Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Jan and I are rocking and rolling as always and getting things done as well and that’s never a bad thing. We’ve got one more week here in town before we head out on the road once again for a number of gigs around the country in the next couple of months. We’ll be going from gig to gig and there will be some driving and also some flights, so it’s going to be a mix of fun and adventures!!!

One of the questions I sometimes get when people hear that we like going to the Big Island of Hawaii is why we like that island so much over the other Hawaiian Islands. It’s really a very simple answer for us, it’s less crowded than all of the other islands and also has the most diverse ecosystem. Wow, ecosystems? Yes, ecosystems! Most of us would think of the islands of Hawaii as just being palm trees and sandy beaches and that’s far from the truth. The big island sure has plenty of palm trees and tropical weather by the ocean, but when you head up to the center of the island you’ll see the two large volcanoes that formed the big island, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa and at this time of the year they have snow on top! Mauna Kea is almost 14,000 feet high and while we were there a few weeks ago, they even had a winter storm warning for the top of Mauna Kea! Even though we didn’t make it to the top of Mauna Kea, we could still see all the snow from down below!

Now that you’ve heard all about the tropics to the snow on the Big Island, I want to tell you about the area in between those two extremes. Waimea is the home to the Parker Ranch and if you didn’t know better, you’d think that you were out West somewhere in Montana in cattle and horse country. You’ll see lots of grazing grasslands and Jan’s photo this week really shows you that countryside. In the town of Waimea, it’s a lot like a Midwestern farming community and one of our favorite places to shoot is the Ke Ola Mau Loa Church also known as the Green Church.  Waimea is a nice place to get a little change of pace on a trip to the Big Island!

Here’s our two snaps from Waimea.

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

Kev and Jan

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Monday morning Peoria greetings to one and all!

Well what a wacky few days of weather that we had here in Central Illinois this past week and weekend! Last Thursday I was out on errands in a short sleeved t-shirt and the temperature was in the low 60’s. We know good and well that it was a fluke and it wouldn’t last and boy did it ever change. I think by early evening that same Thursday the temperature had dropped well over 40 degrees in just a few hours. On Saturday morning the temperature with the wind chill was -10! Ouch! That’s a pretty crazy swing of weather in just a few short days and I guess that you have to expect it at this time of the year! The good news is that every day that we check off the calendar is one day closer to spring and that’s a very good thing.

One of our days while in Hawaii a few weeks ago was spent in the Pololu Valley and it’s one of those end of the earth places where about the only way to really see it is by helicopter. The Pololu Valley is located on the North side of the Big Island and it’s a great drive along the coast from Kailua-Kona. You’ll go through a couple of small towns on the way and there are some local restaurants and shops which make the drive fun as well. There’s a small viewing area of the Pololu Valley at the end of the road and Jan’s photo shows you what an incredible view that you will see if you get the chance to visit there! We made a couple of visits to the Pololu Valley on this trip and our photos are from our second visit and it was sunny and much nicer!

Here’s a couple of our snaps from the Pololu Valley.

Thanks for taking the time as always 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!!!

Well, all good things sometimes have to come to an end as our time in Hawaii did this past weekend! It was great to be there as it always is and to get away from Central Illinois when the weather isn’t all that wonderful at this time of the year makes it pretty darn nice as well. The other thing that’s also nice for Jan and I is that we are able to get out and shoot some nature photography for ourselves. When you’re shooting photos and videos for a client, your first goal is to make them happy with the content that you’re creating for them. If you’re able to please yourself in the process, then it’s a win win for everyone. When you go out to shoot photos for yourself, your only goal is to please yourself and that’s the kind of photography that can get your creative batteries recharged. By getting out and shooting nature photos like we did, we were able to enjoy some sunshine and warm temperatures and also create some great photos as well!

One of our stops on the Big Island was the Lapakahi State Historical Park on the Northwest side of the island and it’s an old fishing village that’s been partially restored as it would have been hundreds of years ago. At this time of the year just off of the coast, you’ll catch glimpses of the whales that have migrated from Alaska and we were able to see a few, but they were too far offshore to photograph.

Here’s a few of our photos from our day spent at Lapakahi State Historical Park.

It’s time for us to get busy with 2018, so we hope that you’re going to have a great rest of the week and thanks for taking the time to check out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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Tuesday morning Kailua-Kona greetings to one and all!

2018 is here and we made it! If you’ve had some time off during the holiday season, it’s probably hard to get back into the swing of things getting back to work. Fortunately for Jan and I, we’ve got a few more days here in paradise before coming back to Peoria on Friday afternoon where I hear it’s going to be a balmy 11 degrees for the high that day! I guess I won’t be wearing my flip-flops and shorts when I get off the plane. That’s going to be a real shock on the system after having had three weeks of 80 degree days!

2017 was a very nice year for Jan and I and we were really very blessed to have so much work once again without us being so swamped that things got crazy busy. Lots of road-trips and shoots out of town around the US and out of the country and that’s always a very good thing. We’re already getting booked up into February and we’ve got road trips on the East and West coasts in the first couple of months of this year, so we’ll get regrouped from our time away at Christmas and get ready to roll once again!

One of our shooting spots this past week was Punalu’u Black Sand Beach Park. If you look at a map of the Big Island, you see Punalu’u on the Southeast side of the island. It’s a great little area with the black sand and the Green Sea Turtles and that’s always fun to see them too. The one bit of advice that I’d give if you’re ever going to visit Punalu’u is to have some sort of footwear because when the sun is out, you could fry an egg on that black sand, so it’s a little hot on the bottoms of your feet.

Here’s a few of our snaps from Punalu’u and you’ll see that Jan got a great image of a Green Sea Turtle in a shallow pool of water.

We both hope that you’re going to have a healthy and safe 2018 and thanks as always for taking the time to check out our work!!!

Kev and Jan

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