Monday afternoon Kailua-Kona Christmas greetings to one and all!

For those of you not familiar with the Hawaiian language (like I’m fluent in it, lol), Mele Kalikimaka is Merry Christmas, so I hope that today on this Christmas Day you and yours are having a very Merry Christmas!!!

Jan and I are here in Kona on the Big Island and needless to say it’s a little warmer and a little less snowy then it is back home in Central Illinois! It’s great to have sunshine and warm temps in the high 70’s with the nice light trade winds blowing to keep things nice and comfortable. We’ve already put a 1000 miles on the rental car in the week that we’ve been here and have been shooting nature photography at a number of locations around the island and it’s been very fun and very relaxing as well.

One of our first stops was at Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and the K?lauea volcano. Now to answer your first question, No, we didn’t see any lava flowing! You can see the steam rising from the Halema’uma’u Crater and we’ve been told when it’s dark you can see the orange glow coming from the crater. At the moment, there’s not any lava that’s flowing into the Pacific Ocean, but there was just a couple of months ago! It’s really hit or miss that you’ll see it! Needless to say, we still had a great time hiking around the park and shooting lots of photos as we always do! We’re planning another visit over to K?lauea and the other side of the island once again to shoot more photos while we are here!

Here’s a couple of our snaps from Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and you can see that there is color and beauty in the land of lava!

We hope that you’re having a wonderful Christmas today and holiday week to come! Thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work!!!

Aloha!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Kailua-Kona greetings to one and all!

It’s the week before Christmas and for a lot of people, they are starting to shut it down for the rest of the year. Hey, that’s Jan and I!  🙂  When I first started working for myself about 28 years ago, the thought of taking time off at Christmas seemed a little crazy because I thought that everyone else would be on vacation at that time and I didn’t want to go somewhere and have it be busy with a bunch of tourists. After a couple of years in business and being in Peoria at Christmas time, I quickly realized that for my business and what I do, the time between Christmas and New Years was non-existent and I started to think, what the heck am I doing in Peoria in the dead of winter when I can be someplace warm! Jan and I started taking off the week of Christmas and New Years and we’d head someplace like Destin, Fla. or New Orleans, La. for the week. I then started to see where business was shutting down even sooner than just Christmas as clients would be taking time off to try and use up any extra vacation time or they would lose it! We’ve not gotten to a point where by about the middle of December, things have pretty well shut down for the rest of the year and so Jan and I are taking full advantage of that slow time to get the heck out of town and detune from the year and all that’s gone on!

We’ve got a lot of things planned out over the coming days to get out and shoot a bunch of nature photography and do some hiking and that will be great!!! There’s something that’s very therapeutic about getting out in the sunshine and hearing the birds singing!

Here’s one of Jan’s photos from yesterday and our first day in paradise and you’ll see what we mean about tranquility!

If you’re going to be traveling this coming week and weekend for the Christmas holiday to spend time with family and friends, make it a safe one and have a wonderful time!!! I know that we’re going to do our best to do the same!!!

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

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

For Jan and I, this is our last week of work for the year and needless to say we’re quite happy about that! Now we’ll still have some Monday morning promos to finish out the year, so you’ll still hear from us in the coming weeks. It really has been a very good year once again and we are very blessed to be doing all that we have in 2017! There have been a lot of road trips and it’s a good thing that we both enjoy being on the road. Now don’t get me wrong, you can be on the road too much and when that happens it’s always good to come back home to Peoria!

We’ve got a visiting sculpture in Peoria and if you haven’t had a chance to see it yet, it’s pretty darn cool. For the next nine or so months, the sculpture titled Return Visit will be featured here in the Peoria area. Return Visit is a giant 31′ tall bronze statue that depicts Abraham Lincoln standing with a modern-day man who’s holding Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The statue is outside on the East side of the Peoria Riverfront Museum and faces the Illinois River. It’s a very impressive piece and you just don’t realize how big it is until you get up next to it! I like the fact that we are getting some of these things in the Peoria area and it’s really nice to see!

Here’s one of my photos of “Return Visit” taken with the drone.

It’s time for us to get busy, we’ve got a lot to do in the next five days to get things wrapped up for the year! We hope that you’re going to have a great week to come and thanks as always for taking time to check out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!!!

We’re winding things down for 2017 and we’ve got a couple more weeks here in town before we shut it down for the rest of the year. It’s amazing how fast this year has flown by with all of the different shoots and locations that we were at around the country. It’s never too upsetting to have things slowing down a bit at this time of the year and it allows us to get a bunch of year-end stuff done so that when we start 2018, we’re caught up with everything and are ready to go! It’s nice having the desk all cleaned up and all the appropriate paperwork filed and boxed up!!!

On my trip out to Southern New Mexico over the Thanksgiving week, I was able to get out and shoot photos everyday which always makes me very happy! One of my photography spots that I was able to visit on this trip was the El Paso Desert Botanical Gardens. It’s not as huge of a garden as some of the other ones that Jan and I have shot at around the country, but it’s a very nice place that’s incredibly tranquil and peaceful. There are a number of fountains in the park, so the sound of running water in the desert is a very calming presence in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Now at this time of the year, it’s a little harder to find flowering plants and trees since it’s out of season, but there still are some and that’s where the challenge is finding some things to shoot! All and all I had a great few hours walking around the gardens listening to the running water and grabbing a few snaps!

Here’s a couple of my photos from a morning spent at the El Paso Desert Botanical Gardens.

It’s time for us to get rocking on all of the last-minute year end things that we need to get done! 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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