-always-on-the-move kind of way.

We had Thanksgiving up with my parents where my mom made pumpkin soup that she served in real hollowed out mini pumpkins. How cool is that, right?! Go mom! We partook in a little American crazy consumerism on Black Friday, but only for a couple hours and only in the afternoon. We did debate going out and hitting some of the stores that were opening at midnight, because honestly, we are up that late anyways. but decided that there wasn’t any to-die-for deals that were worth going out for.

The long weekend came and went and so did last week. It’s all a blur actually. But yesterday we headed out to Alpine for an amazing family shoot where we did a little trespassing (the trick is acting like you belong there) that was totally worth the risk. Right after we grabbed some amazing Mexican food (Alpine Taco Shop, people. Get the fish burrito), and took off for our 2 hour drive to Redlands because we had a dual family shoot with some very good friends of ours first thing Sunday morning.

But before all this week’s crazy took place, we had an especially fun shoot with our very favorite little model. We’ve done three shoots with her now, and Adilynn never fails to bring it. I think she’d let us take pictures of her for hours, and she always has her own ideas for good picture spots. We like clients who bring an opinion. ;) This particular shoot was to commemorate this cutie’s fifth birthday, and we found out from her mother an hour before the shoot that Adilynn was so excited, she’d invited along a friend from school! Couldn’t say no to the birthday girl, so we made sure to get plenty of fun girlie shots of the two BFF’s in their matching bumble bee dresses. Not to be outdone, little Braelin was giving big sister a run for her money in the charm department. That kid is all smiles all the time now!

Warning: The following pictures contain a super dose of charm and cuteness. We double dog dare you not to smile at the frolicking pictures.

— C + J