Jon Claxton | Photography

Through the power of facebook I met jewelry artist Nikkol Rae Fletcher, who is 1-degree of separation from my friend Nikki Caldwell at Fluid Bloom Designs (www.fluidbloom.com).  Of course, as San Luis Obispo would have it, Nikkol and I end up knowing many other 1-degrees in town.  Anyway, Nikkol shot me a quick message after seeing some recent flower photos that I took for Nikki and she wanted to know if I would be interested in shooting some pics of her jewelry.  Of course, I can’t say that I’ve always dreamt of shooting jewelry, but after meeting up with Nikkol one fine Sunday afternoon, I quickly enjoyed the challenge of setting up a studio and dealing with all the lighting challenges that it brings.  You see, I only had two strobes, an umbrella, a bounce, and a soft box.  The challenge came when I began to notice reflections within Nikkol’s finely polished stones.  So, with thoughts of “MacGyver” dancing through my head, I quickly improvised, using almost half a role of papertowels, a plate of glass and some masking tape to build my product tent, and thus eliminate some nasty reflections from the umbrella, and the ceiling.  Nonetheless, I think everything turned out pretty good.  Not to mention Nikkol and I had a couple great laughs after stepping back and looking at what we created.  Nikkol if your reading this, “Yes, we should have taken a photo of the ridiculousness.”

You can find Nikkol’s jewelry in several stores within San Luis Obispo County, including Hand’s Gallery and many others.  I’ll be sure to re-post Nikkol’s website when it is up and running, but in the meantime, I leave you with my photoshop mosiac to enjoy the beauty of Nikkol’s artwork…..

Katie Jimenez and I met on the most unusual of terms; a story that I will reserve for only her, Anthony, and myself.  Admittedly, I think it must have been all for the best.   Once I met Katie and her soon-to-be husband, we could tell all the kinks were going to work out just fine.  Of course, there was the LaCaro connection, but I believe it was much more than that.  I was very honored to shoot photos of Katie and Anthony mostly because of Katie’s love for photography and the significance that she held for her wedding day.  It seemed to be a perfect formula for the reason why I enjoy wedding photography, as well.  The unique images that we all created during their wedding day are sure to fit in to the “timeless” category that I strive to provide for clients with.  I hope you all enjoy the few teasers that have been posted within this blog.  And look out, because I think that Katie will soon be out shooting photos of others who are planning their “big day.”  Afterall, you should see the size of Katie’s wedding planner binder; it was ginormous.

Cheers to both Katie and Anthony for such a beautiful event…..  – jon

Yeah, so I’ve heard all the quotes before, “You can take the boy out of Bako, but you can’t take the Bako out of the boy.”  Well, maybe they’re right.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that Merle Haggard as the very first live performance that I ever saw when I was just a little dude in cowboy boots.  It is kinda surreal to get to watch him again, some 25 years later; give or take a couple of years.  Funny thing about this concert is that I didn’t even show up to the concert with my camera in hand.  I briefly thought about it, but figured I didn’t want to risk dragging that expensive equipment around, with a big wedding coming up this weekend (that’s right, Katie. I didn’t want any of the unthinkables to happen days away from you big day).  But……after seeing the opening band, and the seats that Dwayne and I got, I blasted out of the PAC and drove back home for the camera.  The ushers kinda tripped out after I hauled in my manfrotto tripod, cable release, and a bag full of lenses.  Thankfully, I was sitting up on the balcony like something out the muppet show; nobody was really around to disturb, so the ushers ended up letting me do my thang…  Thought maybe I would just post on or two pics from the night on the blog for fun.