Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We are back in town after having a quick road trip out to Wyoming this past week for a shoot. After having been in Peoria for over a month, it was good to be back out on the road for a shoot and it’s never upsetting to be out West! After being in Wyoming for even a few days, I adjusted very quickly to the lower humidity then we have here in Peoria. We stopped in Des Monies, Ia. for the night on the way back home and when I stepped out of the car, that good old Midwestern humidity hit me right in the face! When we get to this time of the year, we’re about ready for the heat and humidity to be over and it’s coming, but maybe just not quick enough!

One of the things that we shot before heading out West was a gig for our friends at LG Seeds. About six and a half years ago we shot Bret Berg and his “Moneymaker” tractor in the studio and it’s one incredible machine. As you can see from the photos in 2011 on this link, the “Moneymaker” has four engines that are putting out 8,800 horsepower http://blog.kevinmay.com/2011/02/28/eight-eight-hundred-horses/

Bret brought the “Moneymaker” tractor to the National Tractor Pullers Association event at the 130th Sandwich Fair in Sandwich, Il. If you’ve never been to a tractor pull, it’s pretty amazing to see these machines run down the track. It’s a very visceral experience because it’s a overload of your senses. As these tractors make a run, you’ll feel the vibrations of the air and hear the roar of the engines and it’s amazing!

Here’s one of our shots of the “Moneymaker” tractor in action!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work and we sure do appreciate it!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Editing, editing, editing! Yes, I’ve been a video editing machine these past couple of weeks and we have been cranking out the video projects right and left! We go through these periods where we do a bunch of the same thing for days on end, so there are times where we are shooting and other times like this past couple of weeks that it was a lot of editing. We’re busy and that’s a very good thing! May, June, July and August is traditionally our busiest time of the year and this summer was no exception! Besides all the shoots that we did here in Central Illinois. we also had shoots in five different states and Canada. I don’t know how many miles Jan and I spent in the Explorer, but I have to think that it was at least 10,000 miles! It’s a good thing that we both like to drive because if we didn’t, that would be brutal!!!

Today’s photo is our home base city of Peoria and it’s been great being here these past three weeks. We’re enjoying our time here at home knowing that the road trips will be starting up again soon and we’ll be back on the road once again!

We’ve got one more week before the end of summer with the Labor Day weekend, so if you’re going to be traveling for the holiday, make it a safe one! Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great last week of summer!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It sure was nice to spend this past week in Peoria and to be home for a change! As I talked about last week, we’ve been on the road a bunch these past few months and there’s so much that you miss out on when you’re out on the road. To me it’s the little things like sleeping in your own bed and eating your own food that make being home so good. We had a busy week with a couple of shoots and then a ton of video editing work as well, so it was a nice mix of things going on and that’s never a bad thing!

For those of you that don’t know, I live just down the road from Kickapoo, Illinois which is just West of Peoria about 10 miles. There’s not ever been a bevy of dinning options in Kickapoo, but for those that do know Central Illinois, there’s always been Ludy’s. It’s a small little bar that has some of the best hamburgers and cold beer around and they’ve even got picnic tables outside and in the summertime, it’s great to sit outside and enjoy the warm summer weather. Sure we could go down the road to Peoria for food, but it’s nice to have some places close to home. Well now Kickapoo has added a second restaurant and it’s a good one! Pizza 150 is a brand new restaurant that was constructed on the site of another little hole in the wall bar in Kickapoo that is long gone. I had watched the construction going on earlier this year and wondered what the building was going to be and to my surprise, it was another restaurant. From the outside you could tell that it was going to be a nice place and the first time I walked in, I was blown away by how nice it was. Now to me a nice place is a place that’s laid back and I feel comfortable just chilling out and having a few cold beers along with some great food. Pizza 150 fits that bill to a T for me! So if you’re in Central Illinois and looking for a new place to check out, give Pizza 150 a try and I think you might like it too!

