Monthly Archives: February 2014

You can do it too!

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!!

Sometimes I know that people think that the reason a photographer like myself is able to get good photos is because of the professional cameras that we are using. In some photos that’s true and there are some technical things that a more professional camera can do that a camera with less features can’t do! In the case of this weeks photo, the camera was my iPhone 5s. It’s amazing to me the technology that’s packed into this phone and to be able to get great snaps from a cell phone as wonderful. One of the other great features of the phone is a “panoramic” function with the software. By panning across a scene like this nature landscape, the phone is able to record the image and ‘stitch” the multiple images together into one very nice panoramic image! It’s truly amazing to see how far this technology has come in the last 10 years and it will also be interesting to see where it goes in the coming years as well!

Here’s my iPhone panoramic photo from Las Cruces, NM.

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!!

Kev

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Walking around Santa Fe!

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!!!

It sounds like we’re going to get popped with some more winter weather today here in Central Illinois! One of these days winter will be over, but probably not soon enough!!!!

When I was out in Santa Fe, N.M. a couple of weeks ago, I was able to spend a day walking around the downtown and shooting some photos! For me it’s always fun to get out and do this and it’s even more fun in a town like Santa Fe. The Southwest has a lot of great architecture and it’s just so different then what we see here in the Midwest! Lots of warm adobe tones and lots of turquoise colors really work well together and make for a lot of great photos!

I’ve got four photos for you this morning from Santa Fe. The top photo is from the
Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi and is a statue of Kateri Tekakwitha. She is the first Indian of North America to be promoted a saint. The photo on the left is a statue at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts called “Water Carrier”. The center photo is the inside of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. The last photo on the right is of the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.

It’s time to get to work, so I hope that you have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my work!!!!

Kev

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Photography in Santa Fe, NM.

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Cold Peoria Monday morning greetings to one and all!!!!

After spending the week in New Mexico last week and then getting back to Peoria late Sunday afternoon to a two foot snow drift in my driveway, I’m wondering why I came back home!!!! Oh yea, that work thing!!! 🙂

I was out in Santa Fe last week doing a shoot for my friends at Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine! We were shooting on location in Santa Fe at the beautiful Las Palomas B&B and it made the perfect location for all these quilt shots that we did! We were able to shoot in a bunch of the different rooms there and it made for some very interesting backgrounds! Some of photos were also taken outdoors and we really lucked up because the evening after we finished shooting, Santa Fe got four inches of snow and that would have ruined any outdoor photography!!! Fortunately for us we were able to get the shots that we needed, so everything worked out great!

Here’s one of my shots from Las Palomas and I think everyone is very happy with the shoot!!!!

Thanks as always for taking the time to check out my work and I hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev

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I’m still banging the drum!!!

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Monday morning greetings from Santa Fe, New Mexico!!!

Wow, the Super Bowl, yawn!!! The Super Bowl commercials, yawn!!! For all the build up and the hype for the big game, the NFL laid a big goose egg! Blow out games are never entertaining unless your team is the one that’s blowing out the opposition!!! I have a feeling that Animal Plant’s “Puppy Bowl” got better ratings then that yawner!!!!! For the most part the commercials were bad as well! It was funny becuase every-time I would watch a bad one, I would say to the room, “There’s another four million dollars down the drain”! Yes, 30 second spots were four million a pop! Scary but true!!!!

It’s the first road trip of the year and we’ve got a great spot to be shooting, Santa Fe, NM!!! We’ll be shooting for Modern Quilts Unlimited magazine and it should be a lot of fun! The colors and textures out here are inspiring and hopefully we’ll be able to bring that out in our photos!!!!

I’m still banging my drum about lighting!!! It’s been amazing to me over the last five or so years how we in the advertising world have gotten away from doing lighting on people and products. I know that this is an old school thing because back in the day you had to do lighting becuase of the cameras and film. With today’s modern digital cameras, it’s not necessary to do lighting to get a good photo, but we are missing out on the mood that can be created with lighting! There is a drama and mood that is created when you light up a subject and most of the photos that I’m shooting for clients these days lack that dramatic look. There are a host of reasons from our new cameras, time is money and budgets have been squeezed, to “It’s good enough”! It’s sad to see because I think about the lack of impact that photos are missing today!

Here’s a shot that we did last week for my friends at Simformotion and this is one of my clients that does see the need to have photos with impact for their products. Taking a little bit of time and doing some creative and dramatic lighting, we are able to take a product that might not be all that exciting and turn it into an interesting and attention getting photograph! Hopefully as time goes on, more and more clients will want their products and people to stand out and have impact!!!

It’s time to get busy and Santa Fe is waiting, I’ve got lighting and photography to do!!!! 🙂

I hope that you have a great week as always and thanks for taking the time to check out my work!!!

Kev

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