It’s Here!

It’s not the 15th yet! You are right but we just couldn’t wait to share… share what? OUR NEW WEBSITE! That’s right! Head on over to nexttomestudios.com and check it out for yourself. We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out and we think you’ll agree. Have a look and don’t be shy… let us know what you think!

But before you take off, there are a few more things we need to tell you:

First, along with our new website comes a new blog. As such, you will need to update your RSS feeds or Google Readers with our new blog link nexttomestudios.com/blog/ to keep up with us as we have moved everything over and will no longer be posting to this blog.

Speaking of blogging, along with our new website we also posted a sweet engagement session we did with Buck & Taylor to the new blog to kick things off that you wont want to miss. Promise.

Lastly, we need to give some some major props and a huge thanks to Cody at Caava Design who is the phenomenal master mind and designer behind our new brand. Give him a holler if you are looking for a great designer. You’ll be glad that you did.

Enjoy and we will will catch you on the new blog!

–C&J

Rob & Stephanie’s Backyard Poolside Wedding

Happy 4th of July, everybody! From where I sit in our little home office, I can hear patriotic country music being blasted from one of our neighboring condos… gotta love east county. You know what I love about the 4th of July? I get an entire week off from work, and it is just delightful. The school I work for is year round (equals no real summer break for me), so the one week I do get off is extremely welcome. We kicked off my first day off by traveling up to Long Beach to capture a dockside wedding for the awesome Stacey and Paul, where we were forced to drink raspberry sparkletini and specially brewed “Paul Beer” all day.

Forced, I tell you.

Today we’re heading to Ramona to celebrate the holiday with some of our good friends, but first we promised you the full post of Stephanie and Rob’s wedding. These two are ridiculously cute first of all. Just silly and goofy and so fun to follow around all day. They had a beautiful backyard wedding in early December, just before all the leaves started falling from the trees. Everything was golden yellow and deep green—a super amazing background for first look pictures for sure. You might also spot a former couple of Next to Me Studios in these pictures—Stephanie’s sister and brother-in-law, Katie and Mike, got hitched last summer at the Marina Village. It’s the absolute best when we get to see our people again!

-J

Rob & Stephanie’s Backyard Poolside Wedding Preview

Here we are. July 1. Exactly half way through 2012. Jordan and I have had our hands full these last 2 weeks so it’s going to take us a few more days to get the full post up and keep you all apprised of the latest happenings. But we couldn’t leave you without a first of the month post so here’s the deal; Here is a little stand-alone preview of what’s to come. That’s right! I’m not cheating you out of shots for the coming post… no sir! Enjoy these now and then come back in a few days for a whole new post with lots more of Rob and Stephanie’s wedding goodness. See you in a few days. Enjoy!

—C

Make sure you come back now, ya hear?!

Brumfield Maternity

I’m having a hard time focusing my mind on words for this post because honestly, I’m super excited right now and my mind is racing. Jordan and I got word from our amazing designer that our brand new website and blog is off to the programmer and we cant wait to pull the sheet off it for you. Though this is why I’m excited, it’s not why I can’t focus. Now that we are getting close to launching, Jordan and I are looking at revamping all our brand pieces like packaging, thank you cards, new product offerings, communication pieces, etc. Everything is wide open right now with possibilities and it’s fun! We placed some orders today and if you want to see what we have cooking you might just have to book a little session with us to get all our goodies. ;) But here’s the scary (and also awesome) part. In two weeks we start our heaviest stretch of shooting for us ever with 6 weddings in 7 weeks… and oh yeah, Jordan and I have our full-time day jobs during the week too (not to mention that Jordan is finishing up her Master’s degree in the new couple weeks too). So that doesn’t exactly leave a lot of down time, and therefore we’re scrambling to get all our brand related ‘to do’s’ knocked out before we dive into a wonderful sea of editing wedding collections (which we are thoroughly looking forward to)!

But before we start flooding you with wedding post after wedding post, I thought I’d sneak in one more family-ish session with Matt and Donna’s maternity session. We’ve gotten to know Matt and Donna really well over the last year and Jordan even worked at the same summer camp with Donna back in the college days. We got a late start as we lost track of time, talking at our place before heading down to the Sweetwater Reservoir. We scrambled to capture the last little bits of golden light as the sun disappeared between the hills and the temperature dropped dramatically (which none of us were prepared for). But freezing temperatures or not, Matt and Donna were still all smiles and big laughs—I think they even made us laugh more than we made them. Especially when Matt was so confused about why we spent so much money on lenses that don’t zoom, and while Jordan and Donna tried to find a variety of colored letter blocks to spell “James”—only to realize there was no escape from three red letters in a row. We did a bit of trespassing again, and a good thing too! All the epic lake shots at the end we got were totally worth the risk I think. Hmmm, I think that I am going to design up some photographer trespassing exception stickers that I can slap on those no trespassing signs when we are out… I wonder if they would fly with the cops?… hmmm, I might be on to something… Anyways, little James has since been born and I know for a fact that you are going to be meeting him in the future, blogger friends. Enjoy!

–C

Bishop and Moses Families

Chris has been on me to get this blog out like the barley I burned into one of our best pots earlier today. As in, really, really on me (and can’t be scrubbed off no matter how much I try). Probably this is because last month, when it was my turn to blog, I was two days late in gettin’ it done. Luckily for me, this week has not been too hectic for us. Since this is the last week of one of my final Master’s classes, I’m actually really surprised about the lack of intense work. Maybe they’re trying to be nice to us before we start our capstone projects next week… Whatever the reason, it’s been a freeing week with time to go grocery shopping, find delicious, healthy recipes, meal plan, and burn the heck out of our pots. (Sigh. That was a good pot.)

Enough about my cooking woes, though!

Let’s get down to business here. Specifically, the two adorables who are showcasing today’s post.

Oh, how I love taking pictures of these two babies.

Seriously, there is just too much cuteness to stand it when these two are around.

What else do I love? That we’ve gotten to photograph their entire first year!  From newborns, to six monthers, and now they’re a year old! And now that I think about it, we’ve actually had a fourth shoot with Will—his pre-coming-into-the-world photo shoot—aka, Chris and Shay’s maternity shoot.

These two bambinos, and Nelly’s big brother Alex (who apparently won a big award at his sixth grade graduation today, good job, Alex!), are just the sweetest, most fun to photograph kids on the planet. Look at those smiles! Look at those mischievous grins! Look at the excitement of playing with gigantic candy! Look at those great big brother skills!

Cousins. They’re the coolest, right?

-J

It’s a girl!

Congratulations to this beautiful family—a baby sister is on the way! More pictures of the big reveal to come. :)

– J

Aubrey Maternity

Happy middle of May, readers! Is it just me, or is this year flying by a ridiculous rate? It’s already nearly graduation time again at the school where I work, and I could have sworn we just did last year’s graduation. Time is nuts that way.

Well, we have a very special family shoot to share with you all tonight. Special, because it involves one of our favorite families of all time, the Aubreys! Yes, you’ve seen them here before at least once or twice, and there will be many more to come, let me assure you, because their little family just keeps growing! Baby # 2, who makes her technical debut in these family photos, was born in February, and because time is flying so fast, I’m sure we’ll be doing her six month shots before we can blink!

But back to this shoot. Let me tell you something about this particular day: it was freezing! Jen, Justin, and Zoey were such troopers, but just look at those rosy cheeks Zo is sportings. That is cold, my friends. But that just means we had an amazing shoot with lots of running (to keep warm), big wrestling cuddles, and comfy family-sized blankets wrapped around everyone. Oh, how I love this family!

– J