Heidi Ryder Photography: The Blog » Southern California and Destination Wedding Photography

Chris and I make a really great team. We’ve always been the yin to each other’s yang. He’s messy, I’m tidy. He’s outgoing, I’m more reserved. He likes ketchup on corn dogs, I use only mustard.  Some might think these differences make us incompatible, but really, when you put us together we make one complete package – the best of both worlds.

Our differences have proven to be really helpful when it comes to creative projects, too. I know lots about photography, Chris knows a lot about filmmaking. When you put those two talents together, it turns out you can make a pretty cool stop-motion video.

We spent a couple of hours making the video below as an entry into a contest where the winner wins an all-expenses paid trip to a photo workshop in Mexico. I didn’t win, but I like our video anyway. Had we more time to focus on it (we shot it the weekend my grandpa passed away so more pressing things were happening in our life), I know the result would have been even better, and maybe even gotten us a win.

How we did it: I set up my camera to take continuous shots of me walking. I also took a shoot of four Polaroid pictures sitting on a table and Chris keyed the real photo out to use it as a mat for the animation. We shot in four different locations. The concept is I’m prepping myself for Mexico. In the first frame I’m removing a winter hat and scarf, my coat comes off in the second, and I appear in a skirt and flip flops in the third frame and find myself a sombrero. When I walk into the fourth, I’ve got the sombrero on and a camera in hand – ¡Viva Mexico!

Hope you enjoy the video – I just had to share it. I can’t wait to work with my creative partner again!

This is a picture of me and my Grandpa. It was taken after returning home from a baby beauty pageant my mom entered me in. I didn’t win (and with that mouth-agape blank stare, I can’t imagine why not), but I like to think my grandpa thought I was beautiful all the same.

He passed away Sunday morning and my world has been rocked, just a little bit, ever since. He lived a good, long 84 years on this Earth. Sixty-five of those years were spent married to his best friend and soul mate, my Grandma. Knowing that my Grandpa won’t be around to offer me candied orange slices or to give me his trademarked half smile is tough enough, but watching my Grandma come to terms with losing her husband is just about one of the toughest things ever, I think.

My grandpa had a reputation for being tough as nails. But I never knew him as anything but an old softie. He had a great sense of humor about him – and, oh, he was witty. I have never been the type that could remember jokes, but I can still quote a couple of his one-liners to this day. That’s how funny he was. He loved baseball, Westerns, detective shows, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. He once patiently sat at a kitchen table for an entire hour because I insisted on making him breakfast when my Grandma was out of town. I was 10 and I didn’t really know how to cook. He ate every bite. I can list of a lot of things that were great about my Grandpa but I think my favorite part about him is how madly in love he was with my Grandma. Their marriage was beautiful to me and I feel so fortunate to have their example to live by.

My Grandparents are the absolute center of my family. I will miss my Grandpa more than I can express. I am sorry for my Grandma, Mom, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins who are experiencing this loss right along with me. I’m glad we have each other.

Thanks to all of my friends who have sent condolences, good thoughts and prayers towards me and my family. They are so very much appreciated.

Instead of calling this list The 20 Best Christmas Songs Ever, maybe I should call it 10 Great Christmas Songs, Plus 10 More That Are Kind Of About Christmas, but that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. You see, I happen to really love Christmas music. Even the most played out Christmas songs make me giddy with excitement when they come on the radio. There’s a station here in LA that plays ALL CHRISTMAS MUSIC ALL THE TIME for the entire month of December. And I think it’s the greatest thing ever.

Chris, on the other hand, is not a fan. We suspect it’s because he grew up singing in childrens’ chorales and A Capella groups. Thus, he was forced to sing Christmas song after Christmas song over and over again every. single. December. I guess I can see why he’d grow a distaste for the genre, but I can’t see myself ever tiring of the holly, jolly tunes that I love so. Luckily, Chris is a good and patient husband and indulges me for at least 20 minutes when we’re in the car together. He’ll watch me hop and bop around in my seat while I sing along to all of the classics. And he’ll only roll his eyes once or twice.

This year Chris decided we should make a mixtape together. Chris loves making mixtapes. It’s the indie-rock college kid in him that will never die, I guess. We have done what we call “bounce mixes” from time to time where one of us will choose the first song and the other will choose the second song. We go like that until we have a full mix. It’s pretty fun! I chose 10 of my favorite Christmas songs and Chris alternated his “not-really-Christmas-music” Christmas songs. The result? The 20 Best Christmas Songs Ever!

We enjoyed making this mix so much that I wanted to share it with all of you! Have a listen and let me know what you think! It totally succeeded in getting me in the Christmas spirit and I hope it does the same for you! If you want to open a fancy flash version of the playlist in a new window, CLICK HERE. Or, you can just keep this window open and press play below (it’s a large file so it takes a while to start playing).

