Hi guys! We are so excited to introduce ourselves!
I'm Crysta, the one in the polka dots + that is Melissa in the stripes next to me. We are the girl team behind Next Family Portraiture and it's nice to meet you! Something we get often is 'Are you guys sisters?' and the answer is no, it's just we both got that Chinese + Caucasian blend, hahaha. We are just two friends who decided we wanted to help families capture their most precious memories!
We have both been professional photographers for over 6 years now and come from a background of commercial and wedding photography! Our wedding photography company VIVIDfotos is actually a big influence on how we started with Nest.
Over our couples wedding planning process we'd meet with them multiple times before capturing one of the most monumental days in their lives and with that naturally we built some pretty awesome friendships! Lots of times when our couples would begin their families they would come back to us to capture that. Over the years we started doing more and more maternity + family portraits as more of our couples had their little ones.
One day, one particular couple named Lesley + Ryan asked if we do newborn photos and as we had never done any yet we told them no. They then came back with 'well, what if it's our newborn?' They placed their trust in us and really encouraged us to shoot their new addition for them so we agreed and ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! So we did it again, and again, and again, and started Nest!
Sadly, Melissa lost her dad to cancer and when that happened she understood the true impact of photography like she never had before. As she searched for photos with him and cherished the ones she could find she vowed to freeze these memories for other peoples families to have for a lifetime.
We are both overcome with gratitude that we are lucky enough to do something we love and create photos that families will look back on--bringing them back to all the happy memories that time meant to them, forever.