Here’s a couple of my shots for our friends at Pizza 150.

It’s time to get rocking, we’ve got another busy week with a ton of video editing so I’ll be chained to the computer! We hope that you have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out our work!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

We are back in Peoria from last week’s Alabama road-trip and darn happy about that! It’s not that we didn’t have a good shoot last week or that we didn’t have fun too, because we did! It’s more about all the time that we’ve spent on these road-trips in the past few months away from home and we’ve sure spent a lot of nights in hotels! The funny thing is that after being here in town for the next month or so, we’ll be begging to go back out on the road! It’s a crazy cycle indeed! 🙂

As you might know, we love going to car shows in Central Illinois and shooting photos of the different cars. It’s not something that we do all the time, but we try to hit at least one or two each summer! When we were out in Golden, Colorado last month, apparently there is a big cruise in on the first Saturday of the month in town. The amazing thing to me is that they do this year round, so I’m sure that the weather wouldn’t be nearly as nice in December, but I guess that they get a lot of cars and people come out for it. Well, we sure couldn’t have had a better day when we were there and the amazing thing is that people were lined up on South Golden Road in lawn-chairs watching the different cars cruising up and down the road! I was truly shocked at the number of people watching and it almost reminded me of a crowd that you would see for a Fourth of July parade. Needless to say we had a great time and took lots of pictures of some of our favorite cars! Next time we’re out in Golden, Co. on the first Saturday of the month, We’ll have to do it again!!!!

Here’s a few of our snaps from the Golden cruise-in.

It’s time for us to get to work, we’ve got a lot to do to get caught up from this last week being on the road! We hope that you’re going to have a great week to come and thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Alabama greetings to one and all!

Well, it sure has been a couple of crazy weeks since you’ve last heard from us! Busy? Yes, indeed! I was up in Canada on a shoot for ten days and it was interesting to say the least! This past week I spent most of the week working on all the video and still photography from the Canada gig and was able to get things wrapped up on Friday afternoon and was darn happy about that! We had one night to regroup and left for Alabama on Saturday and here we are ready to rock once again for another gig! I’m amazed at the amount of time that we have spent on the road this year and it’s far from over!!!! We’ll rock and roll this week and then I think we’ll be in Peoria the rest of August and I’m not too upset about that at all!!!!

On our road trip out West in late June for another gig, we had a couple of days for ourselves to get out and shoot and a few weeks ago you saw a couple of photos from Badlands National Park in South Dakota. This week I’ve got a couple of photos from Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. For those of you that have never been there, you might have seen the tower in the 1977 movie “Close encounters of the Third Kind”. It’s one of those things that you can see for miles as you are driving too, it doesn’t seem all that big until you get closer and closer and see that it’s pretty darn big! You also can see why many Native Americans in the area hold this tower as being a sacred place. I can feel that vibe when I’m there because there aren’t any other formations like that in the area, so I can see why it’s a special place!

Here’s a couple of our snaps from Devils Tower National Monument.

Ok, it’s time for us to get rocking! We’ve got a busy week and then back to Peoria, so we’ve got to get going! We hope that you’re going to have a great week to come and thanks for checking out our work as always!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well the short work week of the 4th of July holiday weekend has come and gone and so has the three-day work week. I’m telling you I could get used to working only three days a week! I’m sure by the end of this week we’ll all be ready for the weekend and a couple of days off!

On our road trip out West a couple of weeks ago, we were able to spend a day at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. It’s a very fascinating place and if you’ve never been there for a visit, it’s well worth your time to spot in and check it out. Before you get to the park, the area around the park is a very open grassland and flat as it can be. When you get to the park the landscape turns into a mini Grand Canyon with some incredible formations. One of the things that I like is that you can start at one end of the park and drive through to the other end on the scenic drive. There are lots of places for you to pull out and take some photos and see the scenery.