Here’s the playlist:

Christmas (Please Come Home) – Darlene Love
The Tip of the Iceberg – Owl City
Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney
Everything Is One Big Christmas Tree – The Magnetic Fields
Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
Donde Estas Santa Claus – Augie Rios
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Jackson 5
Winter Wooksie – Belle & Sebastian
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree – Brenda Lee
Holiday Road – Matt Pond PA
All I Want For Christmas Is You – Mariah Carey
Put The Lights On The Tree – Sufjan Stevens
Last Christmas – Wham!
What the Snowman Learned About Love – Stars
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town – Bruce Springsteen
Santa’s Beard – They Might Be Giants
Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt
White Winter Hymnal – Fleet Foxes
Baby, It’s Cold Outside – Zooey Deschanel & Leon RedBone
Taking Down the Tree – Low

Happy Holidays!

Even though we’re barely into our second year of marriage, Chris and I have spent several Christmases together already. And I don’t mean I spent a few hours at my house, he a few hours at his, and then we met up later in the day to exchange gifts. No, I mean we really spent Christmas together – I flew all the way to Colorado and spent the holiday with his entire family several years in a row, and I fell in love with them almost as hard as I fell for him.

I quickly grew to adore Christmas in Colorado and even before I was technically part of the family I always felt at home with the Ryders. The snow, the hot wassail, the board games, the laughter, the food – it’s all a warm and cozy combination of the things this Southern California girl thought only happened in movies. I suppose I always knew we wouldn’t be able to spend every Christmas in Colorado, but I was hoping it would be several more years until I had to experience a Christmas without snow again. But, alas, this year Chris and I won’t be making the trek to The Centennial State.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little inconsolable about it at first. After spending most of my life wanting for a snowy Christmas, all my dreams came true the first time I watched snow fall in Colorado and I really didn’t want to give up on that in this lifetime. But, my darling husband talked some sense into me (as he always does), and made me realize that this was the chance for us to start our very own Christmas traditions which will carry on through our lives together and will be remembered fondly by our children. Also! We could finally decorate a Christmas tree together. I was sold.

Since I had to live without snow this year I wanted to make sure every other part of our holiday experience was festive enough that I wouldn’t miss Colorado too much. So I wasted no time and insisted we go out and buy our first tree on Thanksgiving. So, after we stuffed ourselves with turkey at my Dad’s house, we headed out and picked our very first tree. We had prepared for it in the weeks before by picking out decorations. We struggled at first with the look we wanted our tree to have but ultimately decided to just pick out things we like and hope they all sort of come together in a way that makes sense. We’re not really designer people so a designer tree is so not us.

As soon as we got the thing home we realized the only place we could put it is right in front of our fireplace. That was and is sort of a bummer because we look forward to using our fireplace every winter! Unfortunately we have to miss out on that cozy-ness this year, but I’ll make that sacrifice for a tree. Note the stockings hung on the bookcase with care.

We ended up with what I like to call an “Enchanted Forest” look. It’s what I imagine a Christmas tree in the woods to look like if it had been decorated by the deer, squirrels, rabbits and birds. Obviously a tree in the forest cannot be complete without a crap-ton of owls, so there’s plenty of those on there, which makes me happy. We also have special ornaments sprinkled all over, starting with our “first” ornament that was purchased last year to commemorate our honeymoon in Sydney(1), and a creepy felted tree(5) to commemorate our first tree together. We bought it at UniqueLA and it makes us laugh every time we look at it. There’s also an adorable ceramic owl with our last name stamped into its belly(3),custom-made by JustPuff. I love looking at the sampling of the different owls we decorated the tree with.

But so far my favorite ornament is one I had made this year to remember our beloved dog by. It’s Frasier as a superhero, and I know it’s an ornament we’re going to remember fondly. I look forward to explaining this ornament to our children and telling them all about the grumpy old dog their mom and dad loved so much. It was made by Jennifer at Itty Bitties For You, and if you like adorable things you should definitely check out her shop.

And so, even though I’m still disappointed we won’t be in Colorado with the rest of the Ryder clan, I’m really looking forward to spending Christmas with my family this year and starting new Ryder traditions with my husband. Christmas is in ten days! I can hardly believe it.

Please help me make this Christmas even more special by nominating a deserving family for my portrait giveaway. I’ll choose the winner on the 20th and announce them here on Christmas Eve!

I am thankful for so many things: my family, my friends, my health, my job – just to name a few. Each day doesn’t always turn out how we want them to – they’re not all sunshine and flowers. But I’m thankful to have a partner by my side who gets me through the ugly days and basks in the warm glow of the sunshine days with me, as well.

