Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It has been awhile since I’ve done a product shoot in a studio. I sold my studio more then two and a half years ago and it’s been a great decision and no regrets for me! It’s so rare for us to be shooting product shots anymore and usually if we are doing something like that, it’s on location in the clients space. In some ways I think that this is becoming a lost art shooting product photography and making those products look nice with great lighting. Lighting is the key to any studio type shot if it’s a product or if we are photographing people.

This shot was more challenging than I thought it would be. We had a clear glass trophy that was engraved with type. At first I thought it would be a pretty easy shot, but soon found out that it was going to be more challenging than first thought. There’s type on the top and the bottom of the award and the type is on two different angles which added to the degree of difficulty for this photo. Like anything else when you’re doing work like this, it’s all about trial and error with the lighting. You first try what you think might look best and then you modify how you are lighting the product. At some point you have it looking as good as it can look in the time budgeted for the shot. With this award, there were many angles to it, so making sure that there weren’t any bad reflections was also a big concern!

Here’s the shot that we were able to come for this award and I think it looks pretty darn nice!!!!

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

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

It’s good to be home after being on the road for the first couple of weeks of the year! We do like road trips and it’s always good to get out of town for a few days. The shoot last week was in Bismarck, North Dakota and needless to say, being there in January can be a little chilly! Most of the shoot was inside, so it wasn’t too bad, but we did need to grab an outside beauty shot of the St. Alexius Medical Center. To get some really nice color in a night shot, you need to have a clear sky and in the winter time the temperature can really plummet. We got the camera set up and then had to wait for the right time to shoot. It took about an hour to get everything just perfect, but it was well worth the wait. I think that the temperature was around zero and with the wind chill, it was probably about -15 below zero. Being all bundled up really helped, but with no protection on the face, things did get a little bit chilly!!!! Oh well, it’s worth it when the shot works out the way that you know it will!

Here’s our shot of the St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota!

The weather looks to be very nice in Central Illinois this week, so enjoy that it’s not freezing cold out there!!! Thanks and have a great week to come!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning greetings from a cold Bismarck, ND!

What an incredible response to last week’s promo announcements! With everyone checking out the announcements, our website (http://blog.kevinmay.com/) doubled its busiest day ever and that is completely amazing ! We did have a few people thinking that we’re not going to be shooting still photography anymore since we are now shooting video. Don’t worry, we can see this being a 50/50 split between stills and video at some point down the road, but we’ll always do what the clients want us to do!!!!

We’ve been very fortunate this winter to not get blasted with a lot of snow and cold early in December like we did last year. We did have some snow and cold this past week, so in some ways we are a little bit spoiled in that regard. It does make us think of warmer spring days that are coming and maybe in some cases not soon enough for our liking. That’s ok, if we don’t have record snowfall like we did last year in Central Illinois, we won’t complain at whatever we do get!!!

Thinking of warmer days makes us think of spring time and all the things that happen when things warm up!!!! One of those ongoing projects that we’ve worked on is shots of the Central Illinois area for the Peoria Convention and Visitors Bureau. One of our shoots from this past fall was a shoot out at the beautiful Weaver Ridge Golf Club. We picked a perfect day to get out and shoot a few photos and it shows in the results that we got!!!! Here’s one of the photos from our gig at Weaver Ridge!

Ok, it’s time to get outside and freeze, but we are loving it regardless of the conditions!!!!! We hope that you’re going to have a wonderful week and thanks for checking out my work as always!!!!

Kev & Jan

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2015 Peoria greetings to one and all!

I hope that you had a wonderful and safe Holiday season between Christmas and New Years!

I’ve got two big announcements to start off 2015. During my 25 years of self-employment, one of the most asked questions that I’ve gotten is, “Do you shoot video?” and the answer till now has been no. Today, I’m officially announcing that the answer to the question “Are you shooting video?” is YES!!! This all really started with the advent of DSLR still cameras having the ability to shoot 1080 HD video, as well as shooting traditional still photography. For these past couple of years, as I have been doing a still shoot and saw that something would make a nice clip of video, I would get a little “B” roll for the client, as well. From there, this has mushroomed into some small video projects which have been helpful getting my feet wet in the world of video shooting. I now feel comfortable shooting video projects that are within my ability and if I can’t handle a project, I’ve got plenty of videographer friends that can handle a bigger project like that.

I’ve put together a demo reel with some of the things that I’ve been shooting these past couple of years and I’ve uploaded the reel to YouTube. Here’s a link for my demo reel! http://youtu.be/EQ5wCvyYDnE

The second big announcement is that I’m hiring Jan Ebling to work with me full-time. Jan has helped me in the past on a freelance basis, but now I can see where I need her help full-time. Besides assisting me, Jan will also be a second shooter on many of these shoots. Jan’s expertise of being a photo stylist for many years will be invaluable for numerous projects that we’ll be doing!

I’m incredibly excited about these two announcements and I know that this coming year is going to be a great one!!!! 🙂

I hope that you’re going to have a wonderful 2015 and we are both looking forward to helping out when needed!

Thanks again!

Kev