33 by 33

Posted on October 23, 2014 by SidebySide Photography

i am just terrible about keeping up with this blog, but i’m also trying to find a place in this blog world. this used to be our photo blog, but we decided to only focus on our cinematography business. then we turned into our travel blog but now that we have a young family we probably won’t be doing as much travel for a while. so i feel like my blog posts have been mostly potpourri lately…

so, i was thinking in order to find out what my ‘thing’ will be, i’m just going to start blogging. my goal is 33 posts by my 33rd birthday. i’m hoping that i will have some sort of inspiration about what my blogging purpose will be. my thought is right now that i would like to focus on posts that help keep people’s lives simple and happy. there’s so much negativity online so i think that might be a place to start anyway as an overall theme. thoughts? if anyone is actually out there reading this anyway??

… … …

i’ll leave you with a photo to begin my blogging journey!

blog 1/33

my little one in my dad’s truck at cruisin’ grand. all my dad’s cronies were freaking out that he let a baby walk around in his precious truck but i guess she has him wrapped around her finger just a little 😉

The time I missed a train

Posted on April 17, 2014 by SidebySide Photography

on thursdays i try to do a little travel throwback, emphasis on the story from one photo

2006 – photo taken on my first DSLR – canon rebel

i told my parents that i thought it would be fun to visit my brother in budapest for christmas. yes, i told my poor parents that i’d miss christmas a second time to join my brother who was also missing christmas. instead of them being bummed, they decided to join me. i hadn’t traveled with my parents since i was a kid so it was definitely an interesting experience! we thought we’d make more of a trip out of it than just visiting my brother and we planned on going to several countries.

well into our journey together, i needed some space from my parents so instead of staying in the same hotel as them, i decided to find a hostel while in poland. i found a really fun hostel and met some awesome people from around the globe. after a couple days in poland, we had planned on going to slovakia and then back to hungary to leave for home. my parents and i were going to meet at the train station in the morning and head out.

but i didn’t wake up.

the hostel owner was supposed to wake me. i didn’t have an alarm clock or a phone. they were supposed to wake me up but they forgot. so i slept. i woke up minutes before the train was supposed to leave. at first i freaked out a little. i didn’t know what to do, my parents didn’t have a phone, i didn’t have a phone and they were probably wondering where i was and assuming i was dead like parents do.

so i did my best and emailed them not knowing when they’d be able to check. things like this make me wonder what we ever did before smart phones…

then i looked up train times for overnight trains going to budapest so i wouldn’t miss my flight too and enjoyed one extra day in poland. that’s the night i snapped this photo. i hung out with a new friend (who is still a facebook friend after all these years) all day and then wandered around by myself that night. i don’t know what this statue is all about, i don’t remember even reading the plaque, but the weather was brisk and my cheeks were red, and i was left behind in poland an extra day and making the best of it.

moral of the story: don’t get left behind in a country…but if you do…live it up.

a word is worth 1000 photos…

Posted on March 26, 2014 by SidebySide Photography

in the world of 140 character updates, and overgrams, we are inundated with photos. don’t get me wrong, i’m in the business of capturing memories and preserving them for all time, but i think we’ve lost some of the magic of it. bear with me and hopefully i don’t sound like an old fart 🙂

maybe this is aging me, but do you remember when you used to have to think about a photo before you took it? each picture cost actual money, film, processing and making prints (or doubles if you liked giving them away to friends like i did) and that added up. we were careful, we thought about what we wanted to capture and you only retook a picture if you really wanted to preserve that memory and just in case the first one may not have worked. and even then it was always a gamble! you might have had the camera on the wrong setting, or bought the wrong speed film, or had a light leak, or accidentally exposed the film and when you got all the photos back, they were bad. remember that?? remember that sinking feeling when you just spent $5 hard earned dollars and the photos were black, each one of them!

now we live in a world where nothing is left uncaptured. you have all the time in the world to make sure you get it right. you can find photos or videos of everything and anything. moments aren’t pure anymore. we can’t sit and watch a moment and enjoy it and soak it in. we need to be constantly capturing it. now we grab our phones and get what we can because we can and why? so we can go back and enjoy the moment later? yes, there is value in that, otherwise i wouldn’t be in business or have a passion for it in the first place. but when will we have time to go through all that stuff? i think about the hundreds of photos i have from my film life to the thousands upon thousands i have from my digital life. when would i even have time to revisit all of those moments? why can’t i have one photo to remember a moment, isn’t that enough?

now that i have a daughter i’m especially aware of my phone time, checking instagram, facebook and taking photos and videos of her…she’s laughing, grab the camera, she’s blowing spit bubbles, grab the camera, she’s being cute (ALL THE TIME) grab the camera!!! i am torn between wanting to give her memories in the future (because i have tons of home movies and i am so happy that my mom took the time to do that for us, i love them) and just watching her laugh in person and not from behind a screen.

