Monthly Archives: April 2015

Residences at SOSC

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Wow, it’s been busy! There is so much going on work-wise right now and it’s a great feeling! Most of this weekend was spent shooting or on the computer editing photos and video from the past week. It wasn’t too upsetting to be on the computer on Saturday with the weather being cold and rainy here in Central Illinois. Sunday was the complete opposite from Saturday and there was glorious sunshine all day and we were out shooting a number of projects, so we took full advantage of the great weather!

One of the ongoing projects is a series of still and video images for our friends at Cullinan Properties. This project took us down to St. Louis and Quincy this past week and the weather was sunny, but very windy! One of the properties that we photographed was the Residences at The Streets of St. Charles. The property is just West of the Missouri River in St. Charles, Mo. and it’s a great set-up. They have condos and then have incorporated shopping as well within the neighborhood. It gives the area a city feeling without all of the hubbub of the big city!

Here’s a series of time-lapse images of the Residences in a nice little YouTube video.

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

Kev and Jan

Click on image to video the Time-Lapse

Old School Fun

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Monday morning greetings to one and all!

One of the things that I have talked with fellow photographers a lot about over the last five or so years, is the art of lighting and how it is becoming a lost art. When we think of old school photography, and I’m talking about shooting film, there wasn’t any Photoshop to massage or manipulate an image. As a photographer you had to get it right in the camera, which meant that you had to have everything perfect when you pressed the shutter button. The lighting and composition had to be spot on or the photo wouldn’t be what you needed.

In today’s photography world, clients’ budgets have been squeezed and we are having to work faster, not being able to spend the time on a photo like we have in the past. I think what made this shoot last week so special is that we had time to do lighting on the project and what a difference it made in the photography. We were shooting some antique tractors and were given the proper time to make them look as good as possible with our lighting. It takes a lot of photography gear to light one of these big tractors and make it look great. It also takes time to set everything up on location and then do the actual photography. As we all know, time is money!

Here’s one of our shots from last week of this beautiful Best tractor from a bygone era!

Here’s hoping that you’ll 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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My Silver Jubilee

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

I can’t believe it, but I’m wrapping up my 25th year in business this coming Tuesday! I’ve said this before, but it seems like it was just yesterday that I started out on my own back in April of 1990. I guess time does fly when you’re having fun and we’ve sure had a lot of fun all these years! I’ve been incredibly fortunate and blessed that clients have been hiring me and supporting me all these many years. I know that we’ve created a lot of great work over the years and I know that we still have the desire and drive to keep pushing forward these next few years!

I have to laugh a little bit, we’ve featured photos for Unity Point Hospital two of the past three weeks and now we’ve got one more photo to share with you. We are starting to get into that season of shooting architectural photography for clients with things starting to green up and when we’ve got good weather we have to take advantage of it. This past Saturday the weather was perfect, so Jan and I were out most of the day into the evening shooting outdoor photography for a number of clients. Our last shoot of the evening was a night shot of Unity Point’s Methodist Hospital. We got set up with the camera and then waited for the perfect time to get the shot. Things were starting to get good, so we started shooting and at some point about 45 minutes later we knew that the shot was going to be the money shot.

Here’s our photo from Saturday night of Unity Point Methodist Hospital.

Year 26 starts on Wednesday, so we’re going to get rocking!!! Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great week!!!!

Kev and Jan

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Working with kids

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

After my 25 years of shooting photography, when it comes to shooting photos of kids, you just never know how it’s going to work out! Now I could tell stories for hours and hours about shoots that didn’t happen or were a complete train wreck because we were working with young kids. Now it’s not that the kids were all bad or a problem, but depending on the age of the child, you usually have a very limited time to work with them. Most kids have a very limited attention span and the younger they are, the shorter their attention span can be! What I usually try to do when I know that I’m going to be working with children is to have everything set up (camera, lighting, etc.) so we can start shooting as soon as the child arrives on the set. I will always figure that I maybe have five minutes to work to get the shots I need and anything beyond that is a bonus!

Last week we had a shoot at the Morton Unity Point Clinic and we were going to be shooting some photos of a young child with a pediatric doctor. Well we couldn’t have gotten more lucky, we had Dr. May Sun as our pediatrician and little Addison as our young patient. Dr. Sun was great with Addy and I can see why she is so highly regarded with the kids! Remember that five minute rule that I have when working with kids, heck I think we got a half hour or more out of Addison and that was great as well. Like I said, you just never know how much time you’re going to get, so you really have to work fast!

Here’s a few of our snaps with Dr. Sun and Addison!

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we hope that you have a great week to come!!!

Kev and Jan

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