Monthly Archives: June 2015

A Sunday Drive!

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Monday morning Idaho greetings to one and all!

It’s going to be a holiday weekend coming up with the 4th of July next Saturday! Some of you are going to have to work and others will have a three-day weekend or more.

There’s nothing like a nice Sunday drive in the car and I can remember doing that for most of my life. Being out in the country and driving around seeing places that you’ve been to before or exploring new cities and towns is a lot of fun! It’s also a lot of fun as photographers for us to see something special or unique and stop and take a few minutes to grab a few photos. Jan and I took a Sunday drive a week ago and headed from Peoria over to Keokuk, Ia. and then North along the Mississippi River to Burlington, Ia. before heading back home. All and all it was a great day to get out and listen to a little music in the car and shoot some photos!

Here’s one of Jan’s photos of a sun-faced sculpture from the Nauvoo LDS Temple in Nauvoo, Il. and one of my snaps of a fire hydrant in Dallas City, Il.

We hope that you’re going to have a good week and also a safe and wonderful 4th of July weekend as well! Thanks as well for checking out our work!!

Kev and Jan

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Big Boy Toys

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

I’m laughing because I’m thinking this summer in Central Illinois will go down in history as the summer of rain and cutting the grass! It seems like everyday it’s raining and about every other day I’m cutting the grass at my house!! I was out on a quick trip to the East Coast this past week for a shoot and I cut the grass before I left and then three days later when I came back home I had to cut it again! One thing is for sure, it’s really good exercise pushing the lawn mower around the yard! 🙂

Speaking of that East Coast swing last week, I was out shooting what I fondly call the Big Boy Toys. Big Boy Toys in my world are any large pieces of equipment that as a kid you would dream about using while you were playing with your little toys in the yard all those many years ago. I’m still fascinated by how things work and enjoy watching these Big Boy Toys do their thing. You could give me a lawn chair and for hours on end I could sit there and watch a construction site or combine harvesting a farm field.

This past week’s shoot was at a rock quarry in Easton, Pa. and one of the rare things as well for me is to be out shooting photos of a brand spanking new machine. I’m thinking in my 25 years of photography, I’ve maybe shot a brand new out of the box machine less than a handful of times, so it’s very rare indeed to see and photograph at a customer’s site. Everything on a machine like this is brand new, so your photos are going to look great because the machine isn’t all beat up!

Here’s a few of my snaps from Easton, Pa. of this brand new Caterpillar 988K Wheel Loader!

Well it’s either time for me to get to work or it’s time for me to get outside and get the yard cut again! Have a great week to come as always!!!

Kev and Jan

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Rain, rain go away…

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

Well we’re sure had more than enough rain here in the Midwest these last few weeks. It seems like everyday day we are getting some rain and things are getting a little soggy! I ended up getting my yard cut yesterday and normally I would wait for things to dry up before cutting it, but I saw a break in the weather for a few hours and thought I’d better get it done. The whole time that I was cutting it, the ground was wet and my shoes were nice and squishy! We’d love to send some of this water out to the West Coast where they don’t have enough!!!

Back at the first of this year I made the announcement that we were starting to shoot some video for clients. I’ve been truly amazed at the number of projects that have rolled in this year. We just did another one last week where I was shooting video images and Jan was shooting still images for the client, so that was a lot of fun!

We have learned so much in the past few months about the whole process and ways to do things better. There are technical things that we never had to deal with shooting still images and now we are learning about video. One of the biggest things that we’ve learned was getting better audio for a video commercial like the ones we’re sharing today. There was some trial and error in the beginning, but with the help of an incredible video mentor, we are getting things where they should be! These spots are a great example of that!

We’ve been doing a series of TV commercials for our friends at Goldfine and Bowles. We learned so much about audio recording doing these commercials and ways that we could make it sound even better. Like anything else in life, we learn from our mistakes and try to not make them again!

Here’s a couple of our new spots for Goldfine and Bowles!

Thanks as always for checking out our work and we’ll keep rocking and we hope you will as well!

Kev and Jan

Off they go

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well we sure had quite the Sunday of weather in Central Illinois. In the afternoon the thunderstorms really heated up and the winds were rocking. I heard on the radio that about 10,000 Ameren customers were without power at some point yesterday, so that’s a pretty good storm!

We were recently helping out our friends at UnityPoint with some photos. We were trying to show some of the projects that the UnityPoint Health – Methodist / Proctor Foundation has funded. One of the many projects was this project that we are featuring today. When a child is going in for some surgery at the hospital, there is a point where they have to leave the parents and head in for that surgery. This can be a little scary for the child to leave the safety of mom and dad, so to ease that anxiety they get them all gowned up and ready to go. Once they do this, they have a couple of battery operated cars that the kids can drive to surgery. It might not sound like the biggest thing in the world, but it’s probably that little bit that makes things a little easier during what could be a very stressful time for the child.

The one funny back story to this shoot was that we had three sisters aged 7 to 4 and we were going to have the oldest one drive this little yellow Hummer for us. Well as sometimes happens, she got scared and didn’t want to do it. We then tried the middle sister and she wanted no part of it either and then on to the youngest sister and the same results. We ended up putting the youngest sister in the Hummer and the nurse pushed the gas pedal and as soon as the other sisters saw what was happening, they both couldn’t wait for their turn. I think we got this photo with the youngest sister, but we photographed all of them so they would each have a turn driving the Hummer. Sometimes when you think something is’t going to work like this, you get lucky and get the shot that you’re after!

Here’s one of our photos from this great project that was funded by the UnityPoint Health – Methodist / Proctor Foundation.

We hope that you’re going to have a great week and thanks for taking the time to check out our work!

Kev and Jan

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In the Limelight

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Jan and I are rocking and rolling as always and things have been pretty darn busy of late and we can’t complain about that!

One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed seeing is live music! It doesn’t matter what type of music it is, to see musicians playing live has a wonderful feel and there’s an energy that you get from them and their music. I can recall from my days here in Peoria when I was going to Bradley University, a bunch of us would get out to the Second Chance (for those from the Peoria area and also old enough to remember that place) and catch some local and regional bands. It was a great venue to see bands and I really miss the place! Well not to fear, it looks like we’ve got a place here in Peoria that’s fitting the bill as a local place to see live music. The Limelight is an entertainment complex on the North side of Peoria and it’s a great venue to catch live music. I was there for the first time yesterday for a Generations show with local bands from yesterday and today. My guys, The Rave who I’ve photographed for over 30 years and featured here on the blog were there and did a 10 song set of original music. Let me tell you from a photographic standpoint, 10 songs sounds like a lot of time to get photos, but it’s not! I was really banging the motor drive on the camera and trying to get as many images as I could in such a short amount of time! It was a great show and as always the guys rocked!!!!

Here’s a few of my snaps of The Rave rocking the Limelight!

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

Kev and Jan

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