i love stories, and i love to tell stories, especially through images. sometimes an image or film tells the whole story, and sometimes you need the one photo and the 1000 words. how will i teach my daughter this balancing act? right now on instagram i’m posting a photo a day. most days i only take that one photo a day. it encourages me to think about what i want to post, and think about what i want to take, or not take photos of. i plan on doing yearly videos for kids, and so i’m trying to also be conscious of what i already have. do i need 50 videos of her laughing or just 2. how much do i really want to go through later. it is so tough though because it’s so addicting right now to take photos and videos and look at them all the time. i have to ground myself with the fact that baby girl is 5 months old…FIVE months only!! and i have a gazillion photos already.

i’m taking it down a notch, and trying to be in the moment…and maybe spend some time going through and actually reminiscing about some past moments…

i feel like i always say this, but i really am going to try to blog more…more travel…more projects…and more stories…because if you can’t have time to look through the past photos/videos and reminisce, then what was the point of taking them?

the best compliment

Posted on February 12, 2014 by SidebySide Photography

it was a slow morning, eh who am i kidding, all mornings are slow these days, and i’d been up an hour or so.

the first hour or so of mornings now consist of feeding the baby, changing the baby, playing with the baby, pumping for the baby and making coffee for me! then jared wakes up to join me for breakfast and we have a chance to chat, usually about how many times i was up the night before while he was blissfully asleep 😉

but this one morning in particular, i received the best compliment. i don’t think he even meant to go out of his way or even realized what his words meant in that moment but he said, “you look all disheveled, like a mom, you’re pretty” and then gives me a kiss. my hair having been pulled back all night falling out of the rubber band, no makeup, and before coffee and he gives me the nicest compliment.

it wasn’t that he thought i was pretty in that moment, i mean that is really nice and i appreciate it, but the thing i loved the most about that simple, off the cuff statement was that he said i looked like a mom. i have wanted to be a mom as early as i can remember and even though we had to wait so long for me to have that title, now i’m suddenly a mom of an almost 4 month old! and i LOVE it, can i yell it from the rooftops, I LOVE IT! i prayed for this, my friends and family prayed for this and we’re so happy to finally get to know our little girl and i am going to own looking disheveled, like a MOM, thank you very much!

stroepwafels – a family tradition

Posted on December 13, 2013 by SidebySide Photography

my mom mentioned at thanksgiving that we don’t do enough home movies…i thought, she’s right! we do our annual christmas card films and travel films, but we really need to do more everyday things for memories to get into the habit for our little girl!

unfortunately, i don’t know too much about my own ethnic background. i know that i’m half dutch, and what i know further is limited pretty much to dutch desserts. pretty sad huh?

so here’s a fun little time lapse of stroepwafels in the making. My mom and I make these every year, it’s a dutch tradition! every christmas we make them. they literally translate to ‘syrup waffle’ and we have to make them each by hand. don’t bother asking for the recipe, you need a special waffle iron from the netherlands to make these. you also shouldn’t bother asking nutrition facts, they are buttery, sugary and delicious…you do the math! come on, it’s the holidays, splurge a little!

anyway, enjoy our last minute, fun little video 🙂

patience

Posted on October 10, 2013 by SidebySide Photography

patience is a funny thing…

it’s all about perspective really

here i am, starting to get impatient that i’m a week overdue today, i’d really love to meet our daughter…but then i remind myself that it took us how long to get here? what’s a few more days?? i mean…seriously what’s wrong with me? i’ve said the whole pregnancy that i refused to complain because i wanted to enjoy every little bit of being pregnant, and i really do. i love all the little kicks reminding me that life has been created, but i also just want to meet that little person and find out who she’s going to be.

perspective… it only took us three years to get pregnant. i am well aware that there are people who have spent so much longer than that in their heartache, and my heart aches for those around me who are going through the same thing. when you’re in it, it feels like forever and then suddenly you’re about to have a child any day now and you wonder if all that pain was real.

so i’m trying to take advantage of this last minute free time. the baby room is done (blog post coming soon), the hospital bag is packed, the car seat is installed and i even made treats for the nurses. i’m getting lots of wedding films done and i’ve even been able to cross a bunch of things off my to do list that have been on there forever (you know all the annoying little things you just never get to). so i’m taking perspective and looking at this like a wonderful opportunity to finish some things i’ve started before i’m completely exhausted the rest of my life 😉 perspective…

and here are some photos from our 20’s themed maternity shoot with zelo photography! see their super sweet blog post on us here 🙂 shoot inspired by this movie, and hair and makeup done by this lovely lady! we wanted to do something a little different and i think the photos turned out great!