I think we’ve got a couple of great photos to share this week from Badlands National Park. We were incredibly fortunate to see a number of Big Horn sheep and thanks to a long lens, Jan was able to get a really wonderful shot of one of these magnificent animals! They are so big and when you see them up close, you wouldn’t want to be in range of those horns because I’m sure they could do some serious damage. I was able to grab a nice shot of the landscape and also was fortunate to have some very nice clouds in my snap and that made the photo even better!

Here’s our two snaps from Badlands National Park.

Thank you as always for taking the time to check out or work and we hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev and Jan

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Wednesday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It’s a midweek update from us after the 4th of July holiday weekend. If you’re like us, you’re back at work after a couple of days off and it’s always nice to have a little break like that! It’s also nice to have a very short rest of the work week as well and I know that we sure won’t be complaining about that!!! 🙂

We had a shoot in Ft. Collins, Co. last week and it’s always great for us to get out West like that. It’s never too upsetting to be out West in the summertime with your eyes on the Rocky Mountains and the lower humidity that we sure don’t have here in Central Illinois in July. We had a great shoot and then we were able to spend a couple of days in the Denver area for ourselves. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect and we were able to get out and take some photos as well and that’s never a bad thing! One of the fun things that we got to shoot were a couple of furry four-legged friends that were out enjoying a very nice day! I think that the dogs were enjoying the day as much as we were! Here’s a couple of my snaps from a dog day afternoon spent with Chu-Chu and Dublin.

It’s time to get to work! It’s going to be a busy week getting caught up from being on the road and we’ve got three days to do that! We hope that you have a great rest of the week and thanks again for checking out our work!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Rapid City, South Dakota greetings to one and all!

We are on the road once again and what a surprise that is to some of you! 🙂 Last week we had a shoot over by Omaha, Ne. and now this week we’ll be in Colorado for a shoot as well. One of the very nice things for us is that we are able to combine a little fun in with our work and that makes these great road trips for us. We were able to make a little zig in our zag on the way out West and spent yesterday at Badlands National Park and also exploring some of the back roads as well. One of our stops was in the very small town of Scenic, SD. If your driving from Rapid City to Badlands National Park on Rt. 44, you’ll come across the semi ghost town of Scenic. There’s one gas station and a few houses and that’s about it, but back in the day, there was a little bit more here. They had a saloon and the jail was right next door, so you can only imagine what would happen at this place on a nightly basis!!! Good times indeed!!! 🙂

Here’s a couple of our snaps from Scenic, South Dakota.

Next week will be the 4th of July holiday weekend, so if you’re going to be traveling like we will be, make it a safe one between the hot dogs and fireworks! Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work as well!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

I was out in New Mexico this past week and one of my stops along the way was the City of Rocks State Park in New Mexico. I made my first visit there about seven years ago and I was fascinated by the different formations of rocks that are there. It’s a concentrated group of free-standing rocks that are quite large in some spots and that makes for an interesting place to visit. They also have camping sites in and around the different formations so you can really connect with the surroundings and get back to nature.

Here’s a couple of my snaps from my day at the City of Rocks!

We’ve got a pretty busy week coming up and then we are on the road again before the 4th of July holiday weekend. Summer is here and it’s our busy time indeed!

Thanks again for taking the time to check out our photos and we hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning New Mexico greetings to one and all!

One of the things that I’ve always loved is stuff that’s “old school”. It can be anything from a vintage car to some cool deco architecture on a building. There’s something about the style of things from the past that probably never will come back again that’s always been intriguing and interesting to me. The other thing that I find fascinating is seeing these things and wondering how long they will be around.

On my road trip to New Mexico on Sunday, I saw a bunch of vintage signs from some places that are long gone and I had to stop and shoot them becuase you just don’t know how long they will be around. The next time that I might come that way, the old buildings and signs could be long gone! I picked out a few of my favorite snaps and there’s something very fun to me about seeing these old designs and styles of signs!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work and we hope that you have a great rest of the week!!!

Kev

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