Today is one of the many good days and I hope it’s good for all of you as well!

Here’s a picture of that husband of mine – he makes me most thankful. Especially when he makes this face. It’s his, “Aren’t I adorable?” face and it gets me every time. Because he is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I can’t believe I’m only just barely sharing these photos. They were taken well over a month ago now but things have just been so busy, I haven’t even had time to look at them until now. I promise to never keep adorable baby photos all to myself ever again! Baby Vivien is the newest member of our good friends Alisha and Scott’s family. Vivien’s older brother Sam is probably one of my favorite kids ever to walk the planet.

Chris and I weren’t supposed to meet Vivien when we did. In fact, we sadly had no immediate plans to meet her, which is the saddest story ever told. Alisha, Scott, Sam and Vivien live in Denver and so we don’t get to see them nearly as much as we would like to. But, as luck would have it, we were stranded in Denver for 8 hours one beautiful September day (on our way to John and Dorie’s wedding), after our connecting flight to Memphis was canceled due to mechanical problems. As soon as I found out we had nothing to do in Denver for so long, I called Alisha up immediately. She was still on maternity leave so she literally hopped in the car and raced right over to get us from the airport. It was kismet!

So, I’d like to introduce you to baby Vivien. She looks so much like her brother Sam, which is the highest compliment I could bestow upon another human being. I love this family so much and Chris and I were sooo glad we got to meet Viv while she was still a tiny little thing!

When I hopped into the backseat of the car, Vivien was asleep. She woke up a few minutes later and I found her facial expressions absolutely hilarious. I just had to make a collage out of them. I know her mom and dad will appreciate this because they are hilarious people. The second one in the top row cracks me up so much, I am sitting here by myself laughing like a lunatic.

Babies are fascinating creatures. They can start crying at the drop of a hat, and then stop two seconds later. This was seriously the only time we saw Vivien cry during our visit, and it lasted for a nonosecond. She’s a good baby.

Chris took this one while I was holding Viv. I love it!

I liked watching Chris interact with her. I think this was the first time I saw him holding a baby that small! She thought he was weird, clearly.

Speaking of Chris. I’ve mentioned before he’s been learning how to use a camera and taken a real interest in photography. He took the next three shots of the family dogs, Olive and Murphy. They are so good! The student has become the master! I am beaming with pride right now.

And if the day wasn’t already awesome enough – Sam came home from school! Sam is amazing. He adores Chris. Chris adores Sam. They get along so well, it is awesome to watch.

It was sooo amazing to see Alisha, Scott, Sam and Vivien – and our friend Dave, who we got to have lunch with. There is absolutely no other city we could’ve been stranded in which would have equaled us having a really great day. Hooray for Denver!

Chris and I knew that this day wasn’t too far away, but we had both hoped we were at least a year or two from having to say goodbye to our beloved Frasier.

I’m looking at the previous post on this blog and I can’t believe it was barely a week ago that the three of us spent some time in the park. We knew at the time Frasier wasn’t feeling well, but we didn’t realize how serious it was. Early this morning we called our vet to get the results of some blood work and were surprised and saddened to hear that Frasier’s kidneys were failing and that there wasn’t anything that could be done to save him.

I honestly can’t believe I’m writing these words right now.

We love this dog immensely and today has been one of the saddest of our lives. But, we are so thankful that we had such an amazing animal as part of our family. We really are lucky that we got to share our lives with him. We’re also lucky that we got to say goodbye to him the right way, before he really started suffering. After we got the news we cuddled with him and cried for a bit and then we took him on an extra long walk, allowing him to stop and sniff what literally felt like every square inch of our neighborhood. That’s a good day in Frasier’s book. He was exhausted when we got back and while Frasier and I cuddled on the couch, Chris went to the store and picked out the nicest cut of steak money could buy from the butcher. We cooked it up for our dog as his last meal and hand fed it to him while he laid on the couch. It was a sendoff made for a king, and rightly so.

I took tons of photos of Frasier’s last day. He showed a little more pep today than he had in the previous week which was both uplifting and completely heartbreaking. I was just glad that we have these images to remember him by and that he doesn’t look too sick or sad. I’d like to think that his last day was one of his best.

Thanks for being the best curmudgeon of a dog, Frasier. Your dad and I love you very, very, very much and will miss you more than you could ever imagine.

Here’s Frasier’s last day in photos…

PS – I wanted to again extend a heartfelt THANK YOU to the friends and family who have offered their condolences. We have felt so tremendously loved today and it really makes us feel so good to know that so many people cared about the well being of our grumpy little dog. Seriously, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I would like to show you Frasier’s dog tag. Chris took care of the engraving at the pet store and was so pleased with himself for getting “I AM AWESOME” in there. I had to admit, it was a nice touch. It wasn’t until we got home that we noticed Chris had forgotten a letter in Frasier’s name. We started calling our dog Frazer as a joke. This tag is now hanging in our kitchen and I know I will smile every time I look at it.

Goodbye, sweet dog.

I found myself without a shoot today – the first Saturday in a while that I’ve had free! To celebrate, Chris and I decided to take the dog to the park and just enjoy some free time on a summer day. It was quite lovely to get out of the house and not have anything whatsoever scheduled. The world was our oyster, and we were deliciously lazy. Hope I get another day like this before summer is over.

I’ve been teaching Chris about photography recently. He gets as excited about going out to shoot as I do these days, which is so. much. fun. Here’s my student, capturing a dog in the wild.

When my best friend Kim called me to tell me she was engaged, one of the first things we talked about – after squeeing into the phone for five minutes – was who her bridesmaids were going to be. Kim and I have known each other since we were 12 (I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask me how long ago that was!) and talked about being in each other’s weddings well before either of us were even close to being married.

Kim was the maid of honor at my wedding and I was looking forward to being a bridesmaid in hers. As our conversation progressed, the topic of wedding photography came up and Kim said to me, “Can’t you be a bridesmaid and the photographer at the same time? I don’t want anyone else to shoot my wedding!”

While I appreciated the gesture, I had been gearing up to be a bridesmaid in this particular wedding since I was 12 and there was no way I was going to work it as well! Normally I absolutely love shooting friends’ weddings because it allows me to really be a part of the day, but this is the one friend’s wedding I did not want to photograph. So, I plainly answered Kim’s question with a simple, “Um, no.”

So, we agreed that she would hire another photographer and I would just enjoy the day as a best friend and bridesmaid. Mark Leonard was hired as the photographer for the day. It was an interesting feeling not walking around at a wedding with all of my camera gear strapped to me, but I managed. And, I have to admit I did have my camera nearby most of the day and captured a few moments. I am used to seeing the world through my lens, after all, so it wouldn’t have felt right to go the entire day without making any images at all.

So, here’s the wedding of Kim and Johnny as seen through the eye of a bridesmaid. Kim and Johnny, I love you both so much and cannot be happier that you’re on this lifetime journey together. Kim, you are my oldest and dearest friend and I don’t know where I would be without you. Johnny, thank you for taking care of her so well.

Love,

*ME*

Love these shots of Kim’s sister and brother (who are, for all intents and purposes MY brother and sister) getting ready.

And how beautiful is my best friend? Right?!

This shot of Kim’s grandpa seeing her in her dress for the first time brings tears to my eyes every time. Kim and her grandpa have a very special relationship so I know how amazing this moment was.

This adorable little guy is Kim and Johnny’s nephew, Lyndon. He is the most smiley baby ever, I loved him!

Lyndon looked quite dashing in his kilt. Here he is with his proud grandma Linda and aunt Kimmy.

I was kicking back watching Mark take some portraits of Kim when I caught her mom watching them and fighting back tears. That’s her baby girl in a wedding dress, about to get married!  Such a beautiful moment that I don’t think Kim was even aware happened.

Kim wrote her vows out on a pad of paper she found at the hotel. I don’t know why I think this is so awesome, but I do.

From the sneak peek…

And probably my favorite image from the day…

And look! I don’t have any photos from the ceremony because I was in it! Weird. The reception got under way and the normally subdued Johnny got a little, um, freaky with it.

And Kim wasn’t exactly a wallflower…

So there you have it, my best friend’s wedding. It was a truly great day.

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I don’t think I’ve ever done a sneak peek on this blog, because I am an impatient person and think it cruel to tease clients with just one image. But I wanted to share something in particular today, and it doesn’t have anything to do with images.

So, I am forced to blog a sneak peek image of a post that is coming tomorrow. I can’t help it! I can’t write a post to my photo blog without a photo! Besides, the sneak peek isn’t for a client, it’s for my best friend. I wasn’t her photographer, I was just a bystander with a camera so technically this sneak peek doesn’t count.

I was listening to my iTunes playlist, as I am wont to do on a day like today, and a song came on that I love. I’ve listened to this song at least a hundred times before, but I never really paid attention to the lyrics. Well, I must have been subconsciously waiting for the day they would really resonate because today I paid attention, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

I wanted to put a snippet of those lyrics here for safe keeping. The song is “Give A Little Love” by Noah and the Whale.

Well if you are (what you love)
And you do (what you love)
I will always be the sun and moon to you
And if you share (with your heart)
Yeah, you give (with your heart)
What you share with the world is what it keeps of you

And now I’ll leave you with that sneak peek I mentioned. My beautiful friend married the love of her life. It was a very special day and I was so grateful to be a part